A high destiny
This final sentence of Victor's retrospective memoir ends in a tone of
great pathos stemming from the most innocuous of verbs: "seemed."
Reversing the assurance with which the paragraph began, here Victor
comes close to acknowledging that all his talk of and even reliance on a
sense of special destiny is empty of signification. If there is no actual
destiny, then there is also no particular meaning to what he has done that
can exonerate his actions or the path of destruction left in their wake.
