Frankenstein and Orwell: Power of Theme Over Character
This essay examines the narrative power of Mary Shelley's Frankenstein and George Orwell's "Shooting an Elephant," arguing that both works derive their enduring strength from theme rather than character. The essay explores how each author uses morally ambiguous protagonists—Dr. Frankenstein and the unnamed colonial narrator—as vehicles for broader commentary on hubris, irresponsibility, and the corrosive effects of colonialism. By analyzing character flaws, ethical complexity, and the absence of clear moral divisions, the paper demonstrates how literature illuminates universal aspects of human consciousness and serves as a warning against pride and self-deception.
- Introduction: The Political Power of Enduring Stories: Great stories endure by addressing universal political themes
- Character Development and Moral Ambiguity: Flawed characters expose ethical complexity in both works
- Hubris as a Universal Theme: Hubris connects colonialism and Frankenstein's downfall
- The Creature's Moral Complexity and Literature's Role: The creature's ambiguity reveals literature's power to expose flaws
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What makes this paper effective
- The essay sustains a clear comparative argument across two distinct texts, consistently returning to the central claim that theme supersedes character in both works.
- It integrates a direct quotation from Orwell effectively, grounding the analysis in textual evidence rather than relying solely on paraphrase.
- The paper connects literary concepts — such as the Greek notion of hubris — to both texts simultaneously, creating genuine cross-textual synthesis rather than treating each work in isolation.
Key academic technique demonstrated
The paper demonstrates comparative thematic analysis: rather than summarizing each text separately, it identifies a shared conceptual framework (hubris, moral ambiguity, colonialism as arrogance) and applies it to both works in tandem. This approach allows the essay to build a single, unified argument across multiple sources.
Structure breakdown
The essay opens with a broad claim about storytelling's political and universal power, then narrows to character development and ethical complexity in both texts. The third section deepens the thematic argument by linking hubris in Frankenstein to colonialism in Orwell. The conclusion returns to Shelley's creature to reinforce how literature exposes human flaws without offering easy redemption — giving the essay a coherent arc from general principle to specific textual example.
Introduction: The Political Power of Enduring Stories
The greatest stories possess the power to transcend time and culture, which is why many of the world's best stories are also the most enduring ones. Most powerful stories are also political in scope. In Frankenstein, Mary Shelley warns the world about the arrogance of egotism and the dangers of selfishness and irresponsibility. In "Shooting an Elephant," George Orwell sends a message about the pitfalls of colonialism. Both of these stories are powerful because their narrative serves a greater purpose.
Character Development and Moral Ambiguity
A powerful story has strong character development, because strong characters grapple with the grey areas of ethics and morality. Rather than showing clear divisions between good and bad, stories like Frankenstein and "Shooting an Elephant" show that no person is fully good or fully evil. The biggest power in Shelley's Frankenstein is the tension between the creature's emotional needs and his creator's inability to meet those needs. The story serves as a metaphor for irresponsible parenting, and also warns about the disastrous consequences of reckless egotism.
The title character Dr. Frankenstein had not thought through his experiment. It may have been that he did not know it would succeed, but more likely it was simply due to the classical Greek concept of the tragic flaw: hubris. Pride is the downfall of most of literature's strongest characters, and this holds true for Dr. Frankenstein. Although few would call Dr. Frankenstein a strong character, he is nevertheless a delivery system for the overarching theme of hubris. Likewise, the narrator of "Shooting an Elephant" takes a back seat to the broader theme of colonialism in Asia. In both Frankenstein and "Shooting an Elephant," the theme is more important than the character, but the character's flaws permit the theme to be shown in its full complexity.
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