South America

South America appears in Frankenstein as a distant, almost mythical land—a place of exile, promise, and dread. It is the continent the monster proposes as his future home, the site where he vows to vanish forever with a female companion, and the region Victor Frankenstein later imagines as the stage for a potential race of devils. In the novel's geography of moral extremes, South America functions as the ultimate beyond: a space outside the human community where the consequences of Victor's ambition might either find resolution or multiply into catastrophe.

The Monster's Promise of Exile

The monster first invokes South America during his climactic confrontation with Victor on the glacier of Montanvert. After recounting his sufferings and demanding a female companion, he swears that if Victor grants his request, "neither you nor any other human being shall ever see us again; I will go to the vast wilds of South America." He elaborates a vision of a simple, self-sufficient life: "My food is not that of man; I do not destroy the lamb and the kid to glut my appetite; acorns and berries afford me sufficient nourishment. My companion will be of the same nature as myself and will be content with the same fare. We shall make our bed of dried leaves; the sun will shine on us as on man and will ripen our food." This pastoral picture—"peaceful and human," as the monster calls it—is designed to persuade Victor that the creature's desires are moderate and that his exile will be absolute. South America here represents a second Eden, a place where the monster, rejected by the human world, might create his own solitary paradise.

Victor's Fear of a Race of Devils

Victor, however, immediately sees a darker possibility. While laboring on the female creature in the Orkney Islands, he reflects on the potential consequences of his work and imagines that the pair "might even hate each other" or that the female "might turn with disgust from him to the superior beauty of man." But his deepest fear is that they might reproduce: "Even if they were to leave Europe and inhabit the deserts of the new world, yet one of the first results of those sympathies for which the daemon thirsted would be children, and a race of devils would be propagated upon the earth who might make the very existence of the species of man a condition precarious and full of terror." South America, in this vision, becomes not a refuge but a breeding ground for a new species that could threaten humanity itself. Victor's horror at this prospect drives him to tear apart the unfinished female creature, an act that seals his own doom and triggers the monster's final, murderous vengeance.

The Continent as a Symbol of Escape and Consequence

South America thus occupies a unique place in the novel's moral geography. It is the only region the monster names as a destination, and it is the only place Victor imagines as a possible site for the propagation of a new, non-human race. The continent's vast, unexplored interior—"the vast wilds"—makes it the perfect setting for the monster's fantasy of a life beyond human judgment, but also for Victor's nightmare of an unchecked, monstrous lineage. In the end, neither vision is realized: the female creature is destroyed, the monster never reaches South America, and the pursuit ends on the frozen Arctic Ocean. The continent remains a hypothetical space, a place where the novel's central conflict might have been resolved or escalated, but which ultimately exists only as a promise and a threat.

Narrative and Thematic Significance

South America's role in the novel is entirely prospective and hypothetical. It is never visited, never described firsthand, and never witnessed by any character. It exists only in the monster's speech and Victor's fearful imagination. This makes it a powerful symbol of the novel's central themes: the possibility of redemption through exile, the fear of unchecked creation, and the impossibility of escaping the consequences of one's actions. The monster's promise to retreat to South America echoes Adam's expulsion from Eden—a fall into a world of labor and solitude—while Victor's fear of a race of devils recalls the biblical curse of Cain, a lineage marked by violence and alienation. In both cases, the continent represents a final, irreversible boundary, a place where the story might end but where, in the novel's relentless logic, no peace is ever truly found.