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Monsters are one of the most difficult things to define. They lack a black and white definition and as result they are open to many interpretations. Monsters are capable of imposing fear on certain groups of people, but not on others. In his story, “Beautiful Monsters,” Eric Puchner creates a scenario where unlikely groups of people are considered monsters. Similarly, Jonathan Swift’s satirical essay, “A Modest Proposal,” creates a variety of different monsters in one troubled society. Both pieces of literature, however, are not simply just descriptions of different monsters; instead their underlying themes serve as a message about how monstrosity is defined. Swift’s “A Modest Proposal” clearly supports Puchner’s message that monstrosity is a matter of perspective by exploiting the differences in society and how different people living in those societies are viewed.

Swift supports Puchner’s theme of perspective by creating alternative scenarios that appear monstrous because they are outside the established social norms. In “Beautiful Monsters” Puchner creates a scenario where adults appear foreign; his description of adults is evident when the narrator notes, “ The boy has never seen a grown man in real life, only in books and the sight is both more and less frightening than he expected” (Puchner 183). The children that run this civilization symbolize society itself by taking on all of the roles necessary for communities to operate; these children choose to view the adults as monsters because they are alien-like in their perspective and they are too foreign to understand. In a normal community adults would obviously not be portrayed as monsters because they are within the realms of understanding. However, Puchner creates a soc...

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...e to create his own separate conflicts that are caused by monsters, it is obvious that monstrosity and its effects are dependent on the perspective of society, which clearly supports Puchner’s major theme.

Puchner’s belief that monstrosity is defined by perspective is highlighted throughout “Beautiful Monsters.” Puchner and Swift support his theory through their differing accounts of monstrosity. Puchner’s story provides evidence of how a monster is defined in a fantasy and how the rules of society and the people living in it contribute to the development of monsters. Swift’s “A Modest Proposal” demonstrates how monstrosity is defined and how it affects society in real-life situations. The fact that Swift is capable of creating different monsters under different scenarios is unquestionably evidence that monsters are a matter of perspective.