the voice of conscience
Walton reveals just how much he has learned from listening to Victor's
narration, which is to say, how much we have likewise learned from reading
the novel. Confronting the Creature with a stern morality but also with
compassion, Walton attributes fundamental human characteristics to him,
insisting on his humanity and thus on his obligations as a human being.
The Creature responds in kind, enumerating even more complexly shaded
human attributes as fundamental to his constitution. This process of
dynamic self-examination through human interchange may also be seen as a
new element in his experience, eliciting a sense of self not as an
alienated, and therefore unique and unaccountable, being, but as a sharer
in emotions and social duties common to the human race.
