Ever since the fatal night, the end of my labours, and the beginning of my misfortunes, I had conceived a violent antipathy even to the name of natural philosophy.
Chapter 6 · Narrator
Context
Victor reflects on his recovery from illness and his return to the university. He describes his deep aversion to natural philosophy after the night he brought the creature to life.
Analysis
The tricolon 'the fatal night, the end of my labours, and the beginning of my misfortunes' uses parallelism to compress Victor's entire tragedy into a single hinge moment. Each phrase renames the same event from a different angle—what was 'fatal,' what ended, what began—and the rhythm slows the reader down, forcing us to dwell on the weight of that night. The phrase 'violent antipathy even to the name' shows how completely Victor's ambition has reversed into revulsion; he cannot even hear the words without trauma.
Essay Tip
Use this to argue that Victor's retrospective narration reveals his awareness that his ambition was always headed toward disaster—he frames his success as the beginning of misfortune, not its climax, showing he now sees his scientific triumph as the true tragedy.