What happens in Chapter 24 of Frankenstein?
Victor Frankenstein wraps up his tale to Walton, recounting how he left Geneva for good, took his mother's jewels, and embarked on a relentless quest for the creature across Europe and into the icy north. At the cemetery where William, Elizabeth, and his father rest, he vows revenge; the creature responds with a sinister laugh and a taunting whisper. Victor tracks the creature through the Rhône valley, across the Mediterranean, into the Black Sea, and through the harsh terrains of Tartary and Russia, sometimes guided by peasants and other times by messages the creature deliberately leaves on trees and stones. He obtains a sled and dogs and comes within a day's journey of the creature at the Arctic coast, but a crack in the ice separates them. Walton's ship rescues him.
Walton then takes over the narrative, addressing his sister Margaret. He depicts Victor's physical and emotional decline, his impassioned pleas to the sailors not to turn back, and the crew's eventual insistence on heading south. As Victor approaches death, he tells Walton he no longer harbors seething hatred but still believes the creature must perish, encouraging Walton to find happiness in peace. Victor passes away, grasping Walton's hand.
That night, Walton discovers the creature mourning over Victor's body. The creature expresses deep self-loathing, admits to his wrongdoings, and vows to journey to the farthest point of the earth, construct a funeral pyre, and reduce himself to ashes so that no one can use his remains to create another like him. He jumps from the cabin window onto an ice raft and disappears into the darkness.
Analysis
The chapter features a dual ending: it starts with Victor narrating in the first person, shifts to Walton's letters, and concludes with a lengthy farewell speech from the creature. This intricate narrative structure—where the creature exists within Victor, who in turn is within Walton, writing to Margaret—creates a symmetry that mirrors the chapter's themes of guilt and consequence.
Ice dominates the chapter's imagery, from the frozen Arctic ocean to the "mountains of ice" that pose a threat to Walton's ship. This ice acts as both a physical barrier and a representation of the emotional paralysis between the pursuer and the pursued. In contrast, fire appears in Victor's oath ("rage choked my utterance"), in the creature's envisioned funeral pyre, and in his promise to "exult in the agony of the torturing flames," suggesting that destruction is the only source of warmth left for either character.
The creature's final speech serves as the chapter's rhetorical centerpiece. He oscillates between self-blame ("No guilt, no mischief, no malignity, no misery, can be found comparable to mine") and a call for shared injustice, questioning why Felix, who drove his friend away, and the peasant who sought to harm his child's savior escape blame while he alone is treated as a criminal. This shifting perspective complicates any easy moral judgments and keeps the reader, much like Walton, trapped between outrage and empathy.
Victor's deathbed advice—"Seek happiness in tranquillity and avoid ambition"—recasts the entire novel as a cautionary tale, while the creature's final image, "lost in darkness and distance," refuses the closure of a witnessed death and leaves the story unresolved.
Key quotes from Chapter 24
“I, the miserable and the abandoned, am an abortion, to be spurned at, and kicked, and trampled on.”
The creature speaks to Walton during his final monologue, contrasting his own treatment with that of Felix and the rustic whom he argues are considered virtuous.
“Seek happiness in tranquillity and avoid ambition, even if it be only the apparently innocent one of distinguishing yourself in science and discoveries.”
Victor's dying words to Walton, spoken from his sickbed shortly before he loses the power of speech entirely.
“I shall collect my funeral pile and consume to ashes this miserable frame, that its remains may afford no light to any curious and unhallowed wretch who would create such another as I have been.”
The creature explains to Walton his intention to travel to the northernmost extremity of the globe and destroy himself by fire.
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Create an accountSign inVocabulary in Chapter 24
- asseverations
- Solemn, earnest declarations that something is true, made with great emphasis and sincerity as a substitute for other proof.