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Overall, the concept of war and monsters easily connect with each other. We see that there doesn’t need always necessarily have to be a war for there to be monsters, but we can say for sure that there’s always monsters that result from war. This is proven by characters like the Creature and Whatsitsname, but can also be seen today when people act out on violence because of their own experiences and agendas.

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These characters’ use of war and violence exhibit their monstrosity. The Creature and Whatsitsname use killing others as an outlet to express their anger and attain avengance in their own ways. Whatsitsname discovers that “each piece of dead flesh that made up his body fell off if he didn’t avenge the person it came from within a certain amount of time. But if he did avenge someone, then that person’s piece would fall off anyway, as if it were no longer needed” (Saadawi 134-135). Whatsitsname continues by saying that he also knows people are considering him a criminal for the things he does, but “‘what they don’t understand is that I’m the only justice there’s is in this country’” (135). On the other hand, when the Creature tries to explains his hardships with people and says, “‘I will revenge my injuries: if I cannot inspire love, I will cause fear, and chiefly towards you my arch-enemy, because my creator, do I swear inextinguishable hatred. Have a care: I will work at your destruction, nor finish until I desolate your heart, so that you shall curse the hour of your birth’”(Shelley 105). Because they had horrible experiences with the humans in which they lacked care from them in different senses- the Creature feeling that his creator was not fulfilling his role as a father and Whatsitsname’s pieces having been mistreated and killed-, both characters find it justifiable to act out in such manners.

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“‘Cursed, cursed creator! Why did I live? Why, in that instant, did I not extinguish the spark of existence which you had so wantonly bestowed? I know not; despair had not yet taken possession of me; my feelings were those of rage and revenge. I could with pleasure have destroyed the cottage and its inhabitants, and have glutted myself with their shrieks and misery. When night came I quitted my retreat and wandered in the wood; and now, no longer restrained by the fear of discovery, I gave vent to my anguish in fearful howlings. I was like a wild beast that had broken the toils, destroying the objects that obstructed me, and ranging through the wood with stag-like swiftness. Oh! what’s a miserable night I passed!… I, like the arch-fiend, bore a hell within me; and, finding myself unsympathised with, wished to tear up trees, spread havoc and destruction around me, and then to have sat down and enjoyed the ruin. But this was a luxury of sensation that could not endure; I became fatigued with excess of bodily exertion, and sank on the damp grass in the sick impotence of despair. There was none among the myriads of men that existed who would pity or assist me; and should I feel kindness towards my enemies? No: from that moment I declared ever-lasting war against the species, and, more than all, against him who had formed me, and sent me forth to this insupportable misery’” (Shelley 97).

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There doesn’t have to be a war exactly to create monsters, monstrosity is produced from one’s situations and surroundings. In several circumstances, monstrosity is forced upon beings such as the Creature in Mary Shelley’s Frankenstein. Readers can see how the Creature’s demeanor was at first benevolent and kind when he says, “‘I tenderly love these friends; I have, unknown to them, been for many months in the habits of daily kindness towards them; but they believe that I wish to injure them, and it is that prejudice which I wish to overcome’” (Shelley 96). However, because of the judgment and prejudice that he experienced, the Creature felt that he had no choice but to become a monster.

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The Whatsitsname being a direct affect of war and it being unnatural is due to its circumstances. Despite Hadi arguing that he was its creator, Whatsitsname declares his way of being as coming from the situation that he has had to come up from: “‘You were just a conduit, Hadi,’ the Whatsitsname replied. ‘Think how many stupid mothers and fathers have produced geniuses and great men in history. The credit isn’t due to them but to circumstances and other things beyond their control. You’re just an instrument, or a surgical glove that Fate put on its hands to move pawns on the chessboard of life” (Saadawi 128). The Whatsitsname’s whole purpose is to avenge the parts of its body. His mission stemmed from his circumstances and the fact that if there wasn’t a war, it would not exist. The war literally shaped him.

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Wallace Stevens writes, "The clouds go, nevertheless, In their direction" (179). After this soldier's death the clouds continue on like they always have and always will. How quickly this soldiers death will be overlooked like clouds blow away by winds. Showing how monstrous war is, where every moment another life is lost without recognition.

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War and monsters go hand in hand. They come from each other in a way. War creates monsters, and monsters create war. Much like the Whatsitsname, war breaks the moral laws of humans and results in new laws that are acceptable in war. Where is it acceptable and righteous to kill another human, an unnatural atrocity that only comes about through struggle and war.

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This recording, from the moment the First World War ended shows just how unnatural war is. It begins with a barrage of artillery and gunfire. These are the only things we can hear. As soon as the clock strikes 11:11, when the armistice takes effect all of that stops. Almost immediately, birds can be heard. It is not that the birds were gone the whole time and just came back. It's the fact that the birds were there the whole time, but they were drowned out by the unnatural sound of death.

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A new exhibit at the Imperial War Museum uses seismic data collected during the war to recreate the moment the Armistice went into effect

smithsonian.com

The soundscape of the Great War must have been devastating: constant artillery bombardment, rifle shots, fighter planes buzzing overhead and the screams of soldiers encountering gas. But we don't actually know quite what the World War I sounded like. Magnetic tape didn't exist yet and recording technology was in its infancy, requiring sound to be mechanically produced using a needle and soft wax or metal. Taking such machines into the field was not practical.

Still, there were people on the front recording. Special units used a technique called "sound ranging" to try and determine where enemy gunfire was coming from. To do so, technicians set up strings of microphones-actually barrels of oil dug into the ground-a certain distance apart, then used a piece of photographic film to visually record noise intensity. The effect is similar to the way a seismometer records an earthquake. Using that data and the time between when a shot was fired and when it hit, they could then triangulate where enemy artillery was located-and adjust their own guns accordingly.

At least one bit of that "sound ranging" film survived the War-the film recording the last few minutes of World War I when the guns finally fell silent at the River Moselle on the American Front. As Richard Connor at Deutsche Welde reports, part of a new exhibit called Making a New World at London's Imperial War Museum uses those graphic sound waves to recreate the moment the Armistice went into effect and the guns fell silent.

As part of a celebration to commemorate the 100th anniversary of the end of the war, the museum commissioned the sound production company Coda to Coda to use the film strip of the guns firing away at 10:58 A.M. on November 11, 1918, then going silent when the clock strikes 11, the symbolic moment politicians determined the war would end, to try and recreate what that instant may have sounded like.

According to the company, the film strip has six lines, one for each microphone in use. The team researched the types of weapons being used by each side at the end of the war, then used the film to determine the size, frequency and distance of blasts. Looking at landscape images of the front, they also figured out how intense the reverberations from the blasts would be.

Using that info, they recreated the sound of the last minutes of battle, but they also wanted visitors to feel what the moment was like. To that end, they also created a soundbar. Visitors to the exhibit lean their elbows on the bar and place their hands on their ears. The sound is then conducted through their arms to their skulls where they can both hear and feel the moment.

"This document from IWM's collections gives us a great insight into how intense and chaotic the barrage of gunfire must have been for those fighting on the western front," Coda to Coda director and principal composer Will Worsley says in a statement. "We hope that our audio interpretation of sound ranging techniques... enables visitors to project themselves into that moment in history and gain an understanding of what the end of the First World War may have sounded like."

Since that historic moment of silence, the Armistice has been remembered in the U.S. as part of Veterans Day and marked around the world by other holidays, notably, as Remembrance Day by the U.K and Commonwealth of Nations. More than 9.5 million military personnel died during the World War I and an equal number of civilians perished from famine and disease brought on by the conflict.

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Listen to the Moment the Guns Fell Silent Ending World War I

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smithsonian.com The soundscape of the Great War must have been devastating: constant artillery bombardment, rifle shots, fighter planes buzzing overhead and the screams of soldiers encountering gas. But we don't actually know quite what the World War I sounded like.

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In Frankenstein in Baghdad, Whatsitsname does not abide by these laws because it is not human. Although it is made up of literally many different people, it can never be the same as a human. Its sole purpose is vengeance. The Whatsitsname is a direct affect of war. Showing how brutally unnatural war is. By taking pieces of victims killed in conflict and reanimating them it is going against death.

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War is unnatural. In times of war, nature’s laws are different. Humans kill one another over ultimately trivial matters. Often these unnatural wars affect the world we live in in a vast number of ways. There are moral laws that all humans live by. In wartime all of these morals are thrown away. Taking place of these laws is fiery anger brought forward by the ignorance of those fighting. Often blinded by rage, humans do not truly see what is happening.

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"There are laws that human beings are unaware of. These laws don't operate around the clock like the physical laws by which the wind blows, the rain falls, and rocks fall down mountains, or like other laws that human beings can observe, verify, and define because they apply to things that recur. There are laws that operate only under special conditions... people are deluded and never admit their ignorance. (Saadawi 130)