es or heroines as they descend into the dragon's lair; crane our necksover the tops of books or movie seats and peek into the dank recesses of the giant cyclops' cave;stretch out our trembling hands and actually touch the monster's reptilian scales, hairy paws, or clovenhoofs; and then run screaming like a banshee the instant it wakes from its slumber. What a rush! As frightening as these creatures are, in monster stories it is always the beast that ends up takingthe fall, which means that this is a place where we not only get to tangle with evil's most daunting anddangerous minions but to vanquish them with regularity. Pretty heady stuff. No wonder we never seemto tire of these tales. And yet the truth is that the best of these stories are much more than simple-minded creaturefeatures. In the original versions of Frankenstein, The Hunchback of Notre Dame, "Phantom of theOpera," Jekyll & Hyde, and even Dracula we aren't simply terrified and enraged by these ghoulstrolling about in our dungeons, sewers, or bell towers. Instead, in such classic monster stories we arealso haunted by an underlying sense of sympathy--and, yes, responsibility--for these misshapen men.In their deaths and destruction we experience some pathos, some tragedy, perhaps even some shredof regret for the ways they have been abused, goaded, and abandoned. Nowhere is this so clear as in Frankenstein. When, at the end of Shelley's novel, her narrator,Walton, finally sets eyes on Victor Frankenstein's dreaded creature, he describes him as having "aform I cannot find words to describe; gigantic in stature, yet uncouth and distorted in its proportions ...Never did I behold a vision so horrible as his face, of such loathsome yet appalling hideousness ... Idared not again raise my eyes to his face, there was something so scaring and unearthly in hisugliness." Still, Walton, like the reader, feels "a mixture of curiosity and compassion" toward this disf...
