Fear In Lord Of The Flies And The Book Thief

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The concept of fear is rather simple on first glance, but rather powerful on analysis. Fear can be thought of as an acronym for false evidence appearing real, and this evidence appearing real can be manipulative, destructive, or maybe even beneficial. In the Lord of the Flies and the Book Thief, fear is a common factor in the character’s decisions. Fear can take many forms, but also have many forms. For instance fear can act as a powerful force in general that causes an immense change. Fear can also have a strong negative impact, but fear can have a strong positive impact as well. Throughout Lord of the Flies and The Book Thief, the authors use fear as a powerful force that manipulates and changes the lives of their characters. The authors …show more content…

In the Book Thief, it is fear that caused Max to be driven away from the Hubermanns. As a result of Hans feeding bread to a enslaved Jew during a parade, Max was forced to flee. As a matter of fact “Max was gone, and Hans Hubermann was to blame.”(Zusak, 399). Max left due to fear, and as a result this created a negative impact among Liesel as she was very close to him. Furthermore, the factor of fear is what influences Liesel to contact her Mother. Liesel was learning letter writing at school and she took this as an opportunity to reach out to her mother, she asks Hans “Would I be able to write a letter to Mama?”(Zusak, 96), as she hopes her mother is still alive. However Hans and Rosa have a more clear picture of reality, in a discussion Hans says that “I couldn't say no” and Rosa later says that “She should just forget her. Who knows where she is? Who knows what they’ve done to her”(Zusak, 96). It is clear that Liesel’s mother has most likely been killed, or is in a position that would not allow for communications. Liesel fears this too, but she still tries in hope of hearing from her mother. Similarly, fear is also employed as a negative power in Lord of the flies. Jack, a fairly controlling individual in Lord of the Flies is generally a person to be feared. However Jack has fears of his own, and he shows these fears as his thirst for power consumes …show more content…

Fear is a powerful force that controls the characters, it does not only act as a light and dark force but it can act as a general force that causes immense change. In the Book Thief, an immense change caused by fear is the holocaust. Max Vandenberg lived a fairly normal life as a Jew, however it is the holocaust that separated him from his mother. As Max left his mother, Max felt that he should have “...turned for one last look at his family as he left the apartment” he would have felt that “the guilt would not have been so heavy.” as the guilt of leaving his Mother due to fearing for his life caused an immense change for Max and his family. Both the Book Thief and Lord of The Flies share this immense change caused by fear. A rumored beast on the island caused an immense amount of fear for all. The tension caused by the fear caused changes to their actions. Fear of the beast is what killed Simon, on a night when they were eating pig around a fire they began a chant, saying that “Kill the beast! Cut his throat! Spill his blood!” and as the chant progresses “The movement became regular while the chant lost its first superficial excitement and began to beat like a steady pulse.”(Golding, 152,eventually this lead to everybody being seduced by this savage chant. In the meantime, Simon had just returned to tell them that there is no beast as he found the dead parachutist. As a result Simon was killed, and the death of

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