An Essay on the Monstrous

 Copyright 2021 by Gary L. Pullman

Source: Public domain

What is “monstrous”? Does the concept change, thereby altering the understanding of the meaning of the term; do merely the specific instances, the incarnations, so to speak, of the monstrous change; or is there a modification of both the understanding and the incarnations?

 

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Certainly, the idea of the origin of monsters has changed. Once, monsters were considered omens, or signs warning of divine displeasure, or anger, concerning various types of behavior. Later, monsters were regarded merely as mistakes, or “freaks,” of nature. The origin of monsters, once supernatural, became natural. The hermaphrodite became Frankenstein's creature; the Biblical behemoth became the great white shark of Jaws. (Between these extremes, perhaps, as the great white whale, Herman Melville's Moby Dick.)

 

 Source: Public domain

Prior to the shift from a supernatural to a natural cause of monsters, there had been a shift in the way in which the world, or the universe, was understood. When God had been in charge of the universe He'd created, the universe and everything in it had had been meaningful; in God's plan, there was a place for everything, and everything was expected to stay in its assigned place. The universe was an orderly and planned place, because it had been created according to God's plan, or a design, and existence was teleological. Monsters were beings or forces that disrupted the orderliness of the universe, sought to disrupt God's plan, or showed disobedience to God's will, either by tempting others to sin or by giving in to sin (and sin itself was, quite simply, disobedience to God's will). Anything that differed form God's plan was a monster or was monstrous.

Source: Public domain

When the idea of an accidental, mechanical universe replaced the concept of a divinely created and planned universe, only nature existed (or, if God were to be granted existence, He was seen, first, as indifferent to the universe, as the Deists viewed him, or as irrelevant.) Offenses became unnatural actions, behavior which was not grounded in nature. Anything that “went against nature” was a monster or monstrous. Indeed, a naturalistic understanding of the universe is seen in the change in viewing monsters and the monstrous that is indicated in the etymology, or history, of the word “monster,” which, according to the Online Etymology Dictionary, originally referred to a “"divine omen (especially one indicating misfortune), portent, sign” and, only about the fourteenth century became understood as meaning “malformed animal or human, creature afflicted with a birth defect.”

 Source: Public domain

Although some continue to believe that God exists, that He created the world and human beings, the latter in his own “image and likeness,” according to a plan and that the universe is consequently not only orderly, but purposeful, teleological, and meaningful, many others believe that God either does not exist or, if He does, His existence is inconsequential and that human beings must chart their own courses. In the former conception of the universe, wrongdoing is evil, and it is evil because it involves intentional disobedience to God's will; in the latter conception of the universe, wrongdoing is immoral because it is counter to that which is natural. In the former universe, the monstrous takes the form of demons and unrepentant sinners. In the latter universe, evil takes the form of “freaks” of nature, such as maladapted mutants, victims of birth defects, or the psychologically defective: grotesques, cripples, and cannibals.

Alternatively, in a naturalistic universe, monsters may be social misfits. Not only serial killers, sadists, and psychopaths, but also any group that is unconventional, or “other,” or is vilified or ostracized by the dominant social group (e. g., a community or a nation), examples of whom, historically, include homosexuals, Romani people, “savage” “Indians,” current or former martial enemies, cult members, and so forth.

 

Source: Public domain

Our line of inquiry leads, at last, a question and a conclusion. First, what happens when we run out of monsters? As our ideas of the monstrous change, monsters lose their monstrosity: homosexuals, Romani people, Native Americans, the nations that joined together as World War II's Axis powers, members of religious organizations once condemned as “cults” and “sects” have, today, become acceptable. Their members are no longer monsters. As the pool of candidates for monstrosity shrinks, what shall become of the very idea of monstrosity itself? Who will become the monsters of the future, when all the monsters of the present and the past are no longer considered monstrous?

 

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 The answer to this question, it seems, is that we shall be left with the few actions that are universally condemned, that are unacceptable in all lands, everywhere. We might list among such behaviors incest, rape, premeditated murder that is unsanctioned by the state (that is not, in effect, condoned as a necessary wartime activity), child abuse, and, perhaps, cannibalism, which leaves, as monsters, the incestuous lover, the rapist, the murderer, the child abuser, and the cannibal. These could be the only monsters that remain in the future.

Source: Public domain

But they won't be. Here's why: horror is a type of fantasy fiction. As such, it includes characters, actions, places, causes, motives, and purposes that are unacceptable in more realistic fiction or drama. There is room for demons and witches, alongside werewolves and vampires, as well as the monsters embodying truly universally condemned behaviors and the people (or characters) who perform them. For this reason, horror fiction will never be without the monsters of old, even if, metaphysically, epistemologically, scientifically, and otherwise, they have long ago worn out their welcome. Fantasy has had, has, and always will have a home for them.

Meanwhile, however, the history of horror fiction has provided a way to identify threats that, rightly or wrongly, dominant societies have considered dangerous to their welfare or survival, and these threats, once they are seen as no longer threatening, have likewise shown what perceived menaces, in the final analysis, are not dangerous to social welfare, just as they identify the true menaces, the true monsters, that are condemned not just her or there for a time, but everywhere, at all times.

The Horror of Objective and Subjective Threats

Copyright 2020 by Gary L. Pullman

Some horror fiction, both on the page and on the sound stage, features threats which are both objective and subjective. Just as objective threats can vary, so can subjective ones. If there is the threat of a loss of limb, or of mobility, or of stamina, or of life itself, there is also the threat of such losses as trust, of scruples, of faith, or of sanity.

These dual threats are depicted or dramatized through conflict: the villain or the monster is the agent by whom the objective threat is presented, and the physical threat, in turn, causes the subjective threat.

 

The outcome of conflict involving these two types of threat is resolved in one of at least seven ways:

1. The protagonist wins, overcoming both the objective threat and the subjective threat.
2. The protagonist partially wins, overcoming the objective, but not the subjective, threat.
3. The protagonist partially wins, being overcome by the objective, but overcoming the subjective, threat.
4. The protagonist loses, being overcome by both the objective threat and the subjective threat.
5. The protagonist overcomes the subjective threat, but the resolution regarding the objective threat remains unknown.
6. The protagonist overcomes the objective threat, but the resolution regarding the subjective threat remains unknown.
7. It remains unknown whether the protagonist overcomes either the objective or the subjective threat.
   
   
   
   
   

In the hands of skilled writers, these seven permutations can seem to multiply, as various twists are put upon each threat and each possible outcome.

Edgar Allan Poe's short stories often involve both objective and subjective threats. The outcome of the stories' conflicts vary across the spectrum of possibilities.

1. The protagonist wins, overcoming both the objective threat and the subjective threat. Hop-Frog and Tripetta, of “Hop-Frog,” not only overcome the threat of violence and possible death at the hands of the cruel king they serve, escaping after immolating the villain and his courtiers, but they also overcome the subjective threats to their pride and self-respect posed by the king's dehumanizing conduct toward them. Their victory is double; they regain both their physical freedom and their autonomy and self-esteem.

2. The protagonist partially wins, overcoming the objective, but not the subjective, threat. The protagonist of Poe's “The Tell-Tale Heart” imagines that an old man with a “vulture's eye” is a menace. He vanquishes this perceived objective threat by killing the old man. However, the police, alerted by a neighbor who'd heard the victim's screams, arrest the killer, and readers realize that the protagonist has not vanquished the subjective threat of his own madness—nor is he likely to escape the additional, real objective threat of prison or, possibly, hanging.

3. The protagonist partially wins, being overcome by the objective, but overcoming the subjective, threat. William Peter Blatty's The Exorcist is a good example of this variation. Father Karras is questioning his religious faith until, in an act of self-sacrifice, he bids the devil to forsake a girl he's possessed and possess him instead. However, when the devil makes the jump from the girl into the priest, Father Karras foils his adversary by leaping to his death from the upper-story window of the girl's bedroom, in which the exorcism had been being conducted. Although the objective threat of possession by the devil overcomes Father Karras, the priest retains his faith.

4. The protagonist loses, being overcome by both the objective threat and the subjective threat. During the American Civil War, Second-Lieutenant Brainerd Byring of the Union Army succumbs to his on imaginary fears when, on an isolated portion of terrain over which he stands guard, he encounters a dead enemy soldier. Byring fancies that he sees the Confederate soldier's body moving slowly, stealthily toward him. A captain and a surgeon find Byring the next morning.

He has driven his own sword through his heart, after hacking the dead Confederate's cadaver. The enemy soldier's weapon lies on the ground, unfired, and his body is rotten enough to indicate that he has been dead some days before Byring “killed” him. The fight hinted at in Ambrose Bierce's “The Tough Tussle” has been entirely Byring's own; he has survived neither the objective struggle with the corpse nor his delusion that the body was alive, that the dead Confederate soldier was, indeed, sneaking up on him under the cover of darkness to kill him.

5. The protagonist overcomes the objective threat, but the resolution regarding the subjective threat remains unknown. The protagonist of Poe's “The Pit and the Pendulum” avoids the objective threat—execution—when the Inquisition that has imposed the sentence of death upon him is defeated by its enemies and he is rescued. It is unclear whether he also triumphs over the terrors of helplessness and the horrors of physical and emotional abuse. The story's ending does not say or even imply.

6. The protagonist overcomes the objective threat, but the resolution regarding the subjective threat remains unknown. In H. G. Wells' short story “The Cone,” the protagonist, Raut, avenges himself upon Horrocks, the adulterer who has cuckolded him, by causing his wife's lover to fall into a furnace. The objective threat to his wife's violated fidelity has been ended, but the murderer himself may not as easily be rid of the humiliation and rage that appear to have driven him to this desperate act. Even if he does vanquish these emotions, he may have to struggle with another subjective threat, for he seems horrified at the terrible crime—the sin—he has committed: “God have mercy upon me!,” he prays, saying, “O God! what have I done?”

7. It remains unknown whether the protagonist overcomes either the objective or the subjective threat. Legs and his companion Hugh Tarpaulin escape the mad, self-proclaimed King Pest and his courtiers, who have taken refuge from the plague in the basement of an undertaker's shop, but it is unknown whether the rash sailors also escape the plague that has disfigured the afflicted. They might, in fact, be taking the disease aboard the very ship from which they earlier departed, for the narrator of Poe's “King Pest” informs readers,

the victorious Legs, seizing by the waist the fat lady in the shroud, rushed out with her into the street, and made a bee-line for the “Free and Easy,” followed under easy sail by the redoubtable Hugh Tarpaulin, who, having sneezed three or four times, panted and puffed after him with the Arch Duchess Ana-Pest.

 

If they have not escaped the plague, it is doubtful that they will escape the terror that it will bring and, if the rest of the crew they infect understand that it was they who infected them, it is unlikely that they will escape the ire of their fellow seamen; indeed, a new objective threat may arise, one which costs them their very lives. They may have merely escaped one type of death to flee into hands of a death of another kind.

These seven variations on the theme of an objective threat coupled with an often-related subjective threat provide a fertile foundation for a multitude of treatments so that no story needs to be like another, even if they are based on the same dynamics—or, indeed, a specific dynamic within the seven-fold group of dynamics. Likewise, the same writer can produce a story from any one of the objective-subjective threat pairings or from the same one, treated differently.

Metaphorical Monsters

copyright 2007 by Gary L. Pullman

In high school, we learned that a metaphor is a figure of speech that explicitly states a comparison between two different things. Metaphors help us to unify experience, showing us how A and B, although mostly quite different, are also alike in some way.

I prefer a different definition for the term. I like to think of a metaphor as a verbal, or linguistic, equation. In this view, the metaphor isn’t simply stating that there’s a likeness, or similarity, between two different persons, places, or things. Instead, the metaphor is asserting that the two mean the same thing. If the metaphor is “fog blinds,” we’re saying fog = blindness, as, for instance, in math, 2 + 2 = 4.

One reason that I prefer the equation to the figure of speech concept is that the terms in an equation can be swapped with one another. If 2 + 2 = 4, then 4 = 2 + 2. Likewise, if a metaphor is considered an equation, fog = blindness can be recast as blindness = fog. This way of thinking helps a writer to remember clearly the significance of his or metaphors. When monsters are involved, remembering what one is about is important!

In horror fiction, monsters = metaphors; therefore, metaphors = monsters. This chart shows some of the metaphors that writers have employed to suggest comparisons between one thing and another:




There are many others as well, of course. Perhaps we will explore some of the others in future installments.

Some metaphors operate at several levels at the same time, creating a sort of chain of associations. These associations may be literal, symbolic, existential, and spiritual. Here’s an example, using fog:
The symbolic, or metaphorical, term in the first equation links fog with blindness. Fog, if it is thick and pervasive enough, can rob us of our ability to see clearly. It can blind us, as it were. Therefore, fog can be equated with blindness, as it is in the implied metaphor, fog = blindness. Notice, however, that these associations can be extended so that the literal-metaphorical becomes existential as well: blindness = fear of the unknown. What do children fear when the lights go out at night? We say that they are afraid of the dark, but what they actually fear is what may be there, unseen, with them in their bedrooms, invisible in the darkness. They fear the unknown. Therefore, blindness (a form of darkness, in a sense) = fear of the unknown. The chain of associations can be carried further, as the chart demonstrates. Why do we fear the unknown? We fear it because it may threaten us with harm or even death: fear of the unknown = death. Depending upon one’s religious convictions or lack thereof, death, in turn, equals either annihilation or, possibly, damnation--an eternity of torment in hell, cut off from both man and God: death = annihilation or death = damnation. (Of course, it could also equal an eternity of bliss in heaven [death= heaven], surrounded by fellow souls in the presence of God, but we are talking horror here, and, therefore, loss, not gain.)

The same way that some metaphorical equations can be extended so that they form a chain of associations, literal, metaphorical, existential, and spiritual, others can as well. The vampire is an especially rich and evocative possibility. Usually, those equations that can be so extended are the most effective ones for literature, whether of the horror genre or otherwise, because they furnish a broad plain upon which to explore the literal, the symbolic, the existential, and the spiritual aspects of the themes they involve.

What Constitutes Horror?

Copyright 2010 by Gary L. Pullman

What constitutes horror? The answer is both simple and complex.

To understand the meaning of a word, it helps to know its origin. Originally, words usually have simple meanings which relate either to the body or to the world at large. It is only through repeated usage and adaptation of meaning that they develop more complex significance.

According to Online Etymology Dictionary (a great resource for writers), “horror” made its debut in the fourteenth century, from Old French horreur, meaning “bristling, roughness, shaking, trembling.” In other words, it referred to the standing of hair on end and to the shuddering of the body, not from cold, one may surmise, but from fear--to the physiological manifestations of terror.

It is similar, the Dictionary suggests, to the Sanskrit word harsate (“bristles”), to the Avestan term zarshayamna (“ruffling one’s feathers”), to the Latin noun eris (“hedgehog”), and to the Welsh word garw (“rough”). The Latin word horrifus (“horrific”), the same source informs its readers, means “terrible, dreadful,” or literally “making the hair stand on end,” and the Latin adjective horrendous, likewise, means “to bristle with fear” and to “shudder.”

Scientists tell us that animals make themselves as big as they can by assuming an erect posture, rearing upon their hind legs, and raising their forelegs; by bristling their fur or quills; ruffling their feathers; or, in the case of frogs, for example, puffing up. These physiological responses to a perceived threat are intended to intimidate and warn. They are protective postures. People have similar responses: their hair stands on end. They swell their chests and raise their arms.
They glower. Perhaps they will even display their teeth in a snarl.

Horror fiction concerns both the physiological effects of fear: the standing of hair on end, an increased heart rate, hyperventilation, the widening of the eyes and the gaping of the mouth, and so forth, and the objects of fear--that is, the causes of such physiological responses. The horror writer, in fact, brings the two together in a cause-and-effect relationship: the appearance of the monster (or the monstrous) causes the standing of hair on end, an increased heart rate, hyperventilation, the widening of the eyes and the gaping of the mouth, and so forth. In a nutshell, horror writers use words to create pictures and situations that produce a fight-or-flight response in their readers.

How writers perform this amazing feat is the complex part, but it is answered, more or less, in many of the articles I have already posted on Chillers and Thrillers, and, no doubt, it is an issue that I will continue to revisit and update.

Plot Meets Laws of Motion

copyright 2008 by Gary L. Pullman

Since writers tend to look for metaphors everywhere, they’re apt to find some of them in the strangest places.

How strange?

Think Sir Isaac Newton’s three laws of motion. Then, think plot. Now, there are a couple of strange bedfellows, to be sure.

Nevertheless, the metaphor seems to work, and, for writers, being the pragmatic souls they are, that’s all that matters.

To wit:

1. Every object in a state of uniform motion tends to remain in that state of motion unless an external force is applied to it.

In fiction, the external force is the plot’s inciting moment, which is the launch pad, so to speak, that launches the rest of the story’s action. However, in fiction, the inciting moment can be either internal or external and, in fact, is often likely to be both, as is Dorothy Gale’s decision to run away from home and her subsequent leaving, which results in her being caught in a tornado and whisked off to Oz. Once he or she is set in motion, the main character will continue to overcome obstacles (see the third law of motion, below) until he or she succeeds or fails in realizing or attaining his or her goal.

2. The relationship between an object’s mass m, its acceleration a, and the applied force F is F=ma. Acceleration and force are vectors, and the direction of the force vector is the same as the direction of the acceleration vector.

This law corresponds to the pacing of the story’s action. The bigger the threat that the protagonist encounters, the faster the story’s pace becomes; lesser threats or absent threats slow the pacing.

3. For every action, there is an equal and opposite reaction.

The protagonist is locked in a dance with the antagonist. Every time the former attempts to realize or attain his or her goal, the latter acts to block or otherwise frustrate the protagonist’s effort or other obstacles appear to oppose the main character. These series of antagonistic reactions to the protagonist’s actions represent the story’s rising action (that part of the plot wherein the story’s basic conflict is complicated, prior to the climax, or turning point).

Of course, the laws, which may be sufficient to account for motion, don’t exhaust the mechanics of plot, but they are a memorable way of summarizing at least some of the important elements of this element of fiction and kind of cool and interesting in a nerdy sort of way to writers, readers, literary critics, and other geeks and nerds.

Threat Recognition: Keeping It Real

Copyright 2008 by Gary L. Pullman

Most of us, if we survive our childhoods--no easy task, often--develop the ability to distinguish threatening situations, plants, animals, and other people from their non-threatening counterparts. How do we manage to do such a feat, within seconds or less, as often as necessary (except during naps)? Most people would probably attribute this ability to “instinct,” and, certainly, instinct (whatever is meant by this word) could have be one way--maybe the only way--by which this feat is accomplished. However, it seems reasonable that there may be something more to it than just the action of a genetic automatic target-recognition sixth sense or gut feeling. In this post, we offer a few additional possibilities, leaving it to the psychologists to determine whether any of these ideas seem worth the time and trouble of writing a multi-million-dollar grant proposal. (If it is, and the proposal is successful, remember who made the whole thing possible!)

Predators, scientists tell us, whether they (the predators, not the scientists) are lions, tigers, bears, or your Aunt Matilda, have binocular vision, with their eyes facing forward to look straight ahead, rather than having sideways-oriented oracular organs as do, for example, wildebeests, impalas, deer, and Uncle Henry. Doesn’t it seem possible--or even probable--that, over the centuries prey might come to understand that if the eyes face forward, danger threatens?

Likewise, anything that’s bigger than oneself, whether oneself is a shrimp, a slug, a sparrow, a bunny rabbit, or Cousin Bertha, is likely to be able to kill one and should be, at least until proper introductions are made and a chaperone armed with a 12-gauge shotgun is present, avoided.

Speed, too, may be a red flag, even though many prey animals are fairly fleet-footed themselves. There’s probably a reason that snakes are lightning quick and cheetahs run as fast as a lot of Mustangs--over a short distance, anyway. A fast animal, especially if it’s also relatively large, like a lion or a bear or a shark, ought to be avoided. Likewise, anything that just looks weird or scary, such as a snake or a puffer fish, should generally be kept at bay.

Most plants look harmless (although the Venus flytrap’s pretty scary looking, with all those thorny--or toothy--things along the edges of their leaves). Prey animals can learn something from them and their bright-colored animal friends (or foes), too, though. Some plants, like some animals, mimic dangerous cousins (and, sometimes, grandparents). Bright colors, scientists tell us (possibly as a result of a little too much experimentation) often indicate poison, in both plants and animals, and some harmless ones imitate the dangerous ones by assuming the deadly varieties’ coloration. Anything that’s imitated--female impersonators, for instance--are best avoided.

Persons, places, or things that move--things that move?--Sure, we’re talking horror, right?--in numbers (killer bees, a school of piranhas, a pack or wolves or hyenas, a graveyard full of zombies--should, it goes without saying, be avoided, evaded, and otherwise eluded. (Remember The Birds?)

Sen. John McCain, a Republican in name only (RINO)

Anything that has something you don’t have--armor-quality skin, fangs, claws, spines, quills, thorns, rabies, or whatever--is also a no-no when it comes to even casual dating. Avoid these creatures; they are armed and dangerous.

By knowing what constitutes a potential threat, horror writers can lend verisimilitude to their stories by describing threats in reference to the features that may, to the plants and animals that have learned, as the victims of such bullies, what clues to look for, which, again, includes straight-ahead binocular vision, large size, fast speed, Technicolor apparel, a pack mentality, or some sort of organic weapon.

If the threat’s not human or animal or vegetable--if it’s some kind of machine, for example--a website such as that of Federation of American Scientists (listed among our “Recommended Sites” at the bottom of this column) can shed more light than heat, we hope, upon threat-recognition as it applies to enemy aircraft, artillery, poisons, and other weapons systems, at least.

In other words, you’re pretty safe with roses and daises--unless you’re allergic to pollen or there are killer bees about.

Remember, knowing what constitutes a threat--or the appearance of one--helps you to keep it real as a writer. Who knows? It may even save a life.

Note: The photographs that appear in this post are from the U.S. Government Photos and Graphics website. (In other words, you paid for them.)

Value as a Clue to Horror

Copyright 2007 by Gary L. Pullman

Life is always fragile. One might suppose, however, that, before the advancements in science and technology that we enjoy (sometimes) today, the world must have been fraught with many more perils. Human life must have been especially precarious without the benefits of such modern marvels as antibiotics, computers, incandescent light, and firearms, to name but a few. Pneumonia, tornados, the blindness imposed by darkness, and inefficient or unreliable weapons must have caused many deaths that, today, could be averted or avoided. No wonder Gilgamesh sought immortality. Life in his day must have been both mean and brief. What did others seek? The treasures that were the objects of their quests tell us the things their societies valued most. Whatever threatened these treasures represented their fears, because we fear what we may lose (or want but may never gain). If Gilgamesh sought immortality, he valued life and, consequently, feared death, which may be the greatest loss of all.

“The wages of sin,” the Bible tells us, “is death,” and this is frequently the punishment that God metes out to the unrepentant, as he did with regard to Adam and Eve, to the civilization that existed at the time of the flood, to the residents of Sodom, and to many others throughout the pages of both Testaments. However, according to Christian thought, there are two types of death: physical and spiritual, as the following scripture suggests:

And fear not them which kill the body, but are not able to kill the soul: but rather fear him which is able to destroy both the soul and body in hell. --
Matthew 10:28

The one who can destroy both the body and the soul in hell is God, and, many times, the Bible warns the faithful to “fear God,” as does Matthew 10:20. There is a worse condition that death and a worse place than the grave, as the damned find out when they arrive to spend an eternity’s torment in hell. If hell is considered the state of the soul as it exists apart from God, then its opposite is the value that the existence of hell threatens, namely, being in the presence of God (or love, for “God is love”) for eternity. To be an eternal outcast of love is hell.

A threat to one’s whole way of life, which the Trojan War represented to the ancient Greeks, indicates that a people--in this case, the ancient Greeks--valued their culture. Although war is horrible, it’s not usually a horror story’s antagonist, because the monsters of horror fiction are, as we see in another post, metaphorical in nature. They’re symbolic of something else. Instead of a war threatening one’s way of life, therefore, a horror story might posit an extraterrestrial race, as in The War of the Worlds or Alien, as the antagonist, but, make no mistake, these monsters aren’t going to be satisfied with killing only a handful of victims; they want nothing less than a whole nation or, perhaps, the entire planet. In Marvel Comics’ Fantastic Four, Galactus represents such a threat to humanity. Following the lead of his herald, the Silver Surfer, who locates inhabited planets, Galactus literally devours the energy that sustains the planets’ life forms, whether they are human or otherwise, going from planet to planet to appease his hunger. Since Galactus threatens humanity itself, as do, or could, the Martians or the extraterrestrial monsters of Alien, he represents the destruction of a whole way of life, or a civilization and its culture. This same monster--the threat to culture--appears in Beowulf, in the guise of Grendel,

Grendel’s mother, and the dragon.

Such monsters, in a more specific mask and costume, showed up in the horror films of the 1950’s. After World War II, which culminated in the nuclear destruction of both Hiroshima and Nagasaki, the world feared wholesale annihilation, a worldwide nuclear holocaust, and the monsters of horror represented such a threat in the guise of Godzilla, giant ants (Them!), and aliens with enormous destructive capabilities (Invaders from Mars).

The post-war decades (1960’s-present) of horror produced more personal monsters, products of the decade’s emphases on sex, drugs, and rock and roll--experiments with sexual freedom (or license), altered consciousness, and the pursuit of passion, adventure, and excitement for their own sake: deranged serial killers, cannibals, and paranormal or supernatural aberrations and entities who acted, as often as not, on the bases of vengeance, lust, or sadism, rather than on the basis of any rational purpose. Again, the monsters are the threats to the values that the writers, filmmakers, and audiences hold dear. It’s hard to exercise one’s sexual freedom when there’s a sadistic serial killer on the loose or to enjoy one’s emotions when doing so could attract an alien or a demon who feeds off human feelings or the energy associated with them.

What’s to come? Time alone, it seems, has the answer. Whatever the new monster’s shape, though, it will be the shadow of the values of the society of the day that spawns it.

Understanding Monsters

copyright 2007 by Gary L. Pullman

Today, when we think of monsters, we envision something like Frankenstein’s creature, a troll, or a misshapen blob. That’s not what the word originally meant--or not quite what it meant. “Monster” initially referred to an animal or other creature (humans, for example) that were malformed, often because of a birth defect. The word “monster” meant, literally, “omen, portent, or sign,” according to the Online Etymology Dictionary, and monsters were regarded as “signs or omens of impending evil.” The sense of “abnormal or prodigious animals composed of parts of creatures,” a la many of the creatures of ancient Egyptian, Greek, and other mythologies, originated about 1385, the dictionary asserts, adding that the “sense of ‘person of inhuman cruelty or wickedness’ is from 1556.” By 1556, “monster” had come to also signify a “person of inhuman cruelty or wickedness.”

What was monstrous about monsters? The etymology of the word “monstrous,” the adjective derived from the noun “monster,” gives us a clue or two: “Monstrous,” according to the dictionary meant “unnatural, deviating from the natural order, hideous,” picking up the additional senses of meaning of “enormous” and “outrageously wrong” only later. The existence of monsters was once a subject of study known as teratology (from “teratos,” meaning “marvel” or “monster,” and “-ology,” meaning “study of”).

The etymologies of many of the words for monsters disclose the fears upon which many of them rested. Often, monsters were associated not only with death as such, but also with the horrible way in which one died at the hands--or rather, at the teeth and claws--of various monsters. Often, the unnatural creatures ate people alive, perhaps regarding them much as Buffy the Vampire Slayer’s vampire, Spike, thought of people--as “Happy Meals with legs.” However, a victim might be strangled (and then eaten, dead). For example, the Online Etymology Dictionary relates the following information concerning:

• Manticore = man-eater
• Ogre = man-eating giant
• Orc = devouring monster
• Sphinx = strangler.

A monster such as the water-dwelling afranc, with appetites for cattle rather than humans, was also feared, because, in eating the cattle, it deprived people of beef (although, it might be supposed, from the cattle’s point of view, the humans who consume them might also have been monsters). After all, what frightens us, as we observe in “Chillers and Thrillers: The Fiction of

Fear,” is really threats to the people and things we hold dear.

Some monsters suggest that we fear meaninglessness, too (a threat to our need to believe that our existence is important and purposeful). Some unnatural creatures imply that life, including human existence, might be absurd. One such monster is the moon-calf, whose name meant “abortive, shapeless, fleshly mass.” (One thinks of a tumor or an aborted fetus, perhaps.)

What’s most interesting to me is that the word “monster” is contrasted with the concept of normalcy, because a monster, originally, was a creature that was considered, in some way, unnatural. The ancients, of course, believed in natural laws. In physics, these were the laws of nature that controlled cosmic events. For society, similar laws of human nature controlled--or, at least, determined--what was right and proper conduct. These laws were inborn; they were the essential qualities with which one was born and which governed--or should govern--his or her behavior. To act against these natural laws was to act against nature, or to act unnaturally--to behave as a monster and, therefore, to become a monster.

Source Cited

Online Etymology Dictionary