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The Drowned Giant - Coggle Diagram

- - - - In beginning of The Drowned Giant the characters perceive the giant's size as a sign of otherness. Throughout the story, the giant is portrayed as less human, leading to the eventual mutilation of his corpse.
        
        In the beginning of "The Drowned Giant", the characters perceive the giant as more human and gradually as the story progresses, the giant's humanity slowly degrades, eventually leading the characters to perceive it's corpse as merely an object.
        
        Throughout the "The Drowned Giant", the giant's humanity slowly degrades as the townspeople perceive his corpse as less and less human; the more they separate themselves from the giant, the less they treat the corpse with respect, leading to the decline of his humanity.
  - - - Topic Sentence: At the start of "The Drowned Giant", the giant is perceived as almost human. While there is a small degree of separation between the locals and the giant, the townspeople still respect his corpse.
        
        Text Evidence:
        
        "in the clear sunlight his body glistened like the white plumage of a sea bird." Ballard, 1
        
        Text Evidence:
        
        " ...appeared to be a little larger than a shark." - Ballard, 1
        
        Similarly, the townspeople treat the corpse of the giant with a kind of reverence. Even the narrator percives the giant as seven feet tall, and the giant
        
        giant is described w more reverence
    - - Text Evidence:
        
        "One youth was even standing, arms wavering at his side, on the very tip of the nose." Ballard, 3
      - Text Evidence:
        
        "To my surprise I saw the giant's left hand had been amputated. I stared with shocked bewilderment at the blackening stump[...]" Ballard, 4
    - - At the end of the story, the townspeople's perception of the giant has changed; the giant is no longer perceived as human. The local people view the giant more as a resource than as a corpse.
        
        Text Evidence:
        
        "And I had a sudden vision of the giant climbing to his knees upon these bare bones and striding away through the streets of the city, picking up the scattered fragments of himself on his return journey to the sea." Ballard, 7
        
        narrator alone still feels humanity for the giant
        
        Text Evidence:
        
        "The carcass resembled that of any headless sea animal, whale, or whale shark. With this loss of identity, and the few traces of personality that had clung to the figure, the interest of the spectators expired[...]" Ballard, 6
  - - - Background:
        
        Context/Summary:
        
        Thesis:
        
        In the beginning of "The Drowned Giant", the characters perceive the giant's size as a sign of otherness; gradually as the story progresses, the giant's humanity slowly degrades, eventually leading the characters to perceive it's corpse as merely an object.
        
        "The Drowned Giant" by J. G. Ballard is a short story set in a beach town. One day, the corpse of the giant washes up on the beach. Through the course of the story, the giant's body is abused by the locals. At the end, the giant's body is picked apart, leaving only his ribcage.
- - - - At the start, he's percived as almost human, but over the story awe turns to disgust
        
        Comparision to whales at the start
- - - - once the seed of dehumanization is planted, there's no going back.