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Essay by EssaySwap ContributorHigh School, 12th grade February 2008

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Vladimir Jankelevitch maintains, in Le Pur et l'Impur, that the human and the inhuman are not antithetical notions and have on the opposite a narrow link. Man can be recognized as inhuman from what comes from their actions, thoughts and feelings. By definition, the negative prefix in- of the world inhuman, originating from Latin, is used to show the absence or the non existence of the human nature. W or the Memory of Childhood and Frankenstein, are both narratives in which the inhuman is omnipresent, and are not only answers to these questions but also witnesses, amongst others, to the questioning of human nature. How does literature show the opposition between human and inhuman? The contrast between human and inhuman is felt through out W or the Memory of Chlidhood and Frankenstein. It expresses itself through three main forms: loneliness, hate and death. The reader shares the loneliness of the monster that has been refused to get a lifelong companion.

Frankenstein experiences a "deep, dark, deathlike solitude". The solitude of the child, Gaspard Winckler, who might have run aground on the island of Terra Del Fuego; but also the loneliness of the narrator, who has lost his childhood memories: "My childhood belongs to those things I know I don't know much about […] For years I tried to cover up these obvious facts, and I wrapped myself in the harmless status of the orphan, the unparented, the nobody's boy" (W, 12). The loss of his memories made him feel abandoned.

The hate is characterized by Frankenstein murdering little William just because of his blood relationship to Victor. While murdering the little boy, he feels a "hellish triumph" that he too can wreak havoc (Frankenstein, 143). The creature seeks to avenge herself; she wants Victor to experience what she went through.