Similarity between Mary Shelley's Frankenstein and Margaret Atwood's The Handmaid's Tale

Running Head: ENGLISH ESSAY
English Essay
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1ENGLISH ESSAY
Topic- similarity between Mary Shelley's "Frankenstein" and Margaret Atwood's "The
Handmaid's Tale"
In the core text of both Mary Shelley’s Frankenstein and Margaret Atwood’s The
Handmaid’s Tale, themes of emotion, individuality and compassion are present. Having explored
both the complex and primitive aspects of the human nature, the reader is automatically driven
towards the connection between ‘human’ and ‘humanity’. In the first work that is Frankenstein,
written by Mary Shelley, the creature portrayed is stripped of the human characteristics
completely by the help of nomenclature in spite of the fat that he was made of the human parts.
In the due course of the novel, he is referred to as ‘devil ‘, ‘wretch ‘and ‘monster’. In this respect
Mary Shelley reduces the amount of abhorrence initiated by the sub-human created by Victor.
The imagery draws on the feeling of gothic tropes and also satanic senses. The determiners used
by Mary Shelley also stresses his otherness and alienation from the human race. The definite
article used by Mary Shelley in the work intensifies the wave of mystery in the creature and
allows him to stay on the fringes of human society. He is not permitted to participate in the
human lives, instead only function as a spectator. The entire novel is written in such a way that
the reader feels a kind of gothic fascination towards the perverse and the uncanny.
On the other hand, in Margaret Atwood’s ‘The Handmaid’s Tale’, the author has used
nomenclature in order to divest Offred of the individuality and power. The name of Offred has
been derived from the preposition ‘of’’ that is followed by the commander’s name. Hence, it is
used not to separate her from other people, but to relate her with a man. Margaret Atwood
converts Offred to a commodity from a woman having defined her as a male’s possession. She is
no longer considered as a living person but as a ‘thing’ to make use of. In this respect Atwood
successfully draws the theory of the philosopher Simone de Beauvoir according to which women