Beating a Troll

In the first assignment, I wrote about a troll. I read about troll in the Three Billy Goats Gruff when I was a child. Troll is interesting creature because it is described by numerous authors (especially European authors). Sometimes it is a big fat man, and sometimes it is tiny, but it is always ugly. The visual is necessary to make a monster monstrous; that is, a monster must be ugly, scary, and different from human being, preferably dirty as well. This unfamiliar looking makes people unconformable to stay with and not be able to welcome it into our daily life. This my guess is similar to Cohen’s first thesis: the Monster’s Body Is a Cultural Body. According Cohen, the term monstrum means “that which warns,” (Cohen p.4) a monster has a visual that makes people feel fear, anxiety, or warn without saying a word.

Cohen’s theory VI: Fear of the Monster Is Really a Kind of Desire can also be applied on the troll in the Three Billy Goats Gruff. The troll tries to attack all three goats’ brothers. As a result, the oldest Billy beats the troll, but why do the brothers need to fight with the troll? This is because the goats has a desire that to eat the grass on the mountain across the river and need to cross the bridge. The monsters always challenge people who have desires and try to achieve it. Cohen also says “do monsters really exist? Surely they must, for if they did not, how could we?” (Cohen p.20). Monsters challenge us. All difficulties that we get in our daily life can be considered as a monster or happened caused by the monster. For example, when you are really done with a paper, but you forgot to bring it in class, that is also because of a monster. Therefore the life is bitter and tough. But we can beat them, and we can be stronger.