Tag: taboo

Taboos are an important part of monster stories, and many monster stories originated to inform their audiences of the consequences of taboo breach. They are deeply intertwined with our fears and impulses as a form of central drive for human actions. It makes sense that we should look into the meaning and origins of taboos to better understand how they’re employed in monster stories, and for what purpose. Understanding taboos help explain the appeal of the monsters, and how they’ve maintained a kind of universality despite sourcing from different parts of the world.

What is Taboo?

The word ‘taboo’ is a loan-word taken from a Polynesian dialect by Captain James Cook on a visit to Tonga in 1771. Taboos, also spelled ‘tabu’ in Tongan and ‘tapu’ in Maori dialects, are specific prohibitions commonly accepted by a society; actions, thoughts, or words considered to be uncommittable as either the sacred or the profane. In modern culture, the word ‘taboo’ has been colloquially watered down to ‘forbidden’ or ‘verboten’, removing the rationalization behind the taboo but retaining the threat of punishment. Originally, they were believed to have been passed down by the gods or spirits, and violating the taboos would result in serious harm: sicknesses would affect the individual, family, or community; rivers would dry up; crops would die; women would miscarry; or even random, unavoidable death. The inclusion of taboos in early legal code or moral code was an important addition to ensure that they were recognized and respected.

Our recognized taboos can be broadly split into several groups, with a dominant focus on the sexual and dietary. We have additional societal/social taboos which are more largely the basis of moral or legal codes; these are less unpalatable to us, or are highly specific to certain religions, and thus they rarely inform monster myth. They are more frequently breached and tend to be highly legislated, which also means that they are brought into discussion more frequently, and considered to be acceptable to speak about. Since societal taboos are subject to the views of society at large, and are considered acceptable to discuss, they are likewise subject to additional stipulations or alterations, up to and including the gradual dissolution of these taboos.

A selection of some of these taboos are listed below, split along loose categories I developed. It is important to note that these taboos are not universal; nor, for that matter, do these reflect the full range of taboos that have ever existed or ever will exist. While our present understanding of human nature and taboos has watered some of these down or rendered them obsolete by societal standards, the rationalization behind them and their subsequent use in monster myth requires some consideration for their former taboo status.

Sexual:

Sexual/Social

• do not have intercourse with a multiplicity of individuals, particularly after pledging oneself (promiscuity)
• do not have intercourse with someone who is pledged to someone else (adultery/cuckholding)
• do not have intercourse with someone of the same gender (homosexuality)
• do not have intercourse with someone of a different skin colour or perceived race (biracial relationships)
• do not attempt to change your sexual identity or gender identity (alt sexualities/transgender identity)
• do not have intercourse with yourself (masturbation)

Sexual

• do not have intercourse with a relative (increased taboo for increased degree of relation) – (incest)
• do not have intercourse with a child or individual with significant age difference (pedo/hebe/ephebophilia)
• do not have intercourse with the dead (necrophilia)
• do not have intercourse with animals (zoophilia/bestiality)
• do not have intercourse with someone who does not want to have intercourse with you (rape)
• do not have intercourse with a menstruating individual
• do not have intercourse with a pregnant individual

Dietary:

Dietary/Social

• do not eat certain foods banned by religion
• do not eat certain foods on certain days
• do not eat certain herbs if …
• do not consume foods banned by caste or social structure

Dietary

• do not drink blood
• do not consume human flesh
• do not consume excrement
• do not consume things harmful to the body

Societal:

• do not kill
• do not knowingly attempt to harm another human (without having a specific, societally-approved reason)
• do not harm animals
• do not take what does not belong to you
• do not lie (whether under oath, perjury; financially, educationally, job-related…)
• do not use profanity/non-socially acceptable words
• do not defecate oneself in public
• do not disrespect one’s god
• do not partake in rituals, customs, attire, jobs, behaviours not ascribed to one’s class

Common Themes

More broadly, these listed taboos can be condensed down to larger thematic examinations:

• Forbidden knowledge
• Desecration of the dead
• Disrespect for personal autonomy and self-determination
• Harming the defenceless
• Harming one’s bodily integrity or connection to the divine
• Entrapment under false pretenses; fallacy

Forbidden knowledge is the first and largest taboo, although its role has more recently acted to inform other taboos. As a fundamental taboo, we see it in myths as broad as the Exile from Eden, Pandora’s Box, Prometheus’s Gift of Fire, Quetzalcoatl’s Curse, Odin’s Agonies, Orpheus’s Flight from Hades, and so on. In each of these tales, the access of forbidden knowledge comes at great personal cost or punishment. By violating the essential taboo differentiating the classes of access, each of these individuals seeks to uplift themselves above their station and take part in something they aren’t allowed to. Curiosity is punished, pride for status precedes downfall, disobedience is met more severely than anything else. Even the gods themselves are bound by these rules. Quetzalcoatl played a role much like Prometheus in the formation of the first humans, according to his source myths, but when he looked upon the nudity of one of his shrine maidens and learned lust, his desires and subsequent actions cursed him into a horrible snakelike form, or immediate immolation. Prometheus brought fire to the humans and was suspended on a rock to have his liver consumed and regenerated every day. Odin brought runic writing into existence by hanging himself on a tree, spearing himself in the side, and starving himself over nine days and nights, then, finding that insufficient a pursuit of knowledge, gouged an eye out for a taste from the well of cosmic knowledge. Punishing the gods emphasized the unbreakable nature of these taboos across all classes, while simultaneously indicating that the desire to act on them was present in all classes.

Respect for the dead is a fundamental both for sociological and biological reasons. Rituals of washing the dead and making sure they were properly interred or burned developed both as a way to ensure that the dead individual enjoyed the rest they were due, and as a way to prevent the spread of sickness from the processes of natural decay, if not most overtly a vector for plague. Burial and funeral rites featured so strongly as an important part of social customs that they would become a prominent element in monster stories. The threat of eternal suffering for those who were not appropriately buried, and the dead returning to haunt their families were both sufficient enough to ensure that burial rites were respected as a fundamental human right.

Personal autonomy is perceived as the first fundamental right, and the most shocking to have taken away, which makes it more astonishing that it is so frequently violated for so many people. Today, we view personal autonomy as a wide-cast net, including our labour and education, our ability to travel, our names, our right to choose a spouse or engage in mating behaviours, the food we eat, the entertainment we consume, the right to modify our bodies, and so on. Slavery and rape are abhorrent to us because it violates the basic principles of self-determination, overriding someone’s will with another’s. Most monster stories incorporate some degree of loss of personal autonomy and self-determination, whether by installing a monstrous impulse that the conscious mind can no longer resist, like the urge to feed; changing the physical composition of the character to something monstrous and inhuman; or subsuming their will to the will of another, like the first zombie stories, or the brief craze of malevolent hypnotists.

Harming the defenceless is a particularly low blow for monster narrative, because it indicates the complete lack of humanity in the monstrous individual. Our society may be hard and difficult to thrive in, but our narratives emphasized a respect for those who could not take care of themselves. Our protagonists are children, orphans, and underdogs; the wealthy and entitled have no heroic path to lift them to greater glories. Monsters rarely approach fit, healthy white males as their prey. They feed upon children, women, and the infirm, those who cannot fight back. This taboo instills a sense of honour, which is not present in monsters, despite how they would depict themselves.

Themes of bodily integrity connect back to personal autonomy, of course, but also strongly to man’s connection to the divine. Every culture has some narrative indicating how humans were shaped or chosen by the gods, conceal some god-spirit in their bosom, or how they have the capacity to become gods themselves through specific works. That connection to divinity is specified by the bodily integrity, and can be compromised. The trading of one’s immortal soul in a demonic pact is a more recent incorporation of this theme. More commonly, scatalogical themes or predation behaviours imply the loss of bodily integrity through the spread of monster-based sicknesses, or making the sacred profane. The lowest caste in the Indian class structure is composed of those who must handle bodily wastes or take care of the dead. These things were seen as impurities that eternally defiled an individual and their status.

Lies, fallacies, entrapment, and promise-breaking are fundamental monster-behaviours and widely regarded as a basic rule that must be maintained. The Greeks prized craftiness, up to and including lies, but they had specific conditions that couched even this approval. Over the last few centuries, society has been more inclusive of lies as a societal and even heroic act, as long as the ‘right reasons’ for it are made clear. But the spoken word as bond must remain a fundamental part of the monster mythos because it is the foundation of society itself. Without the ability to trust one another, trade and commerce breaks down, as does long-standing host conventions (like not killing your guests when they present weakness around you), and the ability to maintain community. Monsters are a divisive element, often existing within the community, and spoiling it from the inside out.

Development

Taboos have frequently developed out of solid and sensible understanding of nature. Certain hallucinogens were made taboo for common people. Tribal communities understood their effects, but believed them to be gifts of visions from the gods; the godliness put these substances out of the hands of most civilians. If the substance was made freely available, the god-visions coming through so many different outlets would render them contradictory or dubious at best, or invalid at worst. Taboos reaffirmed class structures, gender ‘norms’ and behaviours, and job functions with hefty punishments for transgressors. But how did these taboos originate, and what what purpose did they have in the formation of these structures?

A common underlying theory on the development of sexual taboos is the natural instinct toward the preservation of the species. If an individual or group considers their ‘species’ to be further limited by geographical, cultural, or physiological differences (e.g., belief in racial divides, human subspecies, and racial superiority/inferiority, all of which have been countered by science), they may develop taboos against the dilution of their stock with someone outside their narrowed parameters, a taboo that is dominantly the perpetuation of a specific belief set and protection from the ‘outsiders’ who might influence that belief-set. In more recent years, various social-taboos have been struck down or weakened by changing group beliefs, including the taboos of homosexuality, biracial coupling, and the transgender identity. These taboos are all related to the general preservation instinct: homosexual pairings do not produce children, biracial coupling breaks down perceived racial purity, and trans individuals have the perception or stigma of altered or ‘mutilated’ genitalia, rendering them unsuitable mates in a chromosomal male/female pairing. The breakdown in their strength and range of influence may be in part due to more widely available information on the misconceptions behind these taboos: homosexual or bisexual individuals may still have or adopt children and can be good parents; biracial coupling does not produce ‘inferior’ children, introduce defects, or predicate itself on a power imbalance in the relationship; trans individuals have increasing access to safe surgical procedures, many choose to not have surgery performed on their genitalia, hormone replacement therapy does not affect their biological material, and their gender and presentation has no bearing on the effectiveness of their parenting skills, and so on.

For socially conscious individuals, particularly this most recent generation, the idea of equating these issues with taboos like consuming excrement or committing incest with a close family member borders on obscenity. It may be difficult to remember that these three taboos in particular only gained traction as legitimate forms of self-expression in the last fifty years, and still encounter problems with acceptance to this day. Taboos are also formed based on gut reactions and instincts instead of solid scientific fact. If a culture, for example, holds the male genitalia in special regard, then the removal or alteration of those genitals produces feelings of shock, revulsion, and terror. In places where these taboos are viewed as nearly universal, enacting them could easily be used as disproportionate retribution or a terrifying symbol to combat enemy morale. The observance of circumcision as a respect for God’s will met with traction from other tribes and societies as a form of mutilating genitalia, even if sourced from a religious observance. In the thousands of years since circumcision was instituted, the scientific community has developed studies to indicate that early foreskin removal helped facilitate hygiene, and equally, that removal could harm the ability to enjoy sensation from usage. There are still individuals to this day who view circumcision as an act of mutilation imposed upon an individual who cannot consent to it, without a regard for the scientific or religious viewpoints; likewise, there are groups who view the act of piercing the ears as mutilation, or groups that view piercing the ears as a sign of holiness. As long as these individuals are capable of communicating their beliefs as a group or to a group, that taboo remains valid for that community. Gut repulsion communicates the strongest taboos and trumps logic, cultural sensitivity, or religion.

The taboos listed here cannot be completely summarized by ‘an instinct toward the preservation of the species’. In the sexual taboos camp alone, the issues of promiscuity and adultery both implicitly suggest an impulse toward taking as many mates as possible, passing one’s genetic material along to the next generation, and even selecting a superior mate over the one presently employed. For those that suggest that taboos are largely formed out of animalistic behaviours, with preservation of the species as one of the primary instincts, many animals are not monogamous, and they have shorter lifespans and larger litters as balancing factors. And science, again, has come up in support of violating the taboo: polyamorous relationships in nature provide more for the offspring, and promiscuity allows for a more diverse selection of genes and competition. Humans are not monogamous by nature, neither by selection of a single mate, nor remaining widowed after that mate’s demise, unlike the truly monogamous species we have studied; if so, there would be no repercussions for acts that wouldn’t exist, like cheating on one’s mate or enjoying a variety of mates. Chastity and monogamy are entirely social structures imposed on humans. It may be more accurate to suggest that the taboos are in place for a preservation of group identity, which would include the taboos of biracial relationships, homosexuality, and transgender identity. As our society has worked to unify its people groups by new standards (or more pessimistically, targeted broader ranges of people groups to aggress), these group identities may have been modified or broken down. Alternatively, increased visibility and support for new groups formed from the taboo groups, with token ‘leaders’ spreading identification and good will, may have likewise weakened the taboos. Individuals who won public favour and then revealed themselves to be members of one of these out-groups especially contributed support; they were accepted for their talents and personhood before the classification of taboo could take effect.

Another view on the development of taboos, Freudian psychoanalysis, suggests that taboos are a form of repression taking effect. Individuals who were unwilling or unable to confront issues in their unconscious would express these issues in symbolic ways in the conscious world. Unlike many other researchers, Freud espoused much kinder opinions toward topics as universal as incest. In fact, he viewed incestuous feelings between mother-and-son and daughter-and-father as natural developmental stages present in all families, to varying degrees of literalization. Freud did not go so far as to suggest that incest was normalized, or should be, although many individuals condense his views down to the most shocking and egregious claims. Instead, he viewed patterns of misconduct as representation of incest and sexual taboos, and the acceptance of taboo-prohibitions as a societally-recognized shared structure. The same foundational impulses were present in all humans. At the time, he applied this line of reasoning as explanation for tales of abuse brought to him by the young women he studied. But as he abandoned that line of inquiry, he moved into a less literal interpretation: these foundational impulses that we considered profane affected individuals when their lives were out of balance, and they were expressed in a variety of ways as an unconscious outlet for those repressed impulses. To air them in greater narrative framework, then, would appeal to a broader audience for whom these expressions connected to the same unvoiced impulses. Innuendo and metaphor bore out these taboos to relate, communicate, interact, expel, relieve, interpret, and even satisfy these impulses in narrative form.

Taboo in Narrative

So what makes taboo so alluring for individuals to approach? Because of the strong repercussions for partaking in the taboos, ingrained from an early age, most are loathe to cross the cultural standards to enjoy a taste of the forbidden. Yet the very nature of being forbidden compels people toward it. The common expression ‘stolen cookies taste sweeter’ (or any variation of food) indicates that there is something in the risk-reward scenario itself that offers a ‘payoff’ for participating.

There are certain ‘shames’ associated with participating in taboos. Many repercussions or punishments were public, as means of discouraging others from participating in those taboos themselves, but shame had also been ingrained in the relation of the taboo. Taboo can often be split into two categories as well: the ones we’re repulsed by, and the ones we want to try but don’t want to get caught trying. Few actually want to cheat on their spouses, and fewer do, but it wouldn’t be unrealistic to say that many have entertained even momentary thoughts, or lusted after unattainable figures like celebrities while married. Religions with strong moral codes and senses of shame, like Christianity, equated conceptualization of the deed with committing the deed, so even consideration of an errant impulse specific to immediate stimuli (the attractive woman jogging in front of you on the sidewalk) or to specific objects (the famous pop star in the swimsuit in the latest magazine) carry internalized condemnation. These are developed through unvoiced or unconscious messages relayed by family, peers, and media, forming a reciprocal tie between shame and taboo.

For all that shame does to prevent us from acting on these impulses, we’re also drawn in toward that shame through curiosity. The more that shame blocks us from relieving these stresses, the more we view them through the lenses of taboo. Shame and self-loathing itself creates a psychological need for relief, which could take the form of returning to the same impulses, either in act or through fixation, neither of which is healthy. In comes the Aristotelian concept of catharsis, a word which has ties to the purging of unhealthy bodily fluids. The shame-curiosity feedback loop inherent in humans creates an emotional and mental ‘blockage’ of unhealthy thoughts and feelings that can hamper one’s fullest enjoyment of life. This mess is purged from the body through strong emotional situations in the media, through music, theatre, movies, or television, where the audience can strongly identify with the characters and follow them through their fates. Every tragic hero meets their tragic end through actions of their own design, all normal, healthy human impulses exaggerated or warped to something abnormal. In the most literal sense, catharsis is believed to provide fitting narrative judgments for all the unvoiced taboos rattling around inside a person; the character takes on the role of scapegoat, almost, so that their fate stands for the fates of the audience, and so they take the sin, shame, and emotional blockage with them when they have completed their role. In modern day, we have a variety of ways to depict these taboos and induce catharsis, and chief among them seems to be monster stories.

Monsters and Taboos

Monster stories have been used for millennia as a way of approaching and exploring taboos in a safe manner. Storytellers would use monster figures as a way of conveying the punishment for violating taboos: Minos’s violation of piety by failing to sacrifice a bull to his god resulted in the infliction of a taboo lust on his wife, Pasiphae. Pasiphae’s fixation for the bull resulted in the creation of a hybrid man-bull monster child, the Minotaur. And because Minos and Pasiphae failed to parent the child, but instead locked him away, they were driven to offer seasonal sacrifices of human life to satisfy him with blood and flesh. Between the three individuals, storytellers could inform of the collective taboos of impiety and disrespect for the gods, zoophilia, failure to parent, and pseudo-cannibalism. The existence of the beast itself was a form of retributive punishment for breaching the taboos of impiety and bestiality, but it is fascinatingly implicit that the curse of taboo lust was initial punishment for the impiety, and the resulting mutant offspring punishment for both the impiety and acting on the lust. As a monster, the Minotaur was not represented with human shame or impulses. He engaged in the taboo-breach of consuming human flesh as an expression of his monstrosity, and the ‘punishment’ of death came from heroic human hands as a stabilization of taboo-breach and correction.

The existence of monsters or their actions in response to violation of taboo is often portrayed as a result or consequence of the taboo-breach, but in modern times, our myths are slightly more subtle than being directly sent for correction. 1970s monster movies onward would often have a formula for victimization: immorality was punished early on with very gory, graphic displays against premarital sex and promiscuity, drug or underage alcohol use, lack of respect for authority figures, and other lapses. The survivors of these heavy-handed retributions would usually be well-dressed, well-mannered viewer proxies, and the message was this: acting in the correct way and abiding by the unvoiced moral codes would preserve you from the sweep of reactionary violence. These monsters, slashers, serial killers, murderous ghosts, the undead, would pay for the indulgence of blood-lust with their own destruction; like the Furies and those under their thrall, their singular purpose would be an endless path of violence unto their own demise. Cabin in the Woods acted as a deconstruction of the genre and its apparent morality complex. To very literally satisfy the edicts of eldritch gods, a representative population of human teenagers would be offered up to a randomized selection of primed monsters to balance the totality of humanity’s taboo-breach with a glut of violence unto the scapegoats. While traumatized, the virginal girl and singular intended survivor of the affair would then go and relate the punishment as a reiteration of the taboo-breach’s dangers. These stories necessarily must include a survivor who operates correctly within the parameters of moral law in a restoration of order and a prescription for correct behaviour; by making these characters the heroic proxies, the audiences themselves would self-identify and take those lessons for themselves. The aforementioned Cabin in the Woods goes one further with a slightly more realistic understanding of teenage thought-processes and the fallibility of humanity; by ultimately failing to comply with these unwritten rules and by being a complexly motivated human being, the audience-insert dooms humanity to extinction by the apparently very sensitive eldritch horrors. Her acts are a taboo-breach of their own against the confines of her narrative, and are accordingly offered the maximal punishment of the taboo. In doing so, it subverts and complies with the format of this particular taboo-breach fiction.

Even tragedy was intended as a form of taboo narrative and audience catharsis. Oedipus Rex, one of the most famous taboo narratives around, featured the confirmation of a curse cast long before the titular character was even born, a curse that detailed regal patricide, mother-son incest, and his ascension to the throne through these unnatural means. Although Oedipus was fated to act out these taboos, he still earned his punishment for his role in participating. There’s a dominant message in the play, one that’s overlooked for the more lurid aspect of parental incest, but his downfall occurs not because he copulated with his own mother and produced children, but because he followed the thread of truth doggedly to its conclusion despite everyone pleading with him to abandon it. The knowledge of his unnatural union was kept from him as a form of forbidden knowledge to protect their king, their queen, and Oedipus’s children. Oedipus acted in ignorance, but his actions still had consequences: he killed his own father and slept with his mother, and when he accepted these as truths, his subjects had to respect the laws of the land against such crimes. The play has a reputation for the sensationalistic revelation and the exquisite downfall that greets every character involved, but this is a difficult example to demonstrate the nature of taboo because free will was not a factor in the violation of taboos themselves. Even his search for truth at the cost of everything else, lauded as his greatest strength and hobble, comes in response to a misfortune befalling his city, one the seers decreed was a godly response to great taboo violation — his own. This is a play where every portion of his ascension and descent comes pre-scripted and at a great cost to everyone around him, thanks to the actions of his father which spurred this curse along. And for readers or viewers who followed his misfortunes past this play, his family is further diminished in the struggles and bloodshed of Antigone, wherein observance of the royal-law over respect for family and taboo-law results in more death and division. The best lesson you can take from this is to avoid offending the gods and dooming the next two generations of your family.

Dr. Jekyll is a more modern taboo narrative, superficially focused on the alteration of physicality and the removal of the moral compass, or ‘super ego’, in the pursuit of impulse and physical pleasure. The story of Strange Case of Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde rotates around that essential struggle between satisfying one’s curiosity for taboos and maintaining one’s good character. Forbidden knowledge splits his psyche into the obedient productive member of society and the rebellious taboo-breacher. As Hyde, he tries a little of everything, from drugs and alcohol to sexuality to violence and murder, all while maintaining public appearances as Jekyll. Similarly, Dorian Gray frees himself to commit all the violations of taboo he could care to try, when separated from those consequences. His sins are writ large on his portrait’s body, from the early aging from hard living, to the cruelties set in eyes and wrinkles, shining out of his soul. Both Dr. Jekyll and Dorian Gray bring about their own downfall through an act of self-harm against their amoral, taboo-violating selves, Christian souls incapable of living with the multiplicity of sins bearing down on them. The punishment, in these cases, comes from guilt, fear of being caught, or self-disgust, but these stories also indicate that in the absence of external punishment, common individuals may be compelled to act on these taboos, or more accurately, that a moral nature is not as strong a constraint on moral living as the legal system is.

Beyond punishment, these taboos were displayed in uncomfortable lights as emblemized in monster action and characterization. Dracula enthralled audiences for decades with a veritable smorgasbord of taboos, intentional, subtle, subversive, subconscious, and unconscious in origin. To list only a few: both hunters and Dracula express the transmission of blood as a form of unholy marriage between the individuals, and those having multiple transfusions or from multiple individuals a form of polyamory; Dracula, an undead creature of darkness, takes blood from his victims in sleep-states or under hypnosis, exerting his willpower to render them helpless against his assault; Dracula forces a character to drink his blood as a portion of turning her monstrous; Dracula lays claim to a male character as his own to enjoy and consume, as well as to protect, as he wishes; Dracula frequently interchanges his physical form with those of animals, and takes on an animal nature; Dracula surrounds himself with vermin, usually those typically associated with plague-bearing roles like bats, rats, and insects, and offers these to a mental patient to consume; all vampires in the novel are sacrosanct and have a visceral anathema to signs of Christianity. Where only a single taboo violation or consecutive series of taboo-breaches was sufficient for narrative device before, the titular antagonist is an (un-)living taboo in the flesh, spreading the profane in the continuation of his very existence.

The multiplicity of taboos present in Dracula certainly must be one of the reasons for its longevity. As different taboos have taken center stage in public discussion, or receded from social acceptance, Dracula has likewise adapted to his audience, revealing different portions of his ‘monstrosity’ through different emphasized taboos to suit the standards and concerns of the time. As he stands in for plague vectors, directors and writers focus heavily on the corpse-like body, the plague-bearing animal familiars, and other traits associated with infection. When he plays a role as the ‘invading foreigner’, his accent, strange dress, odd customs, and socio-political plans come to the forefront, fulfilling a plethora of negative stereotypes. When he acts as a sexual predator, his allure and seductive methods of acquiring prey take center stage. The adaptability of monster myths ensures that a larger audience connects with those stories and find them compelling, allowing them to be passed along to future generations, or to appeal to the terrors and taboos of the immediate present. So too, all stories must adapt or recede to convey their subconscious messages for now and beyond.

In upcoming posts, I examine the ritual cleansing required in the event of taboo breaches and how that applies to monster narrative’s structures and rituals of disposing of the enemy, look into the origins of monster weaknesses and where alterations or regional variations came into play, and examine taboo’s effects on the fairy tale morality that governs these original folktales, culminating with a look into the innocent protagonist’s role against the forces of darkness.

References