Currently researching to prosecute Robert Latimer in a mock trial, I googled upon this essay. In it, Rebecca Johnson explores the mythic roles of the murderous father and monstrous child. Very interesting read, I wish I was still in touch with my old anthropology prof to share it with him. The odd little fellow that always wore a three piece suit with a watch fob and was obsessed with Joseph Campbell and Hamlet's Mill. I miss him.

This introductory paragraph grabbed my attention, and I've been mulling it over for the past day:

"The stories and other materials summoning the bogeyman in one guise or another
not only give existing fears a face and a form, but can also excite them and
shape them in the first place. And fantasies not only shape individual
consciousness but constitute society's character as well. The tidal shore
where fantasy laps at actuality changes the contours of them both: they move in
a permanent, restless, symbiotic relation and vary as the weather changes, and
we are living in a time of a cultural El Niño."

Marina Warner

"the tidal shore where fantasy laps at actuality"...... amazing metaphor.