In the start of Frankenstein, we encounter a failed creator on his journey to the North Pole, known as Captain Walton “You are well acquainted with my failure, and how heavily I bore the disappointment.”(2) Captain Walton says that he knows grief because he has experienced it in his failures to become a creator, or a poet. However, without true experience in Victor Frankenstein and the Creature’s grief, he can’t fully understand them without experience.
In Captain Walton’s letters to his sister, he writes about a stranger that he encounters on his journey to the North Pole. He documents his impression of him after taking him onto his boat. “My affection for my guest increases every day. He excites at once my admiration and my pity to an astonishing degree.”(11) It is clear that Captain Walton finds his guest very intriguing. As a result of his fascination he is led to think this about his guest “How can I see so noble a creature destroyed by misery, without feeling the most poignant grief?”(11) Because Captain Walton hasn’t experienced his guest’s grief, or whom we find out later is Victor Frankenstein, he cannot truly understand Victor. Therefore Captain Walton is unable to fully understand grief and is as a result unable to understand Victor on an emotional level.
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If he whom you mourn still lived, […] again would he become prey, of your accursed vengeance.”(164) He is showing his understanding for Victor’s grief and calling the creature out for now just realizing that he has no more purpose. Thus Captain Walton finally has a true understanding for more Victor and can’t comprehend the creature’s problems, because he hasn’t experienced them as he has Victors. However, now that the Captain is attempting to carry the grief of Victor, if he encounters the creature he will feel the need to have to carry that weight as well. (Put in second