The Drowned Giant takes an interesting look at how the human populace treats subjects outside of our common knowledge. Fear or panic are the probable fist reactions, but in this story the otherworldly creature is as dead as can be, and clearly no threat. Of course there are the few like the narrator who have a natural curiosity, and the scientists who show up and do some amount of studying the giant before leaving. But the rest, the various townsfolk, are left to their own devices, and have no care in the world about who this giant is, where he came from, or how he came to drown. Or even what this means for the world.
I've never seen a beached whale, but I can imagine they would have been treated pretty poorly too in the 60's. The deceased giant is handled with no humanity; the people climb him, carve him, burn him, and hack him to pieces, with no regard that this phenomenal, foreign thing on the beach was once living and breathing just as they are. Honor of the deceased is relative. The death of one's mother has a different weight than a ex-coworker's aunt. The giant is so far removed from the people that he is not treated with the same respect as any dead human is expected to receive.
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