What Are Examples Of Societal Flaws

The Embodiment of Societal Fears and Flaws in Monsters Not everything is what it seems. Underlying meanings are often much more common than we realize, yet easily overlooked. Throughout literature, this is very prominent, specifically with authors using their characters to represent deeper meanings through their existence. The purpose for this is to bring societal flaws, such as fears and issues, into the public eye, allowing for better knowledge and understanding of the topic. Upon discovery of their true messages, the things characters represent helps further society’s understanding of its flaws, which in turn creates a call for change or improvement. Since the beginning of time, society has always taken interest in what they fear, hence
The meaning of monsters changes over time as the fears and issues within humanity also change. During the early 18th century, scientific experiments begun in attempts to gain knowledge and advance in fields that were greatly unknown. Also during this time period, there was a very strong bond with religious aspects of life, meaning that certain experiments aroused moral anxieties due to their non-Biblical nature. According to The New York Times writer Nicholas Kristof, “In the 18th century, fears were stoked by books written by people who supposedly had “escaped” Catholicism”, showing the true horror felt by society towards anything that disagreed with religion (Kristof, “America’s History of Fear”). In 1818, a young author anonymously wrote and published a book in which a monster embodied the fear of religion and the unknown, in attempts to awaken society and call for change. Character Dr. Victor Frankenstein’s successful experiment of creating a life required various sacrilegious methods, such as disturbing the dead to stitch body parts together. Author Mary Shelley was able to address these issues and fears through her monster, Frankenstein’s own, Creature. In her novel Frankenstein, Shelley uses Creature to demonstrate, as stated by Maurice Hindle in his introduction, “the dangers that can be cast into society by presuming experimental science”, allowing her to put the fear of
Many other authors have been doing this in their writing for decades, to draw attention to a specific societal issue and call for change. One of the earliest and most famed poets of all time, William Shakespeare, is found to have utilized this strategy in his play King Lear. In this play, despite the lack characters that appear how monsters are commonly visualized, there are indeed two monsters which take the role of Lear’s two daughters. According to Jeffrey Jerome Cohen’s third theses of monster culture, “The monster is the harbinger of category crisis”, and “this refusal to participate in the classificatory “order of things” is true of monsters generally” (Cohen 6). This shows how daughters Regan and Goneril are indeed monsters, as their strong desire for power shows how they go against social norms, lacking the typical feminine stereotype of being dependent on a masculine counterpart to provide for them. Starting at the beginning, Regan’s drawn out, exaggerated confession of love for her father shows her true hunger for power. Following her sister, Regan says “I am mad of that self mettle as my sister/And prize me at her worth/I find she names my very deed of love/Only she comes too short” (I.i.71-74). Shedding light on her true, manipulative personality, Regan simply restates what her sister says and adds to it, showing how motivated by greed for power she