Mary Shelley's Frankenstein and James Cameron's Terminator 3: Rise of the Machines have come to occupy similar positions in American popular culture-largely, for their iconic appeal-but they are also comparable in more subtle ways. Specifically, each tale depicts the emergence of human nature within entities that superficially seem nonhuman. Frankenstein's monster and the T-101 both come forward as compelling and sympathetic characters because they learn and express themselves in terms that human beings are able to understand. The T-101's apparent progression from a methodical killer into an unwavering companion within the Terminator movies is mirrored by the monster's progression from an infantile murderer into a sensitive literature aficionado. Additionally, it is significant that both are brought into creation through clandestine scientific practices; thus, similar themes surrounding the T-101 and the monster make themselves apparent. Essentially, both characters represent the volatile nature of too much knowledge: they are the violent culminations of scientific inquiries gone terribly wrong. Nevertheless, the T-101 and the monster demonstrate human emotion; consequently, their existence questions our very understanding of what it means to be a human being. So, both Terminator 3 and Frankenstein depict man-made characters whose position somewhere in between the human and non-human spheres is suggested by their brutal actions, and implies the moral difficulties of artificially created life. .

             In order to grasp the gradual emergence of human qualities within the T-101 and the monster, it is important to investigate their physical origins. Frankenstein's monster was brought to life by a single man, in secret, seeking to reanimate dead human tissues. On the surface, this sort of birth may seem to have no conceptual connection to the artificial intelligence exemplified by the T-101, but the ideological questions surrounding both remain almost identical.