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What similarities can be drawn between the novels Frankenstein and Never Let Me Go?

This is a very interesting question. Both novels deal with a central idea that humanity is a somewhat fluid concept, that can be redefined and recontextualized based upon a number of different considerations. In Mary Shelley's Frankenstein, Victor Frankenstein decides to create life from dead flesh and human body parts, and creates a being who resents his very creation and his creator. Frankenstein's "monster" is human in every sense of the word, with human emotions, thoughts and desires, but his hideous appearance likens him to a monster. He will never be accepted by society and is considered less than human.


In Kazuo Ishiguro's Never Let Me Go, there is a wider plan at work, much larger in scale and scope than Frankenstein's singular experiment: there is a nationwide experiment occurring in England to produce human clones who can be harvested for organs. There is an odd inversion of the Frankenstein imagery at work in Ishiguro's novel: instead of body parts being used to build a human, usable body parts are the result of the creation of humans. The clones look and seem perfectly normal; but there is a dilemma over whether or not they have souls, and whether they are wholly and truly "human."


In Frankenstein, monstrousness is based upon outward appearances; in Never Let Me Go, the monstrousness is beneath the surface. In both books, people who have scientific origins based upon artificial means of reproduction become living humans with unique thoughts and emotions.

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