Gleaning From The Walls

by Mary Wollstonecraft Shelley

“Oh, Frankenstein! generous and self-devoted being! What does it avail that I now ask thee to pardon me? I, who irretrievably destroyed thee by destroying all thou lovest.”

“Your repentance,” I [Robert Walton] said, “is now superfluous. If you had listened to the voice of conscience, and heeded the stings of remorse, before you had urged your diabolical vengeance to this extremity, Frankenstein would yet have lived.”

“I pitied Frankenstein [replied the Monster] … but when I discovered that he, the author at once of my existence and of its unspeakable torments dared to hope for happiness … then impotent envy and bitter indignation filled me with an insatiable thirst for vengeance … I knew I was preparing myself a deadly torture; but I was the slave, not the master, of an impulse which I detested, yet could not disobey … Evil, thenceforth, became my good … I had no choice but to adapt my nature to an element which I had willingly chosen.”

“I have devoted my creator, the select specimen of all that is worthy of love and admiration among men, to misery.”

“Polluted by crimes, and torn by the bitterest remorse, where can I find rest but in death?”

“The bitter sting of remorse will not cease to rankle in my wound until death shall close them forever.”

(Creator and Creature, desperately wanting something greater in their lives reject their better natures and descend into spiritual darkness and physical destruction.)

~ Gerrie