Connections between Frankenstein and NVLMG

Question 1

Women

Answer 1

• Nurturing and motherly - Miss Emily with clones and Victor with his mum
• Dependent relationship with men - Elizabeth with Victor, Tommy with Ruth and Kathy
• Damsel in distress - Safie/creature, Madame/spider analogy
• Women doomed - Miss Emily fired, Innocent Justine

Question 2

The idea of morals

Answer 2

• Shifts throughout - Victor making the creature and dilemma over female, Morningdale
• Narrative voice - Kathy uses human voice and vulnerability of clones, Hearing the creature’s voice
• Taking rather than contributing - De Lacey’s take creature’s generosity and society takes organs but doesn’t accept them as humans
• Setting used to create ideas about right and wrong - ask miss about this - boundaries both artificial woods/rumours/ice, and problems associated with no boundaries (exceeding natural limits)

Question 3

Isolation or loneliness

Answer 3

• Setting - cottages in the middle of nowhere for clones and creature’s hovel, hidden from society
• Pathetic fallacy - Tommy and Creature in wind/storm, lack of clarity to losing bearings
• Characterisation of the victims - loss of relationships - Kathy loses R&T, Victor loses family, but the fault is different
• Time used to show the impact of rejection from society - Madame and villagers

Question 4

Loss

Answer 4

• Loss of free will - boundaries of Hailsham - told and not told, creature from Victor being overtaken by ambition and passion for an idol in the dreary loft
• Loss of love - no deferral, loss of E, etc, development of characters through narrative arc to explore the effect of loss of love
• Loss of life - everyone dies, both books use the conventions of the tragedy genre to heighten pathos and effect on the reader
• Loss of identity - no names, no purpose, no education, no opportunities, authorial choice significant in both

Question 5

Ambition

Answer 5

Personal ambition of the characters - NVLMG - Ruth v Kathy, office, human disappointments
F - Peneterates the secret of nature, Victor

Narrative voices - Victor v Creature, Kathy’s decision to tell the story - ambition to take the narrative, Miss Emily at the end

Chronology - Walton and Victor - framed narrative, Kathy beginning and at the end, retrospective and how her ambition changes

Question 6

Education - Setting

Answer 6

• Settings - NVLMG begins in an educational institution, all they’ve ever known and is synonymous with family, but limited and mystery to them (creativity - why do we have to be creative) Cottage stimulates a sixth form, actually holding ground, Norfolk is experimental education. F - Formal education for privilege for men, Victor is sent away to achieve the best of it but reject all eminent in favour of outside thinking - within the formal setting of uni, he holes himself in his room, mirrored in scotland, for the creature

Question 7

Education - Structure

Answer 7

Structure - NVLMG - 3 parts, mirrors Kathy’s journey as their purpose becomes clearer - education limited and to being kept clean and compliant, F - palimpsest structure of men seeking own ‘self-learning’ and ultimately at the cost of society and lives of others (pg - death quote) despite their privileges and opportunities to contribute positively
Creature’s story is opposite - no priv but values classics and seeks to put his education to good use initially eg helping the de laceys

Question 8

Education - Characterisation and the narrative voice

Answer 8

F - Vic and Wal voice of male hubris, Vic is arrogant and throws away chances in favour of self aggrandising - creature only becomes cynical through human mentors but before he self educated still gives credit - humble, respect even for his creator seeks meaning outside of his limited education

NVLMG - retrospective trying to make sense of her broader education, whole novel could be seen as a ‘plea’ to be treated as a human like creature as she learnt to be one - compassion to others and seeks this, even in a lesser extent to the guardians - learning from others behaviour or innate goodness? guardians try to help but mysterious of higher authoritarian power (society?)

Question 9

Genres/context (you would finish an essay with this)

Answer 9

F - Prometheus bound to end going beyond formal education to hubris. Morality tale. Gothic horror - education cannot win over corruption

NVLMG - Sci fi realism warning to society, education is primary to functioning societies so novel itself acts as a form of education to the readers (like Fin a broad sense) Education within novel is narrow, limited, dysfunctional for clones and humans (carers cannot think or act for themselves) opposite to F in that sense but results still chilling

Question 10

Inequality

Answer 10

Through women, creatures of science, education

Question 11

Natural world

Answer 11

Settings, society’s view on what it is, development of someone in the natural world

Question 12

Hope

Answer 12

Hope for love, hope for a better future, hope for knowledge

Question 13

Golden formula

Answer 13

On the creatures of science, relationships, women, knowledge/education, ambition, loss

Question 14

Connections (6)

Answer 14

Vulnerability of a character against a powerful force – literal nature - ‘wind’ being chaos and disorder, lack of senses, ‘half-truths’, darkness motif, both in nature yet seen as unnatural

Rejection of both characters by a surrogate parent figure, relinquish hope

Both characters reject any more connections with wider society – Tommy embraces identity of a donor, the creature seeks revenge

Sense of civilization (village/cottage) visible but inaccessible

Marginalization and mistreatment from society

Telling of a story, awareness of reader – NVLMG, direct address, naive adoption of discourse, letters in F – each story has a purpose in it’s telling – makes it easy to manipulate

Question 15

Contemporary debate about the ethics of cloning and stem cell research v overreaching ambition

Answer 15

NVLMG – Morningdale scandal and superior class of humanity, F – usurping God and women – Creature is built from nothing and corrupted, violates nature, tortured by guilt, oversteps ethically by playing God

Question 16

Old v new world

Answer 16

– NLMVG – old world is compassionate, new world is science, blurred lines of humanity (chapt 20) ancient v modern science – told and not told, rejection of modern science determines Victor’s fate

Question 17

Moment of the clone’s realization of their differences

Answer 17

(Madame metaphorical mirror, subhuman, ‘spider’, ‘something else, something troubling and strange’ v Moment of creature’s realization of appearance in pool

Question 18

Simple connections pt 2 (6)

Answer 18

Light v Dark – light (bloom of health), revitalization - dark (illness, thin, pale), Victor’s creation and God’s creation

The role of nurture – without it, the creature is monstrous, the attempts to prove the soul of the clones, educated humanity

Alienated/marginalized creation has a voice

Metaphorical/emotional/spiritual restrictions (formed by the institutions) - NVLMG – big glass front, chink, clones little attempt to escape fate by deferrals, the wall of the De Lacey family

Rejection of the clones who relinquish their lives for the sake of their creators v rejection of the creature, who, regardless, grieves his creator’s death - ‘Oh Frankenstein! Generous and self-devoted being!)

Defining the clones as the ‘other’ fixing a boundary, between human and creation v defining the creature as the ‘other’ - creature’s labels

Question 19

Nature is not like itself

Answer 19

transitory, more personification, forms this opposition, morning is dismal and wet – reality sinks in as the rest of society awakens, confronted with the Church of Ingolstadt – white, purity

Question 20

Epistolary

Answer 20

gothic function – comprising of letters or found documents for a range of multitudinal perspectives

Question 21

The Ethics of Creation and the Limits of Human Responsibility

Answer 21

• In Frankenstein, Victor creates life without considering the creature’s needs or rights. Similarly, in Never Let Me Go, humans create clones for organ harvesting without granting them full human status.
• Sophisticated Connection:
  Both novels interrogate the Enlightenment ideal of progress, suggesting that scientific “advances” pursued without ethical frameworks lead to profound dehumanization. The creators (Victor / society) abdicate moral responsibility, treating sentient beings as means to an end (Kantian objectification), demonstrating a perversion of both parental and societal duties.

Question 22

The Tragic Consciousness of the Created

Answer 22

• The creature in Frankenstein and the clones in Never Let Me Go are aware of their unnatural origins and their fate, leading to existential suffering.
• Sophisticated Connection:
  Both texts reflect a tragic modern consciousness where knowledge of one’s constructed, instrumental existence leads not to rebellion, but to melancholy acceptance. This resignation critiques modern ideologies that promise autonomy but deliver control — a biopolitical reading, especially relevant to Michel Foucault’s theories of life being governed through institutions.

Question 23

Education as a Mechanism of Control

Answer 23

• In Frankenstein, the creature educates himself and becomes articulate, yet education isolates him further. In Never Let Me Go, Hailsham’s education program aims to give the clones a semblance of dignity while grooming them for inevitable death.
• Sophisticated Connection:
  Both novels present education as a double-edged sword: it cultivates emotional and intellectual depth while simultaneously reinforcing societal structures that doom the educated subject. Knowledge becomes a tragic burden rather than a liberating force — suggesting a post-Enlightenment disillusionment.

Question 24

The Aesthetics of the “Other” and Monstrosity

Answer 24

• Victor judges his creation primarily by its hideous appearance, while society in Never Let Me Go views clones with an indistinct horror that justifies their exploitation.
• Sophisticated Connection:
  Both novels expose how “othering” functions aesthetically and ethically: physical difference (the monster’s appearance) and ontological difference (the clones’ origins) become mechanisms to deny full moral consideration. The texts thus offer an early and late-modern meditation on the politics of the body — how embodiment becomes tied to worth, a key concern in disability studies and posthumanism.

Question 25

Narrative Framing and the Erosion of Truth

Answer 25

- Frankenstein uses nested narratives (Walton → Victor → Creature) that complicate the notion of objective truth. In Never Let Me Go, Kathy’s fragmented, nostalgic narration is unreliable, shaped by repression and loss. - Sophisticated Connection: Both novels deconstruct traditional narrative authority, suggesting that memory, storytelling, and truth are deeply intertwined with trauma and complicity. The act of narrating becomes an attempt to impose meaning on essentially meaningless suffering — a proto-postmodern critique of grand narratives.

Question 26

Subtle Critique of Romantic Individualism

Answer 26

- Victor’s hubris is Romantic in origin: he believes in the individual's capacity to transcend limits. Kathy, Ruth, and Tommy in Ishiguro’s novel initially believe they might defer their fate through art or love. - Sophisticated Connection: Both novels ultimately dismantle the Romantic ideal of the heroic individual. Instead, they depict characters trapped in systemic structures they cannot meaningfully resist. Ishiguro’s quietly dystopian society and Shelley’s chaotic world both suggest that individual action is often impotent against institutionalized injustice or the natural order — a dark inversion of Romantic ideals.

Question 27

Conclusion

Answer 27

At their deepest levels, Frankenstein and Never Let Me Go are both elegies for beings caught in systems that exploit their very existence. They merge critiques of scientific hubris, biopolitical control, the aesthetics of otherness, and the collapse of narrative certainty into devastating portraits of the loss of human dignity in the modern age.