of the fifth chapter (III.5.5), and the Genevan magistrate seems to have been assured
of the matter from his interview at the end of the sixth (III.6.28). For readers who
by this point in the novel might well have come to the same conclusion, Victor's questioning
of Walton's mental stability would venture on the absurd. From the larger perspective
of the novel's development, however, the strange echo emphasizes how relative, given
the acute isolation in which its three male protagonists have come to exist, have
become all grounds of reason and normalcy.