ascertain my fate
From the retrospect of later chapters in the novel this seemingly
innocuous phrase might be seen as constituting something of a floodwater
for what will become an increasingly powerful, inescapable driving force
in Victor's comprehension of the world. At the conceptual core of this
notion of destiny one finds combined, as here, a sense of his own
incapacity to act independently, a passivity before what he construes as
superior power, and an abnegation of responsibility for the actions of
himself or others.
