What do you think makes someone a monster?

[CupcakeNinja]

What if they dip their cereal individually into the milk?

This is acceptable only if the cereal is Cookie Crisps

 

[Hadassah]

Writing a novella about the subject of ‘monster’, which you can think of as a short novel. Longer than most short stories, but shorter than a novel. Anyhow, need to see how different people perceive a person as a monster, that’s all.

Ah-cha! That is the key perspective that helps me understand the kind of answer you are looking for.

Communities and individuals both might judge another potential member or peer a 'monster'. They key part is that the person be acceptable at one point, (perhaps before meeting their judge though usually not) and lose that acceptability in such a way that redemption seems hopeless or 'monstrous' in and of itself.

Violating ethical or moral codes usually are part of this, or just living in a manner different than the prescribed social codes. Someone too short in a tall community might be enough to do this in an extreme enough manner, but in most social codes adjacent to our own, this means murder without acceptable motives, direct action against people of a different peer group, or endorsing those previous things. Even then, 'monster' ultimately a personal moniker from one person to another.

Its hard for a third party to tell X that Y is a monster. X has to ultimately make a judgement on Y personally.

Its an interesting question. I did see that you phrased it to ask about "if a person was extremely intelligent" and that really depends on what the person does with being intelligent? Are they a smug asshole that identifies that others need to suffer for their own or the group's gain? I mean, some of the people might call them a monster if "ends justifying the means" is not a shared cultural ideal. Even then, its hard to justify that sort of thing to the people suffering or dying.

This is why people hate the 'trolley problem' and the memes that spawned from it. Without context, its just a useless measure, reality doesn't work with such absolutes. Fiction, however, does.

Ultimately, however, you can't account for if your *readers* will see the person as a monster because readers come from such a broad diaspora and, just like the trolley problem, know that this is a fictional situation. If the people sympathize with the person on the track who has to die, the person with the controls is a monster. If they sympathize with the controller, they are not. The ending is preordained. The character could fail even, grinding everyone including themselves to dust, and some readers will thing the attempt was worthwhile, and not monstrous. (Some might think you, the author, is monstrous instead, for having written such a futile story.)

Interesting focus, hope you find your answer among all the replies!

 

[BenJepheneT]

This is acceptable only if the cereal is Cookie Crisps

I know someone who soak milk with bread and suck the milk out of said bread. When the whole loaf is soggy and tattered in pieces, he dips it into the milk and drinks it all

 

[CupcakeNinja]

I know someone who soak milk with bread and suck the milk out of said bread. When the whole loaf is soggy and tattered in pieces, he dips it into the milk and drinks it all

Kill him. He's too dangerous to let live

 

[Pontan]

This all also makes me think about dehumanization. If you dehumanize specific people enough, normal people will abandon all moral values and empathy, then voluntarily kill the dehumanized, like the nazis did to the jews, and the Rwanda genocide. While humanizing makes you an angel, like humanizing immigrants and supressed minorities. None of the supressed groups are filled with genuinely bad people. Turning violence and hate (Which makes no one happy) into peace and love. (Which makes people happy) In that way, if a human were to dehumanize people until a genocide starts, is not that person a true monster? You could write a pretty awesome story about a peaceful, happy, coexisting society slowly going mad by a new leader spreading propaganda and dehumanizing targeted groups.

 

[xluferx]

Depends on the definition of monster and the perspective, like a monster is anything that we don't understand and fear as a result. A big hairy thing with two heads? A fricking monster

Now on the other raise we call monster to those who do not want to associate with in any way, a human who did terrible but terrible crimes we immediately refuse to acknowledge them to the same as us because we cannot understand or think capable to be like that so he/she is a monster not a human. And to exacerbate on that we quickly look for faults, defects ANYTHING to inhumane that individual.

 

[Deleted member 42060]

While humans have the desire to kill, monsters only kill.