father's dying injunction
To disobey such an injunction, with its almost institutionalized cultural
sanction, is to commit a transgression of substance, preparing us for
other instances of conflicting goals between son and father--Victor and
Alphonse Frankenstein, Felix De Lacey and his blind father--on other
narrative levels of the novel, as well as other, much greater
transgressions for the sake of knowledge. The fact that Walton is
orphaned at a young age introduces yet another common theme of the novel.
