How are both Stoker and Shelley able to horrify their readers, not through graphic violence but through images of the loss of humanity, in Stoker's Dracula' and Shelley's Frankenstein'?.
In both novels we get a sense of a loss of humanity with the characters, but of which characters? The monsters, in this case Count Dracula and Frankenstein's creation, or the people around these monsters'. But what I want to find is what makes us, as readers, horrified. Because both novels do not depict very violent or gory scenes but yet we still find them quite horrifying and I believe the explanation for this is because there is a lack of humanity within the two novels. It is the lack of humanity, which we find most terrifying.
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In the novel Frankenstein' you most certainly feel a certain amount of sympathy for the monster', which Victor Frankenstein has created. Frankenstein created this monster' because one main reason being the loss of his mother when he was young, he also has a thirst for knowledge. Is this a fair reason to create life, to play god? I believe it could be, but the way in which Victor created life was not in the way which God gave us the ability to create life he has done it through science. And it is this which can been seen as to be showing a lack of humanity. We were not made to play God. .
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It's very different in the novel Dracula' because the monster' in this is without doubt truly evil. We learn about Count Dracula's ancestor, who is based on a real historical family, and we find out that one of his ancestors was a Prince who had reputation for being a brilliant and savage general. He is said to have done things such as force women to eat their babies. This is both horrifying and very inhuman. What is more disturbing is the fact that Count Dracula is more powerful than his ancestor because he did not possess the powers, which Count Dracula has. Count Dracula has powers such as having the ability to turn humans into the undead, like Dracula himself.