Comparing Characters In Frankenstein And Young Frankenstein By Mary Shelley

Great Essays
Can the drive and pressure to find love and acceptance corrupt even the purest of minds. For us humans, it can take years to find love and acceptance, but imagine being a revived, stitched together monster and fulfilling those needs. The creature portrayed in Young Frankenstein and in Mary Shelley’s novel face similar and contrasting events. To a degree, each character struggles with the acceptance by their creator, the publics scrutiny, personal experiences that shape their development and future. These contributing factors may be what makes people view the creature as a monster on the inside aside from his monstrous appearance, but is the monster an embodiment of the evil that lurks in all of us? Every parent is different when it comes …show more content…
Both of our monsters struggle with going out into the public’s eye. When the tame, trained monster in Young Frankenstein is introduced to the crowd, they scream in terror and try to run. Both of the monsters come in contact with a blind man who welcomes them in and treats them as if they were human. In Shelley’s novel the monster and the man are able to have a verbal conversation, the monster tells the man his fears of introducing himself to a family he has been observing. The blind man assures him it will be okay but the monster knows otherwise. The monster says, “A fatal prejudice clouds their eyes, and where they ought to see a feeling and kind friend, they behold only aa detestable monster” (Shelley, Frankenstein, pp90). The monster was right, when the family returns they chase him out and beat him with a stick. The same if not worse happens to the monster in Young Frankenstein, where his time with the old man is cut short when passersby see the monster and shoot him in the shoulder. While the monster goes through being shot, he is also chained and jailed in the public eye. Through both depictions of the monster’s time in the public, the humans almost do more damage to the so called monster than he does on the public at first. Thus could Shelley and Mel Brooks be shining a light on the idea that a monster lives …show more content…
Once the monster is civilized, the mob is called off and we see him reading the newspaper in bed. The monster became human in a sense and his creator can also be seen as human in the end, because the cared and acted upon the needs of his monster he brought to life. Victor’s monster doesn’t have that happy ending; Victor tries to create a wife for the monster, but cannot bring himself to do it. The monster ends up killing Elizabeth on her wedding night, and ultimately dies himself. Victor and the monster die alike, alone and bitter. We find all the monster seeks is companionship and that is the reason for his rage. When he doesn’t get love in his heart, it crushes him just as the death of Elizabeth crushes Victor. The monster can be seen as human for the desire of love is a very humanistic want and need, when this aspect of life is never possible mostly anyone would go crazy. Victor on the other hand, has the same want for love, but at the same time denies his creation the right to a wife. By not helping the monster fulfill the need of love, when Victor is the only reason for the monster’s life, Victor can be seen as a monster

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