Essays on Monstrosity

Angela Carter prominently retells the fairy tale story of Little Red Riding Hood, with more vivid and gruesome details as to the horrors of monstrosity. In The Company of Wolves, she first describes in detail the attitudes and machinations of wolves, providing examples using the concept of a werewolf compared to the anthropomorphized wolf in the original tale. Through Carter’s retelling, she envisions a tale of love that more closely resembles what could have happened in reality. Through this, the dichotomy of humanity and monstrosity is blurred when both exhibit traits that are supposedly exclusive of the other. ...

Introduction

he literature has always used specific instances about destruction and damage caused by the act of humans to violate and misuse the natural life cycle processes. Instances of the disastrous consequences when humans use their illegitimate powers to manipulate the natural life form are given with respect to the prevalent cultural themes of the respective eras. Shakespeare's ‘The Tempest’ involves the use of magical prowess in manipulating the normal human characteristics and subsequent creation of the man-made devil, named Caliban. Similarly, Mary Shelley's ‘Frankenstein’ explicates the violation of the natural life cycle be creating a life from the remains ...

Frankenstein is a novel which deals with immortality and human nature to achieve it with the help of science. It was written by Mary Shelley and it got published in 1818. This novel belongs to the genre of science fiction and it deal with the dark side of human nature and the fact that people are interested in creating life in order to be God-like which leads to failure. The story begins with Robert Walton who is at the North Pole where he meets Victor Frankenstein. Walton gives him shelter on his ship and he is told the story ...

Frankenstein is the main character in Mary Wollstonecraft Shelley’s gothic novel also known as Modern Prometheus. She is influenced by ideas and a dream from a summer holiday in Switzerland. During the summer holiday, she and her companions had shared and read German ghost stories, and then one of them, Bryan Lord suggested that they have a competition to see who would come up with the best horror story (Mary 15). One of them had suggested that corpses could also be re-animated, this brought to Shelley’s mind the idea of galvanism. During one of the nights she ...

Van Helsing as a Protector: The Role of the Vampire Hunter the Present-Day Vampire Culture

Abstract The vampire culture grew out of the Gothic genre and became extremely popular throughout the world. The first and most famous representative of the vampire cast is Dracula, who first appeared as a protagonist in Bram Stocker’s book with the same name. Dracula was created as a predator that hid within his threatening castle, and attacked helpless women. The author also introduced Van Helsing, the hero who acted as a protector of women and fought to destroy the monster. However, Van Helsing remained a less popular and well-known character as compared to the monster he hunted. In ...

In the historical course of world literature, monsters have always made a mark in the stories, epics, and cultures of civilization. The Ancient Greeks envisioned one-eyed giants lumbering about their plains; the Japanese of the 1950s saw enormous lizards that were capable of levelling entire cities; and modern Americans have feared the coming of otherworldly creatures from outer space out to invade the entire planet, or at least, the North American continent. In Western literature, no monster has so encapsulated this phenomenon than that created by Victor Frankenstein, in Mary Shelley’s novel Frankenstein; or, The Modern Prometheus, first published ...

Frankenstein is a novel written by Mary Shelley written in 1818 during the Romantic period and is a Gothic novel. The story is about a journey of the characters in the novel and about their quests and their relationships. The story begins with a man named Robert Walton exploring the North Pole where amidst the cold and mist Captain Walton comes across a lifeless man almost frozen in the ice. This man was Victor Frankenstein. It can be said that Captain Walton “saved” lifeless Frankenstein as compared to just keeping him alive for a week because what Captain Walton heard in that week was the ...

In the history of human civilization, stories always had educative role. In the literary works of fiction, authors use diverse images and symbols in order to trigger a particular reflection from the audience. On the other hand, some authors use traditional images in new contexts in order to stimulate a different reaction and challenge the audiences’ perception of traditional images. In other words, authors often argue that the same images can have different meaning and perception in different cultures and different times. The best example of this is a perception of monsters in different times. The aim of this paper is to ...

Middle ages in the European history lasted from the 5th century to 15th century. The era began during the collapse of the Roman Empire and later merged into Age of Discovery and Renaissance. It is worth noting that middle age refers to the middle era of the western history, which is divided into three. These include the Modern period, the medieval period, as well as the antiquity period. Middle age is a period that is mostly associated with the end of antiquity. Middle age was affected by the migration of people in the 3rd century (Newman, 2001). During these era ...

Mary Shelley’s Frankenstein, first published in 1818, has come to have a profound effect on literature, on science and on popular culture. Shelley’s story of an over-ambitious scientist who dreams of discovering the secret of creating life and does so, but with disastrous and fatal consequences is, we might say, well-known, but little-read. Zwinkler (24) writes with wry amusement about an informal survey he conducted among his own sophomores: most of them knew the novel from hearsay and thought that ‘Frankenstein’ was the name of the monster! The students’ visual image of the monster was based on Boris ...

Introduction

Monstrosity is a term used to describe an unsightly object or creature with malformations, something that is excessively big or something evil. Monstrosity is the quality and nature of being monstrous. It is what is unacceptable as natural by a particular culture. This means that the criteria used to label something as being monstrous can change over time. Mary Shelley’s Frankenstein is arguably the best depiction of the term monstrosity. He tells her story through two characters, Victor Frankenstein and the Monster, whereby the humanity of the two is constantly questioned (Anders 1). On the other hand, Ridley Scott’s ...

Introduction

Probably all cultures have sayings or proverbs that tell about how not important is defining a person by an appearance. Many fairy tales and fables talk about the understanding of monstrous; quite often monstrosity is not about the appearance at all, but rather someone’s actions, beliefs, and inner moral compass. In Frankenstein, The Strange Case of Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde, and Lolita, the authors each try to define their characters monstrous in their own way, and in the interim, make the reader to review his or her own thoughts on individual’s monstrosity.

Monstrosity

One of the most important ...

Many cultures have sayings or proverbs regarding the importance of not defining an individual by his or her appearance. Many fairy tales and fables deal with the importance of understanding what truly makes something or someone monstrous; often, it is not necessarily an individual’s appearance that defines their monstrosity, but their actions, beliefs, and inner moral compass. In Frankenstein, The Strange Case of Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde, and Lolita, the authors each take a different path to examine what makes their characters monstrous, and in the interim, challenge the reader to re-examine his or her own definitions of ...

The term “monster” in history has come to be associated with creatures which do not resemble human beings and pose a threat to the existence of man. Monsters are capable of affecting people in a metaphorical sense by influencing the humaneness of humanity, such as the despotic acts of tyrants and the brutality of serial killers. In a literal sense, monsters assume the form of the fictive beats in horror stories or the anthropophagous predators in nature. Sufficient ontological examination is necessary to determine whether monsters happen to be innately evil. But monstrosity is not limited to deviant appearances but extends ...

Strange Science: The Role of the Grotesque in Oryx and Crake and The Strange Case of Dr. Jekyll and Mr, Hyde Every culture has different rules and norms to follow, the adherence to which often separate the classes from each other. However, there are a few hand-and-fast rules that are cross-cultural; these values seem to be etched into the fabric of what makes humanity human. Although there are slight differences across the varying cultures, most cultures agree that murder, for instance, is immoral and undesirable within a civilized society. Another example of a nearly-universally-held value is the general human distaste for ...

The notion of unilateral defeat and the leveling of entire cities at a single stroke were unimaginable to the Japanese, a martial society that had not experienced conquest on such a scale in centuries. In that light, it is significant that the initial Godzilla (or Gojira in Japanese) films were made by men who had personal experience with the horrors of modern war. Three of the men central to the making of Godzilla, King of the Monsters (1954), “a stark reenactment of the

Second World War,” had been involved in the Japanese war effort including director Ishiro Honda, who had served in the ...