Well, I "wrote" a post few days back about spider eating a bee, and all living things must eat concept, so I think we see monstrosity in something that we don't like, or it is just disgusting even if we have no clue is it good or bad, it wakes a terror in us. Since we are talking about monstrums I must share this beautiful scene and one quote with you.
For the quote I will go a bit classic, William Shakespeare:
there is nothing either good or bad, but thinking makes it so.
Somehow I have never feared creatures of the dark, wild animals, but only our human monsters, THE monster in me; in everyone actually. And it scares me to death when you hear, or worse, have known someone for quite a long time and they just snap into something you never realize it is possible.
Guess that is one of the reason I like to read Stephen King's books. :)
And for the ending, I enjoyed your article. :)
It's interesting how you phrase all this. You describe monstrosity with the bee-eating spider, yet you don't point at the spider as a monster. Then, you talk about 'creatures of the dark', and that hints on monsters, yet your description isn't monstrous at all.
I think it was either Canguilhem or Focault who wrote something about monsters and monstrosity as separate concept, only that was on a different note I think... I can't recall and can't seem to find it online either :(. Nonetheless, I think what you wrote here is a great example of that differentiation.
I really liked the phrase from the scene! It somehow points to that relativity @waphilip wrote about as well as to your Shakespeare quote. Also, it rises the question... do we create our monsters? Or do we just choose them?
Thanks a lot for reading and sharing your thoughts :)