In her article “What is a Monster?” Ph. D. candidate Natalie Lawrence argues that society invents and reinforces monsters in order to better define the scope of human rationality and morality. Lawrence uses the example of the death of Cecil the Lion at the hands of Dr. Walter Palmer, where Dr. Palmer received the severe title of monster for committing the heinous act of killing the lion for sport. She argues that by referring to criminals like Dr. Palmer as a monsters, a person attempts to make sense of something that lies beyond the perceived limits of his own moral barriers. Because the individual cannot actualize something so foreign to his norm, he categorizes these things under “other,” reaffirming his own sense of normality and dismissing any infringements on that normality as a part of the supernatural realm. She then articulates how the monsters that we create hold economic value as objects sought after for their oddity.

What I found particularly interesting in the article was the inclusion of the treatment Dr. Palmer received for his misdeed of trophy hunting. According to the article, Palmer was forced to “resign from his practice, flee from his home, and hire armed guards to protect himself and his family” (Lawrence). Here we see how society’s responds to people, things, and ideas that we cannot comprehend to exist in normality: with violence and hatred. Despite people believing themselves constructive and expecting to approach every unknown fact with understanding, one sees that the innate response to something alien is to deny it legitimacy and/or attack it. This can be seen not only in Dr. Palmer’s willingness to shoot a lion because it’s strange to him, but also the crowd’s instinct of attacking Palmer and designating him to a position of “barely human” for his actions. This can be connected to how society views criminals in general: despite being people with thoughts, feelings, and aspirations, they become symbols of degeneracy, caricatures of their sins for people to rebuke.

Questions:

1. If the “monsters” represent things society cannot accept as normal, are the actions to remove the undesired being justifiable such as the backlash against Dr. Palmer? Aren’t we in danger of becoming monsters ourselves in this pursuit?
2. As society marks monsters as attacks against normalcy, is “monsterfication” a definite result for those who exist outside of societal norms?