Similarities Between Jack Worthing And Frankenstein

Jack Worthing from The Importance of Being Earnest, and Victor Frankenstein from Frankenstein seem to not relate to each other at all. However, upon closer inspection, the two are comparable: both Jack Worthing and Victor Frankenstein show their lack of responsibility through the lies they tell to evade their duty. As Jack grows more bored of the country, he begins to create another personality called Ernest where he can visit the city freely and avoid his responsibility. Similarly, Victor avoids his responsibility of raising up his creation by running from it. He also does not tell anyone else about his “issue.” Although Jack’s motives for avoiding his responsibilities may be more selfish, Victor’s evasion is much worse due to the fact that

he is steadfast on his decision to conceal his responsibility, which causes misfortune on not only himself, but also others around him.
At the beginning of each story, both Victor and Jack have a selfish reason for avoiding responsibility. While Jack's motive remains as self-gratification for the entire story, Victor's motive becomes less selfish out of a desire to protect others.

Dr. Frankenstein’s responsibility originated from the creation of a creature, who he was supposed to nurture and care for it. Instead, he ran from it because “breathless horror and disgust filled [his] heart,” (Shelley 59). This original retreat, a result of Victor’s abhorrence of his creation, was only augmented after the unsupervised creature started to kill Victor’s family and friends. Now, Victor chooses to run away from his creation because “...the strange nature of the animal would elude all pursuit, even if [he] were so far credited as to persuade my relatives to commence it. And then of what use would be pursuit?” (Shelley 85). As one can observe, Frankenstein is at first avoiding his responsibility for a more selfish reason. Once his mistake starts to be involved in crime, he avoids the responsibility of telling the police, or really anything, about the creature so that nobody will get in the creature’s destructive path. In a way, Victor grows much more concerned with others than himself, as he does not want people to waste their resources on fighting something that is so hard to take down. He would rather take

all the responsibility of handling his creation than get others involved, which shows a rather selfless motive. Jack, on the other hand, is avoiding his in-home responsibilities of caring for Cecily purely for personal reasons, and never changes his mind on his decision. He reasons that “a high moral tone can hardly be said to conduce very much to either one's health or one's happiness,” meaning that his tasks at home require a break from time to time, so he made his brother Ernest to get into the city and distract himself and get “into the most dreadful scrapes,” meaning that he would rather go to the city to party, drink, and do things that were otherwise impossible to do in the country (Wilde 8). Another motive is exposed when Jack begins to talk about his plans for his decoy “brother.” He says that “if Gwendolen accepts [him], [he is] going to kill [his] brother…” (Wilde 9). This is yet another selfish reason to avoid responsibility and be deceitful, because he is saying that the creation of Ernest is a ploy to get Gwendolen to marry him.
When Jack or Victor is forced to take responsibility, neither try to face the issue head-on, and instead run from it, quite literally. An example of Victor doing this is right after he created the monster. In his own words: “I beheld the wretch— the miserable monster whom I had created … one hand was stretched out, seemingly to detain me, but I escaped and rushed downstairs...I feared every turning of the street would present to my view. I did not dare return to the apartment which I inhabited, but felt impelled to hurry on, although drenched by the rain which poured from a black and comfortless sky,” (Shelley 59-60). Victor takes one look at his creature, and runs from it, possibly due to terror of the actual creature, or more plausibly due to him realizing that he has to take care of it. Even a while after the decision was forced on him, he continues to run from it until the creature gets the revenge it wants. This is very similar to Jack’s reaction to responsibility, as previously mentioned. He avoids his duties by travelling to the city to eat, drink, and go to clubs while acting as someone else named “Ernest.” One can note that Jack avoids responsibility only sometimes: he still cares for Cecily, but not full-time. Victor, on the other hand, does not intend on caring for Frankenstein at all, and keeps hating him throughout the story. A characteristic seen in Jack but not Victor, however, is the fact that if caught in deception, Jack will continue to deceive in order to make his story make sense. A prime example of this is when he is talking to Algernon, who has found a note in Jack’s cigarette case from someone named Cecily who calls Jack “Uncle,” interrogates Jack about Cecily. He responds to Algernon by saying, “Cecily! What on earth do you mean? What do you mean, Algy, by Cecily! I don't know any one of the name of Cecily.” Then, Algernon prods at Jack’s statement even more, and Jack continually changes his statement to best fit the evidence that is stacked against him: ”Well, if you want to know, Cecily happens to be my aunt,” and eventually admits, “[M]y name is Ernest in town and Jack in the country, and the cigarette case was given to me in the country,”(Wilde 6-7). This trait of Jack’s that makes him lie all the time is not seen in Victor’s actions at all.
Upon looking at the evidence, one can conclude that Jack has a more harmful motive, since he was only thinking of himself when he thought to avoid responsibility.

He wanted to be accepted by a woman as well as have a happy life. Victor, on the other hand, decided to keep this secret away from others so that they would not have to go through the same things that he did. He would also save people’s time, energy, and possibly lives because no-one would try to interfere with the creature’s work. On the subject of the two characters’ reactions to being forced into responsibility, although the two characters both essentially do the same thing to avoid responsibility, which is to run away from them, Victor’s reaction is worse, since he does not make any indication that he will eventually care for his creature. Jack chooses to avoid the responsibilities, but still goes back at some point or another to carry out his task of caring for Cecily in the country. Jack also mentions that he will stop avoiding responsibility if he is able to marry Gwendolen: “If I marry a charming girl like Gwendolen, and she is the only girl I ever saw in my life that I would marry, I certainly won't want to know Bunbury.” (Wilde 9). Finally, the result of Frankenstein’s evasion of responsibility was much more adverse compared to Jack. Jack’s lies conveniently helped his case, since they inadvertently became the truth. His journeys to the city had gotten him a wife, helped him understand his origins, and

let him have a good time doing it. The effects of Victor, however, was a completely different story. His lack of responsibility and refusal to accept any of it caused him and his family to ultimately die. While he was being tortured by his creation, Frankenstein kept running but the creature was always following, always finding and killing victims to indirectly cause pain in Victor’s life. Ultimately, because of his refusal to take any responsibility for his actions at any time, Victor’s decisions harmed both him and his friends loads more than those of Jack.