Escape From Spiderhead And The Sloan Men: A Comparative Analysis

In general, most people sometimes think about what is the morality and humanity. Also, they would think about how they can struggle to keep their humanity when someone or something torment them. If people are faced with that kind of situation, they should decide to struggle for keeping their humanity or not such as the main characters of movies. The short stories, “Escape from Spiderhead” by George Saunders and “The Sloan Men” by David Nickle, talk about how characters respond to their situation for their humanity. While both Jeff of “Escape from Spiderhead” and Mrs. Sloan of “The Sloan Men” are victimized by monsters that torment them, but they both struggle to keep their humanity.

First, both Jeff of “Escape from Spiderhead” and Mrs. Sloan

Sloan of “The Sloan Men” start to struggle to keep their humanity after getting out of their confusions. In the story, “Escape from Spiderhead”, Jeff tries to defy to his doctor’s, Abnesti, order because Jeff just doesn’t want to do immoral behavior. Thus, Abnesti said, “Being good in small ways is easy … Doing the huge good things, that’s harder” (Saunders) for letting Jeff to incite doing immoral experiments. However, Jeff never say “acknowledge” to Abnesti because it is only the way that he can do for keeping his humanity. Also, when Abnesti asks, “Is that because you love her?”(Saunders), Jeff answers to him that Jeff’s nonresponse is not only based on the love. In other words, Jeff’s humanity pursues morality, human rights, and the dignity of man, and it motivates to struggle to keep his humanity. However, in “The Sloan Men, Mrs. Sloan struggles in different way, and her motive of struggling is quite different with Jeff’s motive because her struggling for keeping her humanity is just based on her madness to herself. For instance, Jeff tries to keep his humanity from immoral experiment and others, but Mrs. Sloan struggles to keep her humanity from herself because she could not forgive herself to love inhuman creature, Mr. Sloan. Thus, she cuts her fingers, and she mentions that cutting finger was punishment to Judith. Furthermore, after Mrs. Sloan cuts her fingers, she could not stop her madness, thus, she changes

Sloan of “The Sloan Men” choose destruction for to be free from keeping morality and humanity because they thought that their destructive behaviors are one the way to prove their humanity. However, Jeff and Mrs. Sloan choose different way of destructive behaviors. For instance, Jeff doesn’t want to participate immoral experiments. Thus, he thinks about how he can escape from (spiderhead) test room for keeping his humanity, and he tries to find any weapons or tool for escaping from test. However, Jeff could not find anything except Darkenfloxx™ because he thinks, “That was one way to leave” (Saunders). In other words, when Jeff choose Darkenfloxx™ for the escaping, it means same as he wants to be victimized for keeping his humanity through his death. Furthermore, Jeff’s decision shows how much he thinks his humanity is much more valuable than his coercive immoral life. However, in “The Sloan Men”, Mrs. Sloan responds quite different way with Jeff for keeping her humanity because she thinks that her love with monster is immoral behavior, but she wants to keep her love too. When Mrs. Sloan is victimized by monster, she cuts her fingers, gathers Mr. Sloan’s photos, and destroys Mr. Sloan’s cellar because she thinks that her behaviors would help to keep her humanity. Her thoughts and behaviors just fills herself with the madness. In other words, her struggling makes herself monster because her struggling is based on the selfishness.