In part one of this series (Historical Monsters as Metaphor), we looked at the early myths of monsters and how they served as metaphors for the era’s time where anxieties and fears of the unknown felt otherwise impossible to articulate..
Today, monsters continue to thrive, but their forms have shifted. Contemporary stories have expanded away from the old fixation on divine punishment or unexplored terrain. Instead, they mirror the threats and uncertainties of modern life: systemic racism, environmental collapse, trauma, addiction, or even the fear-of-self (and what our minds are capable of).
While horror remains a powerful canvas for these metaphors, so too are many other genres – from steampunk to fantasy and even (in certain cases) romances. (Stay with me!)
They all interrogate us to disclose not only what we fear, but why we fear it.
If horror was just about jump scares, it would’ve died out with VHS tapes (aware I’m outing myself as a Millenial here!). But people keep coming back because monsters aren’t just things that give us Goosbumps (…and again) – they’re often the masks we put on real fears.
Think about Mary Shelley’s Frankenstein. It’s not really about a stitched-up corpse lumbering around. It’s about scientific hubris, isolation, and the terror of creating something you can’t control. Bram Stoker’s Dracula isn’t just a gothic vampire tale – it’s an anxious cocktail of Victorian fears: sexuality, disease, and the “foreign other” invading polite society and vampires as a monster-type have been everything from stand-in for lust, disease, or just plain predatory capitalism. Fast forward to Colson Whitehead’s Zone One, and zombies become a way to write about grief, disconnection, and late-stage capitalism all at once.
Contemporary monster stories frequently comment on issues such as human origin, racism, or environmental change. When we read monster stories today, it’s important to consider their deeper implications.
We love monsters because they give shape to things that otherwise feel untouchable. You can’t fight climate change in a boxing ring, but give it a snarling, apocalyptic beast form and suddenly you’ve got a story. You can’t wrestle with the idea of industrialisation, or systemic collapse, or even your own trauma. But put it in the shape of a creature and suddenly it’s something we can face (… or at least run screaming from).
That’s why these metaphors endure – they keep reinventing the monster to match whatever keeps us awake at night. By using monsters that bridge the gap between reality and fantasy, authors can create captivating stories that truly test our ideas of what… or who we should fear.
There are dozens of subgrenres when we talk about monster metaphors, but here are a few. (There’s often a bit of overlap where one subtype doesn’t neatly fit into just one subgenre, so please forgive the fact that I’ve placed these ones where I feel they’re most suitable).
In Shirley Jackson’s The Haunting of Hill House, the building itself is the monster, but the real terror is Eleanor’s own isolation and unraveling identity. Stephen King’s The Shining is another example of this (albeit with a whole hotel).
On a slightly different angle, Helen Oyeyemi’s White is for Witching transforms a family home into a haunting reflection of intergenerational grief, showing how the brick-and-mortar in these stories often stands in for domestic or familial anxieties: the idea that the places (or people) meant to keep us safe are actually working against us whether wittingly or not.
H. P. Lovecraft was deeply problematic for too many reasons to list as an aside in this post, but his stories crystallised a powerful idea: what if the universe doesn’t care about us at all? Cosmic horror is less about tentacled beasts and more about insignificance. It’s that almost nihilistic, creeping dread that humanity is a blink in the dark. And Victor LaValle’s The Ballad of Black Tom reclaims that tradition, showing that the horror of racism can be just as cosmic in scope. LaValle forces us to ask: who is the real monster, the god from another dimension, or the neighbour who sees you as less than human?
I find this particular subgenre fascinating as it’s definitely not strictly limited to horror. I can rattle off plenty of fantasy novels that ask (and then upend) the question of “why bother?” usually through the ‘chosen one’ trope.
Michael Crichton’s Jurassic Park offers readers an obvious monster… which actually isn’t.
The dinosaurs are not villains in any traditional sense; they do not scheme or plot. They hunt, mate, and survive exactly as evolution intended. The terror comes from witnessing the sheer power of life unleashed (by human hubris, but that’s another metaphor!), indifferent to human plans or expectations. Crichton’s narrative reminds us that nature is inherently unpredictable and often overwhelming, and that our attempts to contain it only highlight its relentless, unstoppable force.
In this sense, the “monster” is not a villain, but the raw, indifferent energy of life itself, reminding us that the natural world will always find a way. And, yes, the fact that humanity’s attempt to control and commodify forces far beyond its grasp could lead us to getting consumed (perhaps more metaphorically than physically) by nature that we’ve disrupted (nicely tying in with climate fiction in the process).
Related Reading: Should Climate Fiction Be Scary?
In the novel Mexican Gothic, the monster is the protagonist’s own family as she uncovers the dark secrets of her ancestry and confronts the horrors of colonialism. In the film Black Swan, the monster is the protagonist’s own psyche as she struggles with her identity and the pressure of perfection.
And in Cujo, Stephen King uses the monster metaphor to explore addiction, a subject he struggled with while writing about the terrifying canine monster.
In Patrick Ness’ A Monster Calls, the titular creature embodies a young boy’s grief over his mother’s terminal illness, forcing him to confront emotions he has spent years suppressing. Stephen King’s It works on a similar principle, with Pennywise taking the shape of each protagonist’s deepest fears, turning both shared and individual childhood trauma into a tangible, shape-shifting horror.
The real horror in the case of these metaphors is the cycle of childhood abuse, denial, and forgotten (or suppressed) pain. Monsters that prey on children or childhood memories often stand in for the scars that don’t stay buried, no matter how much we want them to. It’s a terrifying symbol of what many people face as they try to heal from past happenings.
The serial killer is a monster that represents our collective fear of violence and reminds us that evil can exist within us all, and act as a warning to society of what may be lurking right under our noses.
Serial killers have a unique power to horrify us. Most people can go to bed after reading a book about wearwolves or aliens, but that potential for human darkness – especially when it’s often based on a grain of truth – is creepier than even the best cinematic practical effects.
I’d argue that often, the monster as a metaphor fosters an empathy that allows us to confront both the universal terrors of our capacity for evil and society’s prejudices against those who are different or unfamiliar.
How many times has a plot twist shown just how easy it is to make assumptions based on what we perceive as ‘The Other’? When we’re confronted in literature with someone who doesn’t fit neatly into the societal norms, the instinct is often the same: fear first, understanding later.
Literature thrives on that tension. Shirley Jackson’s We Have Always Lived in the Castle positions Uncle Julian as unsettling and unreliable until we recognise the tragedy and humanity beneath his eccentricities. Similarly, in Helene Wecker’s The Golem and the Jinni, beings who are literally not human end up embodying compassion and complexity, while the supposedly ‘normal’ humans reveal cruelty and pettiness.
In other words, monsters remind us that our knee-jerk fear of the unknown is often misplaced. The real horror isn’t the scarred neighbour, the strange newcomer, or the child who looks different – it’s the prejudice that blinds us to their humanity. (There’s a lot to be said for literature being both a mirror and a window – keep your eyes peeled for a blog about that soon!)
Sometimes the most chilling monsters aren’t creatures or evil people at all; they’re the systems, prejudices, and ideologies that are so ingrained in our everyday that we only tend to notice our blind spots when confronted head-on. Here are a few of my favourite examples:
Octavia E. Butler’s Fledgling reframes the vampire myth into something deeply unsettling yet deeply human. The ‘monster” isn’t the blood-drinking protagonist, but the social prejudice, fear, and power structures that surround her. Butler uses horror as a mirror to show how we define who is acceptable and who is cast out. It’s a sobering reflection on how we (as the ‘good guys’) still often fail those who ‘don’t fit’.
Shirley Jackson’s The Lottery may not name racism directly, but the novel’s small town’s unquestioned sacrifical ritual becomes a metaphor for how communities dehumanise and destroy those deemed expendable. Jackson reminds us that while supersititon has its own issues, the real ‘monster’ is the cruelty of unthinking, cultish social tribalism, which so often precurses racial and cultural violence in the real world.
Monster metaphors can also come under the guise of a system that robs individuals of agency. Margaret Atwood’s The Handmaid’s Tale strips away the supernatural but it all the more chilling for it. The novel still gives us a world so incredibly close to our own, where the monster is clear: the brutal machinery of patriarchy and authoritarian control, turning women into property under the guise of survival.
Finally, earlier this year I got around to reading Kazuo Ishiguro’s Never Let Me Go. More than once while reading, I felt uneasy with the quiet, almost intimate way it draws you into the world. There are no ghouls or vampires to give the reader a jump-scare to reset and remind. The ‘monster’ is the cold utilitarian logic of a society that normalises exploitation. The clones aren’t frightening – the society that creates and discards them is.
The Japanese Kaiju genre forever changed how monster stories are told on both the big screen and on-page. For example, in the original Godzilla film from 1954, the monster represented the ramifications of nuclear war and the destructive power of science in the wrong hands.
In 2013’s Pacific Rim, the monster was a metaphor for people’s worries about invasion and environmental destruction. However, it also suggests (not very subtly), that the solution to these fears is to come together and present a more united humanity.
Unlike traditional monster stories, kaiju are often used as metaphors for collective social fears and anxieties (and to show us the possible consequences of our actions).
Of course, some authors deliberately subvert the monster archetype, turning our expectations upside down to explore additional themes.
Clive Barker’s Hellbound Heart (and the Hellraiser series) introduces the Cenobites, creatures that at first glance seem monstrous in the conventional sense. Yet Barker flips the script: these beings aren’t actually evil in the black-and-white sense, but enforcers of a different moral logic.
I haven’t (yet!) read Tade Thompson’s Rosewater, but friends have told me that it turns the classic ‘alien invader’ trope on its head. Thompson gradually reveals the alien’s complexity, intelligence, and even moments of empathy. By blurring the line between threat and ally, the novel challenges our instinct to label the unfamiliar as evil. Here, the author shows that monstrosity often exists more in perception than in reality.
And here’s a surprise inclusion: Sarah Waters’ Fingersmith. While obviously not a ‘monster story’, Waters manipulates reader expectations to transform the villain into someone sympathetic and layered. The perceived monstrousness is a construct of perspective and societal assumptions. It acts as a subtle but powerful subversion that forces us to question who (or what) is truly dangerous. (Although I have to admit to watching the BBC adaptation of this before reading the book, by which time all I could see were Imelda Staunton and Sally Hawkins’ facial expressions during character dialogue).
By subverting familiar tropes, these works (and others) highlight that monstrosity is rarely absolute. The monster becomes a tool to explore morality, desire, and the assumptions we carry — showing that sometimes, the scariest thing is our own preconceptions.
Monster-based media lets us readers (and viewers, and listeners*) to confront our fears while reflecting on issues concerning the modern human experience. As these stories become part of our narratives, monsters arguably help society keep sight of what scares us as individuals and groups, while connecting us as a whole.
Of course, in all of these cases above, the real terror is what these monsters reflect: the parts of ourselves, our histories, and our societies we’d rather not face but absolutely cannot (and should not) ignore.
In part three of this series, we’ll be looking closer at the most popular psychological and sociological theories of monsters as metaphors.
* Editor’s Note: I’m aware I could also have easily included Jeff Wayne’s War of the Worlds, but just thinking about the ‘ooooh laaaaa’ sound is giving me too many heebie jeebies to write a coherent paragraph about it.
This blog was written with thanks to Dan Padavona for his initial idea and blog post, which can be found here: Historical Context of Monsters as Metaphors.
© Inspired Quill 2023 | Website by Big Red Web Design
