Size DOES Matter... sort of

So it might seem like a silly topic to write about in a blog, but in comparing "Fear, Itself" and Castle of Otranto, I realized these episodes boast two very differently sized villains (although I don't really consider the giant in Otranto to be a villain, so perhaps it's more accurate to say differently sized supernatural elements). So far, the evils we've faced in class have been fairly consistently human sized, but here we come across two extremely different sized antagonists, who are also extremes of each other. So I got to wondering, what does a villain's size say about him/her, if anything?

Buffy and the scoobies laugh at the tiny demon at the end of "Fear, Itself". Still, he terrorizes them throughout the entire episode, despite his size. His powers are greater than those of anyone else in the episode, and Buffy's size advantage over him is the only way he can be defeated in the end. In Otranto, the giant certainly uses his size to his advantage in killing Manfred's heir to the throne and in making an impressive entrance, but when Alfonso was a human and thus average human size (we assume) his line ended and the kingdom was taken over by Manfred's ancestors. A reader or viewer can draw from this that size does make a difference, because in smaller forms villains are more vulnerable. Another example from our texts that supports this, I believe, is Transformations. The dwarf, who is significantly smaller than an average man, is able to win over Guido's lover in Guido's larger form.

But there is at least one instance we've come across so far that I think breaks this mold: Hyde. He is described as smaller than Jekyll, but is far more evil. The image of him as a short, gnarled, stunted man is chilling and makes him seem even more realistic... and as such even terrifying. In the two film interpretations we saw of Hyde, he was a large muscular beast. This image, while perhaps more effective in Hollywood, does not chill and disturb in the same way as the original description. So, while in larger film form Hyde might be capable of more physical damage, in the story he is more effective as a villain and more capable than his larger-than-life counterparts.