My obsession with monsters is well known. You can dribble on about H. G. Wells and Socialism, his work for Humankind until you’re blue in the face. Interesting, sure. But it’s his monsters that always get me. And I’m not alone. A good third of all the monsters in media, movies, comics, books, etc, owe something to old Herbert George. He was such an innovator that he is the King of Monsters to this day.
This obsession of mine has driven me to think abstractly about monsters. What is their function in genre fiction? (I say genre fiction, for it is almost exclusively in genres we find monsters. Name one monster that is actually a “monster” – that is not metaphorical, such as Bill Sykes in Oliver Twist, in a mainstream novel? (One example of this very small group of monster mainstream fiction is Grendel (1971) by John Gardner. One term that is applied to it is a “parallel” novel , meaning it plays in someone else’s playground. In this way Michael Crichton’s The Eaters of the Dead (1975) is also a parallel of Beowulf, but Crichton’s is definitely a genre piece. What’s the diff? The intent of the author. Crichton is all about daring-do while Gardner’s intent is one of examining character.) You can say Hannibal Lector is a monster, but it is at that point The Silence of the Lambs slides out of the mainstream and into the Mystery/Suspense genre.) I’ve been able to identify five distinct functions of monsters. These are a spectrum so some monsters will be in only one while others may cover all five
1.) The first and most obvious: monsters add danger and excitement. The word “danger” by itself has this power as does “vampire” or “ghost”. These iconic names engender all kinds of supernatural to fantastic danger. A captive jaguar, such as the one in Arthur Conan Doyle’s “The Brazilian Cat” (1898) serves this function while not being all that fantastic. The man trapped with the fierce beast could call it a “monster” but we could be more specific by calling it only a “danger” such as a bomb or a mudslide might add to a story. “Dangers” add menace, if done right suspense, color, a sense of mystery such as Doyle does with his Brazilian cat. A starving dog might have served just as well but the jaguar seems stranger, more mysterious and evil by its peculiarity in England. Monsters range in their ability to endanger from a small ant to the invincible Cthulhu. The level of danger depends on the needs of the story. The type of menace also varies from physical harm to more esoteric destruction such as possession or loss of the soul as in Mary E. Braddon’s “Eveline’s Visitant” (1862), in which a ghostly rival can not claim the girl until she dies, while the hero is helpless to keep her alive.
2.)The monster’s second function is to personify outside forces, antagonism or angst. We all have fears and some of those fears are simply fear of physical harm, but other fears are more complex. Take Count Dracula for instance. Drac’s menace works on three levels. He is a “danger”, a) a creature that will drain your blood and kill your body, b) he personifies the fear of disease with his ability to turn you into one of his undead slaves, with his pock mark-like bites, his slow draining away of vitality and finally death, and c) he solidifies the English xenophobia towards foreigners and all their “ungodly ways” such as overt sexuality (more biting), polygamy (he has three brides and wants more) and finally drug addiction (insatiable lust for blood). Dracula on a purely story-structure level is the antagonist to Harker, Van Helsing and crew. He gives the novel focus (it is called Dracula after all). Stoker could have had England invaded by three hundred vampires with their pet werewolves but by focusing on the Count and his wives, he limits the vampire menace to an identifiable character. By killing Drac in the final paragraph of the novel, the heroes destroy the vampire menace.
3.)Monsters create novel challenges and heighten menace. H. G. Wells used monsters for many reasons. He created the Martians to have a multiple function in The War of the Worlds (1898) for instance. One of the novelties that the time of its first appearance was creating a book in which the London-based reader could watch a man much like himself deal with a catastrophe. Could you write the tale without the Martians? Certainly. Grant Allen did in “The Thames Valley Catastrophe” (1901) in which volcanoes destroy London. In many respects Allen’s story reads like The War of the Worlds, with a man fleeing and trying to find his family amidst all the destruction and panic. But the strangeness is not elevated to the point that Wells’s novel does. The monsters are needed to give the menace a heightened quality of hopelessness, which Wells only dissipates at the end with the bacteria killing the Martians. Allen’s volcanoes can be fled from while the Martians hold the entire planet captive.
Some critics have seen Wells’s ending as a fault in the novel, a deus ex machina, a cheat. First, it is bad Science. Aliens could not be affected by terrestrial germs, a fact Wells probably knew. But Wells’s intent points to other things – he chose to say something – in this case about the power of small unimportant beings versus powerful ones, a Socialist thread, a message about Imperialism that trumps both Science and predictable plotting.
4.)Monsters explore new themes and ideas. A mainstream novel will usually deal with a group of characters and the things they want and what they will do to get them. In Ernest Hemingway’s “The Hills Like White Elephants” two adults are negotiating over an unplanned pregnancy. Some novels like The Scarlet Letter by Nathaniel Hawthorne focus on how society deals with characters’ decisions. (The usual triad is Man Vs. Man (The Red Badge of Courage), Man Vs. Nature (The Old Man and the Sea), Man Vs. Himself (Madame Bovary). Monster fiction opens up the menu of choices. By externalizing the conflict (you just can’t ignore a zombie apocalypse, you just can’t!) the characters are pushed outside their relatively quiet struggles, to face larger ones, or at least different ones.
Professor Michael Drout delineates this by saying mainstream fiction is about what characters wants and genre fiction is about what characters need. Frodo has to take the ring to Mount Doom. What he wants is probably a hot bath, a second breakfast and a good mug of Green Dragon ale. All of which is merely counter-point to the tragedy of his fate. A novel about the bucolic struggles of hobbits would be pretty tame stuff, while the travails of the Fellowship was pretty novel until a thousand lesser hacks copied it. Tolkien is not interested in the relativistic, subjective novel of the human condition. He is exploring “big ideas” about Good and Evil, self-sacrifice, loss, environmentalism. Genre fiction can do this because it is about ‘Needs’. ‘Wants’ may be part of the story, as with the characters in George R. R. Martin’s Game of Thrones series who are all caught up in political intrigue but when the White Walkers show up, all those wants are taking a back seat.
Monsters raise moral questions and set new story perimeters. As part of the needs-not-wants structure, monsters, or more precisely monster-filled plots, beg moral questions. These are the ‘big ideas’ in action. One of the functions of Wells’s Martians is to question the existence/nature of God. His character of the curate serves to bang this drum. The film maker M. Night Shyamalan did not like Wells’s answers so he re-invented the scenario in his film Signs (2002) and came to a different conclusion. Most horror fiction revolves on the question: “If ghosts/vampires/monsters are real then is God/the afterlife/good forces real too?”
Mainstream fiction is relativistic and atheistic. People are crap but it’s all relative, right? God doesn’t exist, crime does pay, might is right. To say otherwise is to slip into “Romance” or the idea that there are forces outside ourselves that influence life. (God, Luck, the Stars, Karma, Fate, etc.) Science Fiction asks different questions such as what is it to be human? (Robot fiction, Philip K. Dick) What will the future be like if this (pick any trend) goes on? What would happen to humans if they became immortal? Could travel in time? The mere existence of aliens in a story begs the following: if life exists outside of Earth is human religion relevant? Aliens that are stupider than humans may be exploited (is that right or wrong?) or if they are superior, will they exploit us? The SF writer is building certain conditions with his alien monsters. Wells’s Martians are cold, inhuman, and rapacious. Heinlein’s Puppetmasters see us a natural resources, using humans as mounts. Questions about evolution, adaptation, human qualities such as love and faith are challenged. How the story ends often determines what answers (if any) the writer offers.
5.)Monsters mirror humanity. Monsters offer a counter-point to the human condition, something mainstream writers claim to be so interested in. Sometimes a slightly crooked mirror tells you more than a literally accurate one. The Twilight Zone was built on this idea. Make everything normal except for one little detail and see what happens. Richard Matheson, who wrote many great stories in this vein, explores our attitudes toward food in “Foodlegger”. He also pokes at the black market, the criminal justice system and social taboos. All by making meat illegal. Monsters can do the same thing.
Let’s look at a classic novel that uses all five factors: I Am Legend (1954) by Richard Matheson is probably the most intense monster novel ever written. In the beginning we start with the main character surrounded by zombie-like vampires. He is the lone human surrounded by monsters, creatures that come in the night to kill. By the end of the novel the vampires form a new society and frighten each other with tales of the terrible monster, man, who comes in the daylight to kill. The roles have been completely reversed.
Matheson’s vampires offer a) danger, by surrounding the hero every night and trying to kill him. This constant state of siege builds suspense. Matheson has to create super-vampires at the end of the book to break the deadlock, b) the vampires personify the forces against the hero, as a version of society to which the outsider can never belong. In the end they destroy him for being this “other”, a monster, c) I Am Legend creates novels challenges, again made less novel by a host of post-1968 zombie thrillers, in that the hero can not defeat the vampires. They hold the entire earth. The hero tries to find a way to fit in, to have a mate. Like Frankenstein’s Adam, he is doomed to a solitary demise. He fights as long as he can but ultimately gives up, d) this last element pinpoints one of Matheson’s big ideas: that it is futile for the monster, which the hero has become, to try to fit in. Society will deny this to the outsider every time. He will be destroyed. No one ever accused Matheson of writing happy endings or wearing rose-tinted glasses, e) I Am Legend sets a terrible mirror to society. How do we treat the monsters (non-conformists, dissidents, eccentrics, the deformed)? Is the majority always right? Are we any different than the vampires?
After reading the novel we come away with a new way of looking at monsters in any story. Matheson uses the Gothic images of Dracula and Frankenstein but creates a thoroughly modern novel filled with many levels and more insight into human nature than a bookshelf full of mainstream twaddle.
If you missed “The Monster Genre I” click here.
