But where were my friends and relations? No father had watched my infant days, no mother had blessed me with smiles and caresses; or if they had, all my past life was now a blot, a blind vacancy in which I distinguished nothing.
Chapter 13 · The Creature
Context
The Creature reflects on his lack of family ties after learning about the importance of parental love and kinship bonds in human society.
Analysis
The anaphora of 'No father...no mother' hammers home absence through repetition, each 'no' marking a missing piece of normal human development. The alternative he offers—'or if they had'—is immediately erased by calling his past 'a blot, a blind vacancy,' language that echoes his earlier self-description as 'a blot upon the earth.' By using the same metaphor for his past and his entire existence, he suggests that not having a witnessed childhood is equivalent to not existing at all in human terms.
Essay Tip
Support a thesis that Victor's abandonment is the novel's original sin—this quote shows the Creature defining himself entirely through what he lacks (parents, infancy, memory of care), which directly ties his later destructiveness to Victor's failure to provide the basic relational structure every human needs.