What Makes a Monster? The Nature of Monstrosity in Ordinary Monsters
Defining the Thematic Claim
Ordinary Monsters opens with a question it never stops asking: what makes someone a monster? The novel's title invites readers to assume the answer lies in the supernatural—in the blue-shining power of a child, the healing flesh of another, the strange talents that mark the orphans of Cairndale as different. But J.M. Miro's story steadily dismantles that assumption. The thematic claim at the novel's heart is that monstrosity is not a matter of nature, biology, or supernatural ability, but of choice and conduct. The children with extraordinary talents are not monsters; the true monsters are the ordinary humans—institutions, bounty hunters, scientists, and even caretakers—who exploit, cage, and consume the vulnerable. The novel repeatedly contrasts the children's supernatural abilities with the all-too-human cruelty of the world around them, and in doing so, it redefines the monstrous as a moral category rather than a physical one.
The Epigraph: Monstrosity as Behavior, Not Birth
The novel's framing device, an epigraph credited to The Book of Enoch, establishes this distinction before the story even begins. The passage describes a turning point in an ancient conflict: once humans could no longer provide for the giants, the giants turned hostile and consumed mankind. The giants are not monstrous because of their size or their power—they are monstrous because of what they do when their needs go unmet. They turn on those who once sustained them. This mythic backdrop primes the reader to understand monstrosity as a behavioral betrayal, a choice to devour rather than to protect. The giants' consumption of humanity prefigures the novel's central conflict: the way powerful figures in the story—Berghast, Marber, the institutions that hunt the children—treat the young talents as resources to be used up rather than as people to be cared for.
Charlie Ovid: The Mislabeled Monster
Charlie Ovid is the novel's clearest case study in mislabeled monstrosity. A sixteen-year-old with a healing ability that leaves no scars, Charlie has been shot, pronounced dead, and hidden away in a Mississippi warehouse by authorities who cannot explain his survival. His crime was accidental: he killed a white overseer at the dockyards, and the system that should have protected him instead treated him as an aberration to be concealed. When he arrives in London, fleeing a litch that hunts him through the fog, he is taken in by a gang of street children led by Gilly and Millard. The moment his healing power is revealed, the children turn on him. Millard grabs Charlie's head and declares, "He's a bloody freak, he is. He's a monster." A little girl starts to cry. The children scatter, calling him Spring-Heeled Jack.
The cruelty of this scene is that Charlie has done nothing to harm these children. He has, in fact, just defended Gilly from the bull man Mr. Plumb, who bends the little girl's finger back until she screams. The children's fear is understandable—difference is frightening—but the novel makes clear that the real threat in the warehouse is not Charlie's healing flesh but the grown men who exploit child labor and break children's fingers for losing cargo. Mr. Plumb and Mr. Thwaite are the monsters here, and they are entirely ordinary. Even the constable who tells Charlie to "walk it off, blackie" embodies a casual, institutional cruelty that dwarfs anything Charlie's talent has done. The novel's point is sharp: the children call Charlie a monster for being different, while the adults who actually hurt them pass unnoticed.
Miss Davenshaw's Lesson: Difference Is Not Monstrous
The novel makes its thematic argument explicit in a classroom scene at Cairndale. Miss Davenshaw, the blind teacher, leads the children into a cellar storeroom lined with jars of preserved human fetuses—teratologies, specimens with single eyes, two heads, and stacked knots of flesh. She asks the children to consider what they see, then delivers the novel's central thesis: "Difference, children, is not monstrous. It is nature at work." She explains that these aberrations follow their own rules of logic, that they are not chaotic or arbitrary, and that the talents the children possess are variations that have existed as long as human history. "There have always been talents," she says. "And there will always be."
The scene is remarkable for its refusal to flinch. Miss Davenshaw does not sentimentalize the specimens or the children's differences. She asks them to "look closely and feel pity," and Charlie does—pity wells up in him. The lesson is that the monstrous is a label imposed from outside, a failure of understanding, not a quality inherent in the thing observed. When Komako defines monsters as "mutations that don't lead anywhere," Miss Davenshaw gently redirects: the talents are not dead ends but persistent, repeatable variations. The children are not aberrations to be feared; they are part of the natural order, and the people who hunt them are the ones who have lost their way.
Berghast: The Corruption of Longevity
The novel's most chilling portrait of monstrosity is Henry Berghast, the founder of Cairndale who presents himself as the children's protector. Berghast is not a supernatural creature; he is a man who has lived for centuries, and the novel makes clear that his longevity has corrupted him from the inside out. In a passage of interior reflection, Berghast considers his own decay: "If you live long enough, you cease to be human, you cease to understand anything that fills the human heart." He has watched his parents, his brother, his wife, and his child grow old and die, until their faces are lost to him, "like reading of them in the pages of a book, a book written by someone else."
Berghast's monstrosity is not supernatural—it is the result of time and choice. He has hunted the prophesied Dark Talent for years, reducing his own power in the process, and now he plans to use Marlowe as a lure to absorb the drughr's power for himself. He knocks the boy unconscious, cuts his wrist, and begins draining the drughr's power through him. The scene is a direct inversion of the epigraph: Berghast, like the giants, turns on the one who sustains him. He is the true monster of the novel, and he is entirely human. His corruption is not the result of a talent or a curse; it is the result of living so long that he has forgotten what it means to love.
Marlowe: The Dangerous Child
The novel complicates its own argument through Marlowe, the child at the center of the prophecy. Marlowe is genuinely dangerous. As a baby, he burns Eliza Grey's hand with his blue-shining power; as a child, he kills a bounty hunter by melting the man's flesh. His power is described as a "blue shine" that can destroy as easily as it can heal. The novel does not pretend that Marlowe is harmless. But it insists that his danger does not make him a monster. Marlowe is a small child who grips Charlie's hand and will not let go, who has nightmares, who begs Charlie not to leave him. When he wades into the orsine to seal it, sacrificing himself to save the others, the novel makes clear that his power is not the measure of his humanity.
The blue shine is a symbol of this ambiguity. It is beautiful and terrifying, capable of both healing and destruction. The novel refuses to resolve this tension. Marlowe's power is real, and it is dangerous, and it is also part of who he is. The question the novel asks is not whether Marlowe's power is monstrous, but whether the people who fear it and hunt him for it are behaving monstrously. The answer is unambiguous: they are.
The Ending: Who Survives, Who Is Lost
The novel's climax and epilogue drive the thematic argument home. Berghast, the man who claimed to protect the children, is stabbed by Charlie and dragged into the orsine. The manor burns. Margaret Harrogate dies protecting the children. Marlowe sacrifices himself to seal the orsine, telling Charlie to find a way to bring him back. In the aftermath, Charlie discovers that his healing talent is gone—taken by Berghast. The children who survive are the ones who chose compassion over consumption: Charlie, Alice Quicke, Komako, Oskar, and Ribs. The monsters are the ones who tried to use the children as tools.
The epilogue offers a note of hope. Charlie believes Marlowe may still be alive inside the orsine, and when Miss Davenshaw reveals the existence of a second orsine, Charlie declares he will find it to rescue Marlowe. Alice agrees to join him. The novel ends not with the triumph of the institution but with the determination of the children to save one of their own. The message is clear: the future belongs not to the Berghasts of the world, who consume the young to sustain themselves, but to those who choose to protect and rescue each other.
Complexity and Contradiction
The novel is careful not to make its argument too simple. The children are not innocent in any easy sense—Charlie kills Deputy Alwyn, Marlowe kills the bounty hunter, and the talents are capable of terrible destruction. The novel acknowledges that power is dangerous, that difference can be frightening, and that fear is a natural human response. But it insists that fear does not justify cruelty. The keywrasse, a creature that battles Marber and drags him into the loch, is itself a kind of monster—but it acts to protect the children. The weir-bents, taken from Marber by Komako, are tools of power that can be used for good or ill. The novel's symbols resist easy categorization, just as its characters do.
The deepest contradiction lies in Berghast himself. He is the novel's clearest monster, yet he was once a protector, a man who founded Cairndale to shelter the talents. His corruption is gradual, the result of centuries of loneliness and loss. The novel suggests that monstrosity is not a fixed state but a process—a slow erosion of empathy, a choice repeated until it becomes a nature. This is what makes the theme so unsettling: if Berghast can become a monster, so can anyone.
Study Questions
1. How does the epigraph from The Book of Enoch frame the novel's definition of monstrosity?
The epigraph describes giants who turn on humans once they can no longer be provided for, consuming mankind. It establishes that monstrosity is a matter of behavior—specifically, the choice to devour rather than protect—rather than a matter of nature or birth. This framing prefigures the novel's central conflict, in which powerful figures like Berghast and Marber treat the children as resources to be consumed.
2. Why does the novel have the street children call Charlie a monster, and what does this scene reveal about the theme?
The street children call Charlie a "freak" and a "monster" after seeing his healing power, even though he has just defended Gilly from Mr. Plumb. The scene reveals that the label of monstrosity is imposed from outside, based on fear of difference, while the actual cruelty in the warehouse comes from the ordinary adults who exploit the children. The novel uses this contrast to argue that monstrosity is a moral category, not a physical one.
3. What is the significance of Miss Davenshaw's lesson on teratologies?
Miss Davenshaw shows the children jars of preserved fetal specimens and tells them that "difference, children, is not monstrous. It is nature at work." The lesson reframes the children's talents as natural variations that have always existed, rather than aberrations to be feared. It is the novel's most explicit statement of its thematic claim.
4. How does Berghast embody the novel's definition of monstrosity?
Berghast is a human who has lived for centuries and has been corrupted by time. He reflects that "if you live long enough, you cease to be human," and he plans to use Marlowe as a lure to absorb the drughr's power. His monstrosity is not supernatural but moral—he has chosen to consume the children he once protected, making him the novel's clearest example of a true monster.
5. How does Marlowe's sacrifice complicate the novel's argument about monstrosity?
Marlowe is genuinely dangerous—his blue-shining power can kill—but the novel insists that his danger does not make him a monster. His sacrifice, wading into the orsine to seal it and save the others, demonstrates that his power is not the measure of his humanity. The novel argues that what makes someone a monster is not what they can do, but what they choose to do with it.