Creatures and Bears and Voyuerism...Oh my!

Little do we suspect, when we forget to close our windows or cover our hovel-holes at night, curious creatures learn how to imitate life, or so Benjamin Percy and Mary Shelley suggest.  In Percy's short story "The Heart of the Bear" we see a learning how to behave like a human and imitate our actions through watching a family in their remote, window-filled home.  In Shelley's infamous novel Frankenstein, the book's creature learns how to speak and read from an unsuspecting family, all the while he growing to care for the peasant family who doesn't know of his existence. 

Not Pictured: A bear or horrific creature made of dead bodies watching you make formula, read books, have sex, etc.

The parallels between the two lie not only between the situation of learning through spying, but also what occurs as a result.  In Percy's story, the bear becomes very attached to the family, fantasizing himself as a recognized member and even lusting after the family's mother/wife.  The Frankenstein creature feels a similar affection, sympathizing with the peasants in their struggle for sustenance and feeling their joy when the young man's love returns to him. 

But despite the affection in both these tails, things inevitable fall apart, because in both stories the watcher can never be more than a watcher, for both the bear and Frankenstein's creature are ultimately not humans.  They are monsters that strike fear into the hearts of the people they encounter.  Things go awry in Percy's story when the bear decides to go meet the family, and ends up killing the wife and husband, leaving their baby alive.  In Shelley's tale, the creature reveals himself to the family, only to be chased away, never to see the family he learned from and loved again.

An interesting, more minor, similarity between the two is that each story has a character that doesn't see the creature as frightening.  In Percy's story it is the baby, who sees that bear and gurgles, not recognizing the bear as dangerous, and even being raised by the bear for an unknown period of time, long enough to run out of formula twice.  In  Shelley's story, the peasants include a blind father, who can't see how horrific and ugly the creature is, leading him to initially accept the monster as a normal person.

There are differences though.  In Percy's tale, people die, but the creature ends up being accepted for some time by the baby, and is never confronted by people as it shops for groceries, drives, or goes to the park with the ever day people.  The Frankenstein creature, on the other hand, is hated by the peasant family and every other person he comes into contact with.  The end results are also different, the Frankenstein creature ultimately becomes bitter and makes it his goal to ruin his creator's life.  The bear, on the other hand, finds the baby accidentally shot itself, then leaves the house, realizing that it is, at its core, a wild animal.