The Result of Fear

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“Social control is best managed by fear” (Michael Crichton). According to Michael Chrichton fear is used to control people’s actions. Fear is one of the biggest impacts on human behavior therefore it can result into taking over someone’s life by constantly worrying and living in distress or even guiding oneself in a deathly situation. This is where The Chrysalids by John Wyndham begins to link in. The people of Waknuk, David and his group of telepaths, Sophie and blasphemies in general are in constant fear of dangerous events that can occur. Fear has the ability to make anyone’s life stressful that can result to a drastic change in behavior and decisions, which explains why the people of Waknuk wrongly accuse blasphemies of being evil. Constant enforcement of the rules are made which leads to secretive behavior for some in order to live which is all caused by religious teachings and the norms interpretation of the bible. Fear results in the constant fear of conformity, secretive behavior, and obsession with religious teachings that preserve the conservative views of the community of Waknuk.

The Waknuk society is constantly enforcing conformity of deviations, has severe punishment if one knows any information, and does not tell the police. The reasoning for this is occurrence is out of fear of Waknuk society has towards deviations tempting the pure, as a result severe conformity to the true image of God has been developed out of a set of beliefs, which brainwashes the human mind and much worse, the human spirit. David’s Aunt Harriet even says that, “ I shall pray to god to send charity to this hideous world, and sympathy for the weak, and love for the unhappy and unfortunate I shall ask him if is indeed his will that a child shou...

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...ght up which is the explanation for their narrow minded thoughts regarding to the deviants.

To reiterate, fear links to constant fear of conformity, secretive behavior, and obsession with religious teachings that protect the conservative views of the society of Waknuk. What I have learned in The Chrysalids by John Wyndham is that fears affect perception, your perception changes according to your psychological state and it affects your behavior as well. People reflect regarding their fears all the time and as they feel that they will come upon them, they start becoming apprehensive. When an individual is afraid of something, they may experience unusual judgment that they would have never made before which all the main events that occur in The Chrysalids relate. The main thing I learned was the two powerful emotions that result our actions is fear and love.

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