Parallels or Coincidence?

A different Great Moment this time. I hope I’m not the only one who has had the experience of reading a book which makes you rethink another book you’ve read. A weaker example of this would be Stephen Fry’s series on Greek myths (Mythos, Heroes & Troy) which made me reevaluate many modern stories due to both having the archetypal plots present in the myths. The two stronger examples I’d like to discuss are ones where one novel makes you reinterpret what you thought was the whole point or plot of another book.

Spoiler alert. This post covers parallels I’ve noticed between Frankenstein and Miss Smilla’s Feeling for Snow, and Inferno and American Psycho. If you plan on reading any of either pairing and don’t want plot points given away, please skip reading this post and wait patiently for the next Great Moment in Literature.

At the end of Frankenstein, the monster is in the arctic and drifting away on a hunk of sea ice (in a context which is nominally unsurvivable). This is not dissimilar from the ending of Miss Smilla’s Feeling for Snow (my favourite book), which makes me want to re-read that book in light of this. There are several other parallels to Frankenstein – the book opens with the death of a boy Smilla treated not unlike a son, she then embarks on a quest to make him heard again (through solving the mystery of his death). Both consider the taking of a life, both show a keen interest in human nature, the limits of knowledge and both have the last part of the story occurring on a boat in the Arctic. There is even a key figure in Miss Smilla’s Feeling for Snow whose general size and demeanor is not out of sync with Frankenstein’s monster. I have only recently finished Frankenstein, but have now put Miss Smilla’s Feeling for Snow back on my TBR list so I can re-read it to see what other parallels I notice.

“Abandon all hope ye who enter here” is written on the gates to hell in Dante’s Inferno and is also the opening line of American Psycho by Bret Easton Ellis. I did not make this connection when I read Ellis’ book despite having read Inferno only a few years earlier. However, when I did, it made me reconsider Ellis’ controversial novel. If, instead of treating Patrick Bateman as an unreliable narrator and debating the meaning of the ending on which events in the story can be held as having occurred, you treat the whole novel as the description of a poetic-justice based hell, just for Patrick, the story changes. To me, it elevates the whole novel and not only justifies many of the quirks of the book (such as the stream of consciousness narrative), but renders them as necessary to comprehend why this is truly Patrick’s private hell. The frustrations, torment from every little detail of his and others lives (eg: the exquisiteness of the torture of someone else having a better business card, or people calling him the wrong name), bouts of guilt and vacuous narcissism, all speak to a poetic application of suffering. Further supporting this notion are the final words of the novel – “This is not an exit”. Not only does this recall Sartre’s play No Exit (where we get the concept of hell not being a place, but other people), but it also aligns with the narrative of Inferno, where the exit of hell is not found through climbing up past Satan, but by clambering down his giant body feet first, then flipping and climbing ‘upwards’ towards Satan’s feet. The main character in Inferno is confused by this and fears he is not on the path to the exit of hell. The same is true for Patrick Bateman. His revelation at the end of the story is most likely only the entrance to a new level of hell rather than an exit from it, because he doesn’t have a guide like the character in Inferno. What I like about this interpretation of the book is that it addresses some of the issues critics have with the text (graphic violence and sex) by making those depictions seem somehow less controversial through making them not acts of thrill-seeking by Patrick Bateman but part of his punishment. It’s just a different spin on things. Having said that, to my mind the book is still too over the top in its depictions, and hard to read for much of the novel, and as such is best avoided. So, despite wondering what other parallels I could find, I’m not intending to read it again.

What about you? Have you had a similar experience with a pair of books? What were they? Please comment with them below.

Next time I’ll talk about a pair of writers who scored a major publishing contract without having written a word. To make sure you don’t miss it, please subscribe to my mailing list.