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Essay Question:
What is a monster?

I NTRODUCTION:
Aristotle: monster is a product of a “depraved conception”, exists as a deviation from the natural
According to Aristotle, the ancients thought of monsters as the products of “depraved conceptions”, beings that were for, this reason,
designated to exist as “excursions of nature”
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The essay argues that the monster is an aberration resulting from a depraved conception (societal or parental)
and reveals malfunctions within society
This essay agues that in its most basic sense, the term “monster” may be understood to define an ‘aberration’, an entity that displaces
or distorts the social norm, and for this reason, is considered to be a threat to the social community which produces that social norm
...


What renders the monster terrifying is that once created he will rebel against its creator and escape his
control: Cohen “The Monster always escapes”
What then renders the monster truly terrifying is its unnatural propensity to revolt against its creator, much like Milton’s Satan, and
escape his control, perusing its own independent cause
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Classical monster- Frankenstein’s Creature VS Modern monster- psychological deviance
This essay evaluates what is meant by “monster” in its classical sense, as termed by Noel Carrol, a physical being “in violation of the
natural order, as seen with the “creature” in Mary Shelley’s Frankenstein, and examines how such a tradition has been adapted to suit
a more modern audience, moving towards the notion of introspective monstrosity, where the monster is the result of a psychological
rather than a biological, physical aberration
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ESSAY B ODY
FRANKENSTEIN
✪Depraved Conception:
Anne Mellor:

“Frankenstein is a book about what happens when a man tries to have a baby without a
woman…”
Creature reaches out to him like a baby: “he muttered some inarticulate sounds… one hand was stretched out”
“the demonical corpse to which I had so miserably given life”
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✪The Creature is a biological aberration, a work of “filthy creation”:
“I collected bones from charnel houses; and disturbed, with profane fingers, the tremendous secrets of human frame”
He is filthy because he is unnatural
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Stands as a warning against exploration of its
uncertain demenses
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✪Attempts to escape and revolt (but does not succeed in creating a monstrous progeny)
Frankenstein’s creature escapes the control of his Creator- once let loose- he can never be recovered
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Having been rejected by his creator/parental figure- the creature breaks the “natural bonds of obligation” towards his
creator
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He demands to be given a female partner, a monstrous Eve
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FIGHT CLUB
✪Depraved Conception:
The unnamed protagonist (here onwards assumed to be called Joe as in “I am Joe’s smirking revenge”) suffers from
severe insomnia and mild depression/apathy
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His monstrous progeny is his alter-ego, an alter-ego with neo fascist, terrorist tendencies:
“How I met Tyler was I went to a nude beach
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Once more through the creation of a separate personality, and what for most of the novel appears to Joe, as a separate
human being, the novel presents a man who creates without the assistance of a woman
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✪The monster is an aberration of Joe’s psyche, the result of a chemical imbalance- he is a deviation from Joe’s
normal state of mind:
A more modern interpretation of the monster as a psychological one- tending towards monstrosity as a form of insanitya hybrid of repressed impulses that is embodied in the form of a monstrous alter-ego, recalling the monstrous duality or
Dr Jekyll and Mr Hyde
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He represents a psychological distortion, a disturbance in Joe’s natural personality
...
catalyst to monstrous representation
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In a fragmented post-modern world beset by guilt, anxiety and despair- internalizing fears produces narratives which
centre on psychological disturbance, narratives which are ‘dominated by fantasy, hallucination and madness’
(Botting)
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Joe’s doppelganger exists to oppose and redeem this manhood in crisis- a manhood that, through the capitalist myth of
empowerment through commodification and consumption, becomes complacent, emasculated and dull- like a
domesticated male cat: “Deliver me Tyler from being perfect and complete”
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Tyler exists in ideological opposition to the status quo
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The monstrous creation then creates and develops
his own anarchic network-politics, inspiring men who feel abandoned by history to “violently remake their world”
through Project Mayhem- the monster that cannot be controlled:
QUOTES:
…wipe my ass with the Mona Lisa…This is my world, my world, and those ancient people are dead
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We wanted to blast the world free of history
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” (Ruth Quiney)
“A terrorist as shadow self” (Ruth Quiney)
“masculine protest against domestication” (Ruth Quiney)
“Tyler Durden and Project Mayhem… fill the paternal vacuum historically occupied by the state, the ‘Fatherland’
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✪Tyler Durden revolts and escapes control successfully (and succeeds in creating a monstrous progeny because
he is an abstract creation and idea- once Tyler Durden/Joe dies the- Project Mayhem continues to exist without
its creator):

Because every once in a while, somebody brings me my lunch and my meds and he has a black eye…and he
says: ‘We miss you Mr
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Once an idea is unleashed it can never be retrieved and rapidly turns into a movement
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“Only in death are we no longer part of Project Mayhem”- a motto that implies that while a monstrous idea may bind
the life of an individual till death may liberate him- the monstrous idea itself is never bound to by the limitations of the
individual human life, or in general, is not contained by mortality
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In a way a monster can be defined as a self-governing terrorist
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The evolution of the monster has lead to a much more terrifying concept, that of the monstrous movement, (a terrorist
organization, a ‘race of devils’) for the most terrifying monster is, of course, the one that can never be contained and
can never be terminated, but multiplies and attempts to subvert the dominating hegemony
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