Giants
Since the dawn of time, tales have been told of giant races of people living on the fringes of civilization, who wreak destruction when they leave their homes to enter the world of people. In pagan religious beliefs, the giants are usually the antagonists of the pantheon of gods, and their troublesome behavior is a plot-device in many of the most famous legends. In Greek mythology, for example, the gigantes attack Mount Olympus, home of the gods, and are defeated with the help of Heracles (Hercules in Roman myth). Buried under the earth as punishment, their agonized convulsions cause earthquakes.
Similarly, in Norse mythology, the giants (Jötnar) are a constant nuisance, and one of their number, Surtr, actually helps cause Ragnarök, the Norse apocalypse. Despite their destructive capabilities, giants are usually depicted as incredibly stupid, such as in the tale of Odysseus and Polyphemus the Cyclops (a one-eyed giant) in The Odyssey. Odysseus gains the trust of his giant captor, tells him his name is ‘no one’, and so when he attacks Polyphemus the giant yells to his concerned friends that ‘no one is hurting me’, allowing the hero and his friends to escape from the island of the Cyclops.
Along with their stupidity, giants are depicted in Western Christian tradition as arrogant, proud, and generally excessive in all sins. Their enormous, unnatural bodies were thought to signify their sinful nature, as if their size was reached by the sins forcing the confines of the physical body to expand. Christian thought saw giants as the descendents of Cain, the world’s first murderer, who had sex with the wild beasts that roamed the land to which he was exiled. His half-man, half-beast daughters were inexplicably beautiful, and they had sex with Fallen Angels, and thus the giants were born.
Usually, giants are encountered by travellers in far-off places, but when a giant inhabits civilised areas, it is unnatural, and the menacing giant must be killed. An oft-retold story illustrating this topos is King Arthur and the giant of Mont Saint Michel (see the illustration above). This giant’s appalling behaviour includes the fatal raping of young girls and gorging on livestock from local farmers (NB the excess of lust and gluttony). The giant’s unnatural pride is signified by his weaving a coat from the beards of kings he had killed. Arthur defeats the giant in single-combat, and beheads him.
The humanoid giant’s moral-message is that man can become a monster if he is excessive in sin. But why, apart from signalling the dangers of exploration into parts unknown, are giants depicted on maps? When they are depicted, superficially-human giants are always shown at the margins of the unknown, where civilised people do not live. This carries an important message: sin is usually committed at the expense of others, and even when it harms only the perpetrator such people will be unpopular. If our sins turn us, effectively, into giants, we will be forced to live in exile.