Victor's diction here reflects experiences to which we as readers have yet to become
privy, experiences that have forced upon him a psychological condition that conceives
of the world in terms of adversarial struggle. This is an example of the shrewd linguistic
forecasting that we find everywhere in the early chapters of Mary Shelley's revised
1831 text. In this case we are alerted to how much those experiences have warped Victor's
notion of reality into a series of antagonistic states. The "palpable enemy," which
is here figured in spiritual terms, will become objectified in the Creature that he
unleashes upon the world and who becomes dangerous precisely because he is treated
as an enemy.