Arts and Humanities Commons^™

People Eater, Lilas Verrill

Honors College

Monsters have persisted in literature throughout human culture serving the role as the living embodiment of our greatest fears. Based on that definition, we should have no reason to want to offer them our sympathy, our understanding, our love, yet we see them written with depth, complexity, even humanity, time and time again. The monster is more than just what scares us. They can be difficult to understand - foreign and strange, but if we take the time to look a little deeper, we may find part of ourselves staring back. This thesis explores the role the “monster” plays as …