Essay Three Topic – Monsters in Literature

According to Asa Simon Mittman, “monsters do a great deal of cultural work, but they do not do it nicely. They not only challenge and question; they trouble, they worry, they haunt. They break and tear and rend cultures, all the while constructing them and propping them up. They swallow up our cultural mores and expectations, and then, becoming what they eat, they reflect back to us our own faces, made disgusting or, perhaps, revealed to always have been so.”

For your third writing assignment; write an essay (1000+ words) in response to the following topic: Argue the concept that monsters embodied in literature give people a safe way to confront fears such as the threat of monsters in society and the existence of the monster within us.

Consider the following questions as you write:
1. Why do monsters pose a threat to individual and cultural identity as presented in the stories that we read?

2. What are the monster’s social and political implications in literature?

3. Why are the encounters with monsters in literature horrifying?

4. How and why does the human monster develop?

5. What are the monster’s characteristics and how do they exemplify society?