The Babadook, a Monster of our own Creation

The Babadook is a difficult monster to classify as it does not outright kill people or attempt inflict pain on others. It works in such a way that its strengths play off of its victims weaknesses; in a sense, the Babadook is the incarnation of ones deepest personal struggles and vulnerabilities that manifest into a corporeal entity that will then antagonize those it manifested itself from. Relating to this, I believe Cohen’s last thesis, “The Monster Stands at the Threshold… of Becoming,” from his book Monster Theory, helps to elaborate on just what makes the Babadook so monstrous.

Cohen describes in his last thesis that the monster is a creation of our own doing that we can fight but will always return with greater knowledge than before. This is due to the fact that if the monster truly is of our own creation, such as Amelia creating the Babadook through her inability to cope with her husband’s death, then the monster will always have a way to beat us as it knows its victim as itself. Even when Amelia was able to overpower the Babadook she didn’t actually defeat the monster, it simply retreated to a dark corner of her basement biding its time until she becomes emotionally fragile to strike again; or as Cohen puts it, “[t]hey can be pushed to the farthest margins of geography and discourse... but they always return” (pg. 20). Once a monster has been created from our own mind then there will always be that shadow of doubt or small fear that keeps the creature alive even during the happiest of times and once created will never fully disappear.

By relating Cohen’s monster theses one can see the different ways many of the monsters from our society have come into being. The monsters are not some missing link, or mutated beast, but a being of our own creation, which makes one think, who truly is the monster?