Comparing Frankenstein And August Wilson's Fences

From the 1700s, the time of Frankenstein, to 1950s America when Fences took place, to the late 1980s during the Iran-Iraq war when Persepolis was set, the concept of parenthood has remained pretty much the same. Parenthood comes with the responsibility of taking care and worrying about not only yourself but the whole other being. The obvious fact about parenthood is that there is no perfect parent. There is no book that can tell you what to do or what the perfect way is, but there are stories and novels that can show a reader that there is a spectrum of parenting styles and that some are better than others. This spectrum is seen in Mary Shelly’s Frankenstien, Marjane Satrapi’s Persepolis, and August Wilson’s Fences. Mary Shelly’s Frankenstein takes place in the

Frankenstein displays the worst end of the spectrum because of Victor’s total abandonment of the creature and the fact that he experiences the need to kill his creation. After two years, once Victor is done with creating the creature Victor says “I had finished, the beauty of the dream vanished, and breathless horror and disgust filled my heart; unable to endure the aspect of the being I had created, I rushed out of the room, and continued a long time traversing my bedchamber, unable to compose my mind to sleep” (Shelly, 58). This is the modern day equivalent of a father leaving their child the moment they were born. Later on, Victor mentions why he turns his back on the creature. He says “A mummy again endued with animation could not be so hideous as that wretch [the creature]” (Shelly, 59). He leaves the creature solely because of his looks and calls him a “wretch”. These actions forever changed the creature and helped shape the creature into the monster that he became. The creature “grew up” without a father figure and parental figure, for that