Similarities Between 1984 And Frankenstein

“I was benevolent and good; misery made me a fiend.” (Shelley 1818, pg 141) The words of a monster; or so is assumed. The dynamics of power and monstrosity are recklessly thrown around within both George Orwell’s ‘1984’ and Mary Shelley's ‘Frankenstein’. What can be immediately assumed as ‘safe’ or ‘monstrous’ cannot be trusted at face value, as the malice uncovered in the supposed protagonists of the texts, Winston smith of ‘1984’ and Victor in ‘Frankenstein’, opposes the premonitions that we held at the exposition of each text. Similarly, the antagonists of both texts, The Party and The Creature respectively, are multifaceted - making it very difficult to determine who is in the wrong. Seeing as the protagonists and antagonists are extensively

During Frankenstein, the most stark example of this is the fact that it is separated into an epistolary format - with letters from Walton describing his unrelenting journey to the arctic framing the text made up of 3 volumes, all narrated to us through victor. The layered narrative is deliberately confusing, creating a subconscious bias at the exposition of Volume 1, and obscures the truth from us as readers. However, in the Volume 2, we get the recount of The Creature’s life, and the humanity of him shines through. When looking at the definitions of monsters and humans , humanity is defined as ‘characteristic of people as opposed to God or animals or machines, especially in being susceptible to weaknesses; showing the better qualities of humankind, such as kindness. ‘ shown through Victor's weakness, and his ambition to achieve, yet it is also shown through the monster's compassion, as his efforts of befriending the DeLacey family, much like his attempt to befriend William Frankenstein are founded in compassion. As he stated, he ‘was benevolent; (his) soul glowed with love and humanity’ (Shelley 1818, pg 114) - with adjectives such as ‘benevolent’, ‘humanity’, and verbs and nouns such as ‘glowed’ and ‘love’ showing human kindness within him. However, the way in which monsters can be defined is much more widespread.

The protagonists, antagonists, villains and anti heroes as characters with intense moral diversity and disparity provide a thought-provoking read for the readers, as there are so many differing interpretations that we can gain from them. Ultimately, the presentation of morality directly ties in to what we see as the monster or villain within the texts, and through this moral ambiguity, we get multidimensional characters such as the Creature, Winston, and Victor - as opposed to the conventional hero vs villain dynamic, Ultimately showing that monstrosity and villainy is not two dimensional: rather a quality that anyone could possess - insinuating that rather than being afraid of monstrosity it is internal corruption that should inspire fear