cousin
This, the second death in as many paragraphs, almost slips by without
notice. But surely Walton might have been left a patrimony by his
father and thus need not have been granted freedom from financial
constraints by the death of a youth whom we may assume was of an age
comparable to his. This unexpected source of his independence, means
sufficiently ample to allow him to hire a crew and outfit an ocean-going
vessel for a lengthy voyage, testifies to the instability of fortune, the
constant threat of mortality, and even to how important are extended families
in this narration. It also rather foreshadows later events in the
novel, since Victor Frankenstein's cousin Elizabeth will also bear the
cost of his success.
