am I not alone, miserably alone?
Not only does the Creature's terrible solitude remind us of the mental
isolation into which Victor Frankenstein finds himself plunged, but it
also takes us back to the original scene in which this narrative is being
recited, upon a ship in the midst of the Arctic Ocean, remote from either land
or other human beings. As in Walton's letters (Letter 1.2 and Letter 2.5), so here one cannot fail to
hear the echo of Coleridge's "Rime
of the Ancient Mariner": "Alone, alone, all, all alone,/ Alone on a
wide wide sea!" (line 232).
