Tartary

Tartary, the historical region of Central Asia, appears in Mary Shelley's Frankenstein as a desolate, snow-covered expanse that Victor Frankenstein crosses during his obsessive pursuit of the monster. It is a land of extreme cold, where the snows descend on his head and he sees the print of the monster's huge step on the white plain. The region represents the physical and psychological extremity of Victor's quest, a place where the boundaries between human endurance and madness blur, and where the natural world itself seems to conspire with the monster's taunts.

Geography and Environment

Tartary is depicted as a vast, icy wilderness, a landscape of immense deserts and frozen rivers. Victor describes the snows thickening and the cold increasing to a degree almost too severe to support life. The peasants are shut up in their hovels, and only the hardiest venture forth to seize animals driven from hiding by starvation. The rivers are covered with ice, cutting off Victor's chief source of food. This environment is not merely a backdrop but an active agent in the narrative, testing Victor's resolve and physical limits. The monster, who is impassive to cold and frost, uses the region's harshness to torment his creator, leaving inscriptions that mock Victor's suffering and promise even greater hardships ahead.

Victor's Pursuit

Victor's journey through Tartary is the culmination of his long chase, which began after the monster fled from Geneva. He follows the monster's track through the wilds of Tartary and Russia, guided sometimes by terrified peasants who have seen the apparition, and sometimes by the monster himself, who leaves marks to ensure Victor does not lose hope and die. Victor describes the cold, want, and fatigue as the least of his pains, carrying within him an eternal hell. Yet, he is sustained by a spirit of good that provides him with food in the desert and revives him when he is parched by thirst. The pursuit through Tartary is a pilgrimage of vengeance, where Victor's only respite is sleep, during which he dreams of his lost friends and family.

The Monster's Taunts

The monster uses the desolation of Tartary to taunt Victor, leaving inscriptions on tree bark or cut in stone. One such message reads, "My reign is not yet over; you live, and my power is complete. Follow me; I seek the everlasting ices of the north, where you will feel the misery of cold and frost, to which I am impassive." Another warns, "Prepare! Your toils only begin; wrap yourself in furs and provide food, for we shall soon enter upon a journey where your sufferings will satisfy my everlasting hatred." These words, far from discouraging Victor, invigorate his courage and perseverance, driving him to continue his journey across immense deserts until he reaches the ocean.

Narrative Significance

Tartary functions as a threshold between the civilized world and the ultimate, frozen wilderness of the Arctic. It is the last inhabited land Victor passes through before he embarks on the ice-bound sea, where his final confrontation with the monster takes place. The region's extreme conditions strip Victor of all comfort and companionship, forcing him to confront the full consequences of his ambition and the monster's vengeance. Tartary is not a place of human society or culture but a testing ground for the limits of human endurance, a landscape that reflects the internal desolation of both the pursuer and the pursued.