How slowly the time passes here, encompassed as I am by frost and snow…I have one want which I have never yet been able to satisfy and the absence of the object of which I now feel as a most severe evil. I have no friend.
– Mary Shelley
Frankenstein, Robert Walton in “Letter 2”. In his letter to his sister Walton expresses his need for a friend. The ice and snow symbolize seclusion and the absense of life.