Monster Mash-Up Poll Number 1: best monster (non-human)

This Thursday, 1st March, is World Book Day - and the book blog is celebrating with its regular week of polls.  As 2018 is the bi-centenary of the publication of Mary Shelley's Frankenstein, we've taken monsters as our theme, and each day, we'll be presenting you with a selection of different monsters, or monstrous characters, nominated by SPS pupils and teachers, and inviting you to vote for your favourite.  Today, we're kicking off with a menagerie of non-human monsters: read the nominations, and then cast your vote (if you're reading this on your phone, you need to scroll to the end of the post and click 'web version' to vote). 

Orcs

from The Lord of the Rings by JRR Tolkien

Orcs provide readers with many gut-wrenching moments throughout the Lord of the Rings series.  Their disgusting appearance and unruly behaviour make them a legend: their power and strength make them worthy opponents.  You can't imagine the battles for Middle Earth without them - they were part of the most awesome armies in literature.

Grendel

from Beowulf

Grendel is a monster who plagues ‘Heorot’ the great hall of Hrothgar, king of the Danes. Look at his presentation before he attacks Hrothgar’s Hall: Ðá cóm of móre under misthleoþum/ Grendel gongan… (There came from the moor, under the misty clffs, Grendel walking). It’s just so spooky. There are many things I don’t like about Beowulf, but Grendel is great. I love the image of him walking, ‘gongan’ towards the sleeping Danes: there is a pleasing ghoulishness about him.  Grendel is a ‘shadow walker’, a descendent of Cain, a giant, he has a mother, but we don’t get many concrete descriptions of him, and he can come to life in the imagination.

The Hound of the Baskervilles

from The Hound of the Baskervilles by Arthur Conan Doyle 

Huge, spectral hound of hell, ghastly, enormous and blazing with fire, that has haunted the Baskerville family for centuries.  Roams at night, killing people foolish enough to walk over the moors, and is made even scarier by the legends told about it. Scariest of all, Conan Doyle based the hound on a true story. 

The Dementors

from the Harry Potter series by J K Rowling

Servants of the dark-lord Voldemort, the dementors are undoubtedly some of the scariest creatures in all of literature. Floating, shadowy, skeletal beings, enrobed in black, who feed on human happiness and suck out people's souls, leaving them empty shells.  No loyalties, so you never know whose side they're on. The combination of all these nightmarish characteristics mean that dementors are absolutely terrifying and should definitely be voted most scary non-human monster.

Sauron

from The Lord of the Rings by J R R Tolkien

The greatest monster in literary history. An immortal, who created the One Ring to Rule Them All, and even though defeated in battle (only once) he survives his physical death and retains his strength as the all-seeing eye in Mordor. He caused one thousand years of conflict, and is as close to a god as you can get. 

Moby Dick

from Moby Dick by Herman Melville

If you're going to choose the best monster of all time, you've got to consider size and reputation: look no further than Moby Dick.  The centrepiece in one of the greatest works of literature ever, Moby Dick is an immense beast, who terrorised whalers ever since Captain Ahab first caught sight of his surfacing head.  

The Wolf

from Little Red Riding Hood

The wolf is a devious, dangerous, dark beast, whose cunning and desire make him a beast worth nominating.  He has no remorse, and he's willing to deceive a child to kill an elderly woman, making him truly monstrous.

Napoleon

from Animal Farm by George Orwell

Napoleon is the character hated the most by far by all the readers of Animal Farm I've ever met.  This pig orchestrated the fall of the oppressive humans, but then became a tyrant himself.  Orwell based Napoleon on Josef Stalin, one of the most brutal and oppressive dictators of all time.  Surely this makes Napoleon the most maniacal, devious, despicable monster in all literature? This pig is to blame for all the deaths and torture of the farm animals: on the road to totalitarianism, he quelled rebellions brutally, spreading lies through propaganda and sacrificing brave animals without thought to boost his own power: vote Napoleon!!!

The Gruffalo

from The Gruffalo by Julia Donaldson 

The Gruffalo is an icon, one of the best known monsters in literature: and his story also teaches us a lot.  He's been filmed, and adapted, and his stories are massive hits: he's also been influential on modern day monsters, and who knows, many others yet to be created ...

The Nightmare-Life-in-Death

from The Rime of the Ancient Mariner by Samuel Taylor Coleridge 

Any embodiment of death that you encounter while stranded on the open sea would be guaranteed to strike fear into your heart, especially after she has gambled and won the right to toy with your fleeting humanity ...

Azathoth

from the Cthulhu Mythos and Dream Cycle stories of H P Lovecraft  

Azathoth the Great is Lovecraft's pseudo-deity in a universe of monsters: 'outside the ordered universe [is] that amorphous blight of nethermost confusion which blasphemes and bubbles at the center of all infinity—the boundless daemon sultan Azathoth, whose name no lips dare speak aloud, and who gnaws hungrily in inconceivable, unlighted chambers beyond time and space amidst the muffled, maddening beating of vile drums and the thin monotonous whine of accursed flutes.'

Mr Croup

from Neverwhere by Neil Gaiman

Scarily intelligent and delights in causing pain and misery. Controls Mr Vandemar, who is also terrifying.

The Jabberwock

from Alice Through the Looking-Glass by Lewis Carroll

The reason I nominated this monster is because it is never physically described. Carroll uses made up words such as 'whiffling' (to move or cause to move lightly as if blown by a puff of air) and 'frumious' (a combination of fuming and furious) to evoke it, so it is entirely a monster of the imagination. 

The Morlocks

from The Time Machine by H G Wells

Anaemic cannibals, discovered along with the useless Eloi by the time traveller in the English countryside in AD 802,701. They live underground, developing an aversion to sunlight and rendering them blind. Violent and life-threatening. Symbolically frightening: Wells imagines a polarised class system that dehumanises the poor and makes them like Morlocks, while the rich (like the Eloi) are useless and futile.

Satan

from Paradise Lost by John Milton

 

Because he’s such a good villain: troubled but complex - 'better to reign in hell than serve in heaven'.

The Martians

from The War of the Worlds by H G Wells

'Intellects vast and cool and unsympathetic regarded this earth with envious eyes, and slowly and surely drew their plans against us'.  Huge, tentacled extra-terrestrials, technologically advanced enough to invade, bringing with them total war and chemical weapons.  Eventually defeated by the common cold, but not before they've laid waste to most of the Home Counties.   

Pennywise

from IT by Stephen King

Shape-shifting evil entity, whose best-known incarnation is the eponymous evil clown.  Messes with people's minds and lives in the sewers.

So - seventeen mighty monsters: but which of them is most majestically monstrous? You decide - vote now ...

Many thanks to Oli Hatfield, Sam Bedford, Andre Saldanha Blackwood, Jack Taylor, Akbar Shamji, Rob Norris, Eddie Kembery, Miss Douglass, Dr Hudson, Mr Kemp, Robert Brewer, Joseph Schull, Miss Waller, Isaac Wighton, Will Garside, Adam Benaben, Aidan Lim  and many, many others for all their nominations.