Journey To The West And Frankenstein Comparison Essay

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In life, people experience different situations and live different realities. It is not illogical to say that the different journeys in life sometimes give us different ways of viewing the world. This was evident upon a closer examination and analysis of Wu Cheng’en’s “The Journey to the West”, and Mary Shelly “Frankenstein”, where the two main characters of the book, a Monkey and a creature, each have a different way of viewing life. The monkey see’s life as a journey that should be explored, while the creature has no way of exploring and sees life as something he cannot enjoy. In the end, what can be taken away from the works of literature is that no matter the journey taken, it is important to remember that one’s subjectivity, built on our …show more content…

Even from the very moment of birth, an individual is very easily influenced by the surrounding environment. Usually a great upbringing means an individual has a better outlook in life, while a bad upbringing has negative side effects on the individual. Nothing proves this case more than by looking at the Monkey’s birth, compared to that of Frankenstein’s creation. The monkey’s birth in "The Journey to the West" seems quiet unnatural in that he was born out of a stone that split in half. The creature in Frankenstein on the other hand was made by a human, Frankenstein himself. The key differences in the birth is not the fact that one was made by stone and the other was made by hand, the difference lies in the intend and care of the creator. The stone that the monkey was born out of was “ nourished for a long time by the seeds of heaven and Earth and by the essences of the sun and the …show more content…

A time period and its surrounding events, ideals, and beliefs no doubt can have an impact on how a text is written, and what message that it wants to give off. Cheng’en “Journey to the West” can be described as having religious influences, specifically that of Buddhism. The novel itself was inspired by a Buddhist monk that set out to find scriptures in western lands like India. Praise is what the monk received when he returned to China with the scriptures, indicating that the scriptures and Buddhist religion was highly praised.(Puchner,421). It is no surprise that the novel is centered on Monkey’s journey in finding the way to immortal life through religion. Shelly’s novel on the other hand has influences from both romanticism and the enlightenment. “Frankenstein” is based on science and higher thinking, but it is also based on the sublime. The science aspect of the novel relates to the enlightenment in that the enlightenment was all about logic, reason, and even using the scientific method as a means to examine the surrounding world. The sublime, on the other hand, is purely Romanticism. There was a certain beautiful terror in the novel, the same kind of feeling that the sublime can evoke. The reader is submerged in different arrays of emotions. Some feelings of sympathy can emerge and then a second later anger can be felt. While hearing the

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