Okay, wait I’m still not done thinking about this because just before Victor commits to killing the Creature, he asks him to prove himself an intelligent being by saying a word, any word, besides “Victor”.
Of course, Victor really has no intention of saving him. It’s all a flimsy excuse that seeks to justify destroying him. He issues this challenge fully anticipating the Creature will fall short of the mark. Only, the Creature doesn’t.
Yet, the moment the Creature utters “Elizabeth”, his fate is sealed. Victor's jealousy and resentment towards the Creature allows him to dismiss this evidence of intelligence by confirming, in his mind, that the Creature is only capable of parroting words he hears without understanding.
Still, Victor pauses and there is this powerful moment where the two look at each other with varying degrees of frustration and resentment.
There is something in the Creature’s eyes. Something different. Victor considers this revelation only for brief a moment but he does consider it. Yet, it’s not enough to halt him in his course. He is determined to destroy the Creature if only to soothe his wounded ego as a jilted lover and eradicate all evidence of the “failed experiment” he considers little more than a stain upon his perfect record.
Yet, as Victor walks away from the burning lab, the Creature calls to him by name again and again. Victor. Only Victor. Never Elizabeth. If the Creature truly had only been parroting the only two words he knew, surely, he would have called out “Elizabeth” at some point, too. He didn’t. He called out solely to Victor in his urgency and fear, and you can pinpoint the exact moment that Victor realizes that he was wrong. The Creature understands the meaning and difference between the two words. He understands the danger he is in. He is calling out for Victor's help by name.
For a brief moment, the Creature is once again his triumph, the miraculous being that he brought to life and is, by all means, his son. Once again, the Creature is that miracle bathed in sunlight which he just abandoned to flames. For that one brief moment, in Victor’s eyes, the Creature is a man. One capable of thought and emotion and understanding. One that needed him. Suddenly, what Victor has done is no longer disposing of “faulty equipment”, it’s coldblooded murder.
Victor had been lamenting the fact that the Creature only ever uttered his name again and again without any real comprehension or significance, only to realize that the Creature did in fact understand its significance and had been calling out to him by name because Victor truly was the centre of his world. There was only one other who had spoken his name in such a way.
Who else, but his mother?
“Victor!” Once spoken with that same unconditional reverence and affection was now being cried out in desperation and fear, just like his mother in her last moments.
Suddenly, Victor is once again that helpless child, separated from his screaming mother by a door, beyond which death is quickly closing in. Horrified, Victor does what he could not do for his mother when he was a child, he runs back. In that moment, I feel that he was trying to save his mother just as much as he was the Creature. Yet as even as he tears open the doors, by then it’s already (presumably) too late.
Not only did the Creature's screams remind him of his dying mother calling out his name, but they proved beyond the shadow of a doubt that he was no longer disposing of evidence, he was killing his child.
This thought has been in my head for months now and I still can’t stop thinking about it, so I need you all to suffer with me on this one, gang.
