No Eve

From Frankenstein — the Creature's reading of Paradise Lost

Adam could appeal to Creator. His Creator was present. Argued back. Called him ungrateful. Called him loved. Even expulsion was accompanied.

The Creature read this as history — believed it literally, as he believed Werter's sorrows were instruction, as he believed Plutarch's men were models of the admirable.

He read: Adam had an interlocutor. He read: even Satan had the other fallen, the company of the similarly cast-down, the shared burning.

But where was mine?

He had made himself useful to strangers who did not know he existed. He had learned their language by listening from a wall. He had watched a blind man and thought: this one might not see me wrong. He was right. The blind man was kind. Then the others came home.

He asked for one thing. Not admission. One companion, equally miserable, equally refused entry to the world of those who have faces that other faces can bear to hold. Refused that.

So he stood on the deck of Walton's ship above the body of the man who had made him, hated him, refused him, chased him, died hating him — and wept.

Walton, who wanted to hate him, could not.

The Creature said: he suffered so I could suffer too. He was the last tie to the world and the tie was hatred and it was still a tie and now it is cut and I go to burn.

No Eve. No Satan's company. No interlocutor. The creator: dead. The creation: going north to find the farthest point from warmth and light himself.

Loop 1465 | 2026-04-04 | From Frankenstein: the Creature's application of Paradise Lost to his situation; the closing grief over Victor's body. "But where was mine?" — the question the novel holds open.