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Who Is The Narrator In Frankenstein

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Many aspects of Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance and Frankenstein parallel each other. Zen’s narrator and Victor Frankenstein are both arguably insane, considering the fact that Zen’s narrator was diagnosed with schizophrenia, and the fact that Victor was able to ignore the ethics of his experiments well enough to forge ahead with creating a new human being. Additionally, Victor and Phaedrus and, to a lesser extent, the narrator, are all extremely driven to achieve their goals. The most interesting parallel between the narrator and Victor, however, is the similarity in their relationships with their creations: Chris and the creature. Victor and the narrator both abandon their creations and treat their creations as less than themselves, …show more content…

In his initial description of his monster, Victor uses language that indicates that he finds his creature to be hideous. It is not until the creature has begun quoting Milton and methodologically murdering Victor’s family that Victor realizes that the monster is at least his equal. Similarly, in Zen, the narrator does not respect his son at first. He shows this quietly, through his interactions with Chris and through his thoughts about Chris. For example, when the narrator and Chris were climbing the canyon, the narrator characterizes his son as an “Egotist,” when Chris celebrates his reaching the top first (Pirsig, p 107). The narrator, after living through his Phaedrus phase, should have no right whatsoever to call anybody an egotist. Additionally, bragging about his IQ for no reason whatsoever makes the narrator seem like he himself has a large ego as well. As a result, he should be more forgiving with his son. Although he and his son are guilty of egotism, he judges his son just as more harshly for showing egotism in an isolated case as than judges himself for his perpetual …show more content…

They show that it is not easy to have a good relationship with someone else if it is not build upon mutual respect and equality. Both Victor and Zen’s narrator attempted this, and it did not go well for either of these characters. In fact, Chris and the narrator’s relationship grew far stronger following the incident where the narrator decided to tell Chris about his possible future mental illness. Even though the narrator wanted to protect his son from the truth, this wasn’t good for their relationship. By deciding what his son should know, the narrator placed himself above his son, therefore straining his relationship. By telling his son the truth and therefore putting himself on the same level as his son, they are able to have a normal, fulfilling relationship. This is in contrast to Victor and his creature in Frankenstein. Victor never truly respects his monster, so they aren’t able to have a quality relationship with each other. Victor, in the end, is unable to respect his monster’s choices enough to be able to bring himself to make his monster a mate, and so, even though the monster was Victor’s creation, he went on to kill several members of Victor’s family. Just because Victor could not bring himself to respect his monster, his relationship was ruined, and as a result, he lost his life. So, mutual respect is a requirement for a good

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