universal truths?

i found this image in the newest issue of the New Yorker yesterday

who are these characters, and what are the universal themes to which they can’t connect?  their bodies are “different” than the “normals” (Erving Goffman, Stigma: Notes on the Management of Spoiled Identity), so how do their bodies allow or dis-allow them to connect to the themes they speak of?

It reminds me of Mary Shelley’s Frankenstein; or, The Modern Prometheus (The 1818 Text):

“As I read, however, I applied much personally to my own feelings and condition.  I found myself similar, yet at the same time strangely unlike the beings concerning whom I read, and to whose conversation I was a listener.  I sympathized with, and partly understood them, but I was unformed in mind; I was dependent on none, and related to none.  ‘The path of my departure was free;’ and there was none to lament my annihihilation [sic].  My person was hideous, and my stature gigantic: what did this mean?  Who was I?  What was I?  Whence did I come?  What was my destination?  These questions continually recurred, but I was unable to resolve them” (124).

What role do bodily differences play in belonging and the ability to relate to “universal themes” shared by many, the “normals”?