Jack supplies the human measure
You can make a story out of a hero among dragons; but not out of a dragon among dragons.
An earlier version of the contrast occurs in Heretics (first published 1905). In chapter V, ‘Mr. H. G. Wells and the Giants’, Chesterton reads The Food of the Gods as Jack the Giant-Killer retold from the giant’s perspective. Jack preserves an ordinary human measure: the giant’s size cannot by itself establish his goodness. Chesterton then argues that the giant could recover the conditions of courage only by fighting still larger opponents and thus occupying Jack’s vulnerable position. See chapter V, from the paragraph beginning ‘The Food of the Gods’ through ‘That is by ceasing to be a giant’. The inspected Gutenberg text derives from the twelfth, 1919 John Lane edition.
Here the emphasis shifts from moral judgment and courage to narrative surprise. A recognizably human centre makes extraordinary surroundings register as extraordinary. ‘Normal’ therefore functions as the story’s point of orientation, rather than meaning that the protagonist must be uninteresting. This connection explains the dragon contrast without identifying any particular unnamed psychological novelist as its target.
Sources
Revision 1 of 1 · 2026-11-07 · Suggest an edit