Frankenstein and If Nights Could Talk Essay -- comparison compare cont

Frankenstein and If Nights Could Talk      Ã‚  Ã‚  Ã‚   Even though most people associate the word "monster" with ghouls, goblins, and other creations of the horror genre, monsters can exist in the more common shape of human beings. People who have suffered sexual abuse, people who suffered neglect as children, and people who have chemical imbalances in their brains have committed worse crimes than Bram Stoker's Dracula ; Adolf Hitler seems more of a monster than Mary Shelley's. However, most people who can behave so horribly towards other humans were not born monsters; rather their experiences and relationships molded their hideous forms. As Shelley's Frankenstein and Marsha Recknagel's memoir If Nights Could Talk demonstrate, the experiences of those who care for these creatures affect their fates as well.    Mary Shelley, or perhaps Victor, neglects to give the monster a name and refers to him as "the monster" or "the daemon" throughout the novel, however he does not truly become a monster until he commits William's murder. The monster had no murderous impulses when first created; Victor simply called him so because of his hideous appearance. While spending his first night alone in the forest, the monster felt "...half frightened, as it were, instinctively, finding myself so desolate...but feeling pain on both sides, I sat down and wept" (Shelley 71). Like a child, though not in the shape of one, the monster helplessly suffered as he tried to find his way in a strange world without a parent to guide him. When he finally finds himself at De Lacey's cottage, the monster shows interest in humanity and a longing to become a part of society. He reads Milton's Paradise Lost, Plutarch's Lives, and Goethe's Sorro... ...ered his family. As nurturers, Marsha and Victor's experiences with being nurtured affect the monster and Jamie, as well as their own experiences with mankind. Perhaps these two stories demonstrate the idea that parents raise their children either exactly the same as they were raised or exactly the opposite. While both choose to raise their monsters in opposite ways from which they had been raised, one monster changes back into a man though the other does not change his shape but perhaps he could not. When Jamie changes his name to Dante, he reasons that both he and Dante went to Hell and came back; but for the monster he cannot come back from his Hell, rather it exists all around him.    Works Cited Shelley, Mary. Frankenstein. Mineola: Dover Publications, 1994. Recknagel, Marsha. If Night Could Talk New York: St. Martin's Press, 2001.