Meet your monster

Story archetypes:
1. Overcoming the monster (this post)
2. Rags to Riches (April 30th post)
3. The Quest
4. Voyage and Return
5. Comedy
6. Tragedy
7. Rebirth

The monster’s jaws open wide; the throat is a hideous cavern of slime. Claws grip you, squeezing out your life force, shoving you toward the cavernous opening. It seems hopeless. The monster is huge, his strength otherworldly, his defenses impenetrable. He might be part human and part animal, or a cross of animals, or a supernatural being. Sometimes the monster is fully human, but even in those cases, he is deformed in some way, representing a darkened, maimed, warped, or demented version of humanity.
No matter what the monster looks like, his threat remains the same—to snuff the life out of something dear to you. In mythic tales, he was the dragon swooping down to threaten the entire village. Later, he became a supernatural villain (as in Dracula) or, with the advent of science fiction, H.G. Well’s host of Martians or Sigourney Weaver’s Alien. Now this dark force swoops down and threatens something equally previous.

What makes a modern-day monster?
As cosmic as the battle is between the light hero and the dark threat, modern day monsters can assume a surprising range of guises. Political monsters include Hitler, Stalin, Castro, and recently, Sadam Hussein and Osama Bin Laden. These humans are depicted as dark, lacking humanity, and a threat to life as we know it. Another interesting modern monster is a disease (breast cancer) or the aggregation of a destructive human behavior (rampant consumerism). For example, in the same way mythic monsters swept across the globe devouring victims, middle-class consumerism now poses a monstrous threat to the victimized environment. It reminds me of the old Blob movies, in which the seemingly innocuous blob (a single person’s purchase or inappropriate disposal of garbage) grows in size with every victim it consumes, spreading its potential for devastation and becoming more threatening as it grows.

Although these modern monsters may seem far removed from Beowulf’s Grendel, modern-day heros must answer the same call. They must find the monster’s fatal flaw, a weak spot (often the monster’s sense of his own omnipotence and/or importance) and use that insight to wield a fatal blow. Shai Agassi, founder of A Better Place (about to launch the largest electric car infrastructure ever imagined), seems to be a modern-day hero striking such a blow. His monster? The collective behavior of car-driving humans whose gas-guzzling cars are adding to carbon emissions at a rate that threatens life as we know it on the planet. His insight? This collective human monster’s fatal flaw is its need for (should I say loyalty to) convenience and savings. By devising a way to offer drivers all over the world cheaper, more convenient electric cars, Agassi is posed to drive a knife deep into the monstrous side of increasing carbon-emissions. Will he succeed? It remains to be seen, but he’s definitely got a powerful weapon in his arsenal. We can only imagine the monster’s surprise when he fingers his mortal wound, and realizes it was inflicted through Agassi’s ability to turn convenience and savings into a mighty weapon.

What a monster is not
It’s tempting to see personal affronts and blockages as monsters. The boss who ignores your best efforts or who demeans you may seem monstrous. The boyfriend or girlfriend who dumps you may feel likewise dark and devoid of heart. But the key to the “Overcoming the Monster” tale is that the monster threatens more than your personal ego. Only so can the killing of the monster bring with it the secured promise of future life. If killing the monster is purely personal, and the task is undergone for personal ego gratification, the battle will not evoke transformation in the hero. Rather, the hero may becomes a new incarnation of the monster, even more destructive and terrible than the previous incarnation.

In search of a monster
It’s no wonder then that human beings search high and low for a cause, something greater than themselves that they can believe in, fight for and defend. No cause means no monster, and hence, no “salvation.” This salvation is known in psychological terms as the transformation of the ego, the development of a self-centered, pleasure-seeker into a mature individual who lives a moral, virtuous life. Such a transformation demands a cause, a monster to fight. In fact, the real toughie can be finding an appropriate monster, one whose destructive powers are threatening something that truly matters to you. You may have already found your monster. It may be an illness threatening someone you love. It may be an addictive behavior. It may be a selfish human failing. It may be a political tyrant. If you’ve found your monster, count yourself lucky, and head for the armory to prepare yourself for battle. If you haven’t yet found your monster, well, that means you’re beginning one of the darkest quests yet, a journey into the realm of meaninglessness, anarchy, and chaos. And you’re going to need a few magic aids to make your way through… so keep reading.