A comparison of Mary Shelley’s ‘Frankenstein’ and ‘OF Mice and Men’ by John Steinbeck Essay

I will be comparing the novels ‘Frankenstein’ by Mary Shelley and ‘Of Mice and Men’ by John Steinbeck. I will focus on how the main outcasts in each book feel and how their emotions are presented and what effects this has on the reader. The novel Frankenstein is about a man Victor Frankenstein, who grew up in Geneva, Switzerland as an eldest son of a quite wealthy and happy family. His parents adopted an orphan Elizabeth, who later becomes his wife. Frankenstein wasn’t very popular although he had a good friend called Henry Cleval. At a young age he found the need to learn and at 19 he went to a University in Ingolstadt, Germany. Here he found his need to learn even greater and his interests soon became an obsession. After four years of intensive studying he took his work further and created life from different parts of the human body taken graveyards, slaughterhouses and dissecting rooms. When the creature awoke he realised that he had created a monster, but what Victor hadn’t realised was that it had feelings like any other human being. Out of his nervousness when the monster disappeared, he caught a fever which his good friend Henry Cleval nursed him back to health. As he went home he was informed of his brother’s death, and when he saw the creature again he knew it was the monster. Scared of what his family might think he decided not to tell them but he let his knowledge of the real killer mentally torture him, especially when Justine a good friend of the family was accused and hanged for murder. He left the house and went wandering in the valleys, there Frankenstein’s creation meets him and tells him his life story. After leaving Frankenstein’s laboratory, the monster went and found himself in a village where he was by attacked villagers because of his appearance. He then found refuge in the country side and stayed in a small hovel next to a house occupied by a blind man and his two children. Here he learnt to speak and read by reading the family’s books. Then longing for some companions he speaks to the blind man which he knows won’t judge him on appearance. He gets in a friendly conversation but then the man’s children come back and it all goes wrong. The monster filled with anger and rage then runs of into the forest Here he meets Frankenstein’s younger brother who he strangles, knowing that it will hurt Frankenstein. The monster has only has request from Frankenstein, that he makes him a wife so he won’t be lonely all his life. Frankenstein is moved by this and agrees, knowing that the monster will carry on killing if he doesn’t. Victor leaves for England with Henry Cleval to finish off his work, promising to Elizabeth that he will marry her on his return. Victor started to work on his second creation when he starts to get doubts and destroys his work while the monster is secretly watching. The monster then swears revenge and tells Victor that he will be with him on his wedding night. The next day the body of Henry Cleval is found and Victor is accused of murder. He sees the body and eventually gets cleared of the charge and he heads back to Geneva very unwell, knowing that the monster has claimed another victim. He then gets married to Elizabeth promising to tell her the secret after there wedding night, but she gets killed by the monster. After another member of his family is lost he tracks the monster which eventually leads him to the artic, where he gets taken aboard Walton’s ship. Exhausted he tells Walton his story and asks him to kill the monster if he dies. The ship gets free of the ice where the crew decide to go home, Victors health decreases until he eventually dies and the monster visits his dead corpse. He then talks about his suffering and how he hates himself because of all the people he has killed. Finally with no meaning to life left he talks about building his funeral pile and leaves the ship. The book ‘Of Mice and Men’ has two main characters, George Milton and Lennie Small. George and Lennie work together going from ranch to ranch as labourers. Lennie is a huge man, gigantic in size but has a brain of a child whereas George is a small man but is highly intelligent; they hang round and work together using Lennie’s strength and George’s brains. They both recently escaped from a farm in Weed where a woman accused Lennie of rape, when he was supposedly only feeling her dress because he likes soft things. Lennie loves George telling him about his dream of having small farm with a vegetable patch and a rabbit hutch. The rabbit hutch is the only part of the plan that Lennie constantly remembers because of his limited memory span. The two head off for a ranch in California, when they are almost the George tells Lennie that if there is any trouble he is to hide in the brush near the river and wait for George to find him. When George and Lennie reach the farm where they will be working, they meet an old man called Candy who shows them their beds and tells them that their boss is angry because they are late. The boss speaks to Lennie but finds it suspicious because George keeps speaking for Lennie. After the boss leaves, his son Curly enters the bunkhouse looking for his wife. Curly has a new wife who everyone knows that she always flirts with other men. Later that evening Curly’s wife comes in and starts flirting, later on curly returns and starts picking on Lennie in an attempt to start a fight because he likes to think he is tougher than everyone else. After the first day at work, all the men return to the bunkhouse where Slim, a kind man gives Lennie a puppy. The other men leave for the Whorehouse and Lennie goes and visits Crooks, a black stable buck. Crooks makes Lennie realize how alone and isolated he would be if George abandoned Lennie. The next morning Lennie is playing with his new puppy when he accidentally kills it, Curly’s wife then enters the barn and lets him feel her soft dress, with his huge size he gets a bit forceful and she begins to scream. Trying not to get into trouble he covers her mouth and accidentally breaks her neck. Lennie runs to hide in the brush where he hopes George will save him. The other men then find her dead body and hunt Lennie down to kill him. George knows where Lennie is and points them in the opposite direction. George steals Carlson’s gun and finds Lennie, he calms him down but then shoots him in the head. The others then find him and George tells them what happened. Both stories end in tragedy, and have as a central figure as an outcast due to a mental or physical defect. In â€Å"Frankenstein† the writer starts of by making Victor seem happy and jolly person to help contrast the change in his mood and his way of thinking later in the book, much like George telling Lennie about the small farm they are going to own. In â€Å"Frankenstein† the Monster had the potential to be good or bad and for the majority of the book he was trying to be good and get some friends â€Å"I, Should first win their favour, and afterwards there love† Due to his defects though, none felt sympathy for him, he was just a ‘monster’ this was what drove him to the killing .He tried making friends with the blind which went very well until his children came back and they say him â€Å"Felix darted forward, and with supernatural force tore me from his father† . He soon began hatred for all man kind, for them being so predigest against h ow he looked. In both stories the writer creates sympathy for the two characters, Frankenstein’s monster is an outcast because of his physical defects and Lennie because of his mental defects. The writer creates sympathy for the monster by giving it hideous looks where even the creator Frankenstein can not bare to look at it â€Å"he was ugly then; but it became a thing such as Dante could not have conceived† The fact that monster had the potential to be good or bad but turns bad because of the way people treat him adds more sympathy. There are loads of other points in the story where sympathy is created for the monster, a main point is when Frankenstein goes back on his word and decides not to make the monster a partner so it will not be lonely. Also the monsters talk with Frankenstein on why he wants another one like himself gets a lot of sympathy from the reader. â€Å"I thought with a sensation of madness on my promise of creating another like him, trembling with passion, torn to pieces the thing on which I engaged. Mary Shelly keeps adding sympathy through the novel as she uses very dramatic and descriptive language to show the monsters agony. Later on in the novel the sympathy soon runs out for the monster as he turns evil and makes his soul purpose of his existence to seek revenge on his creator. Lennie gets sympathy in a whole different way, he is not totally rejected by society like Frankenstein’s monster but still does not fit in like other people due to his mental intellect. Throughout the novel Steinbeck emphasises Lennie’s two main defects, his incredible strength and mental intellect of a child and when put together these can be a very dangerous combination. Steinbeck constantly reminds the reader of Lennie’s child like attitude and his lack of adult awareness e.g. when he kept the dead mouse in his pocket as a pet. The way Steinbeck writes throughout the novel about how Lennie is an incredible worker and can lift twice as much as other men emphases Lennie’s incredible strength. The way Lennie always talks about the rabbit’s gains him a lot of sympathy from the reader as it is the kind of thing a child would talk about. Another time Steinbeck makes the reader feel sorry for Lennie is when he accidentally kills the puppy which he loved dearly, this shows that he does not always follows George’s commands and it can get him into trouble. During the story the writer does not want the reader to hate Lennie even through he commits a serious crime the reader still feels sympathy for him as he acts in the only way that he knows how.