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How Monsters Went from Menacing to Misunderstood | The New Yorker

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For most of human history, monsters were repugnant aberrations, breaches of the natural and moral order. What’s behind our relentless urge to humanize them?

Save this story Save this story Something’s going on with our monsters. They used to feast on humans with abandon, burn our villages, prowl the margins of the map; now they’re seeking therapy. The fangs are still there, but they’re clenched in pain. Killing sprees have become cries for help; horns and scales are mere markers of identity. These creatures aren’t out to destroy the world; they’re just trying to find their place in it. Consider sea monsters, perhaps the oldest terrors in world literature. Tiamat, the Babylonian chaos goddess, embodied the primordial ocean. She spawned a brood of a

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