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Cause and effects of fear in our society essay
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In John Wyndham’s novel The Chrysalids many of the characters are motivated by fear. For instance, Joseph Strorm has a great fear of God and of the unknown. He is a firm believer of what is right and what is wrong. His fears have motivated him to capture, kill or banish the blasphemies to ‘the Fringes’. Joseph also sent Aunt Harriet away just because her baby had a slight deviation. He called it a ‘mutant’, which caused Aunt Harriet to later kill herself. Old Jacob has a fear of God and change. He is so afraid that God will send another Tribulation so he does anything to avoid it. He believes that blasphemies should still be burned. The children play a big part in shaping the theme of fear together in The Chrysalids. The children know they
The Dangers of Fear Irish Playwright, George Bernard Shaw, once said, “The worst sin toward our fellow creatures is not to hate them, but to be indifferent to them; that's the essence of inhumanity.” Inhumanity is mankind’s worst attribute. Every so often, ordinary humans are driven to the point where they have no choice but to think of themselves. One of the most famous examples used today is the Holocaust. Elie Wiesel’s memoir Night demonstrates how fear is a debilitating force that causes people to lose sight of who they once were.
Another form of fear that is later introduced is the concept of the boys humanity slowly becoming strayed. In the novel there is a great amount of foreshadowing towards this topic. An example coul...
In every society, throughout all of time fear is present. It is a an evolutionary instinct thought to have kept us alive, throughout the darkest moments in human history. However as time has progressed fear has had an unintended consequences on society, including the suffusion of incomprehension. During the Salem Witch Trials and Cold War a large sense of fear overcame these societies causing tragedy and misinformation to become commonplace. It is in these societies that it is clear that fear is needed to continue a trend of ignorance. Although bias is thought to be essential to injustice, fear is crucial to the perpetuation of ignorance because it blinds reason, suppresses the truth and creates injustice.
The idea of fear is a fairly simple concept, yet it carries the power to consume and control lives. Fears have stemmed from an inadvertent psychological response to situations deemed threating to one’s personal safety, but have evolved into a complex web of often illogical misconceptions which are able to cloud a person’s judgment and result in situations often worse than originally intended. Fears can be hard to quell, but it has been shown the best way to overcome fears is often to face them, as author James Baldwin asserted when he wrote, “To defend oneself against fear is simply to insure that one will, one day, be conquered by it; fears must be faced.” Baldwin makes strongly qualified statement, and his idea fears must be faced to ensure one is not conquered by them is evident frequently, and is especially visible in Nathaniel Hawthorne’s classic novel, The Scarlet Letter. In The Scarlet Letter, two characters are placed in situations in which they are directly confronted with their fears, but react much differently, resulting in contrastingly different consequences. Baldwin’s assertion is qualified by the journeys of Hester Prynne and the Reverend Dimmesdale in The Scarlet Letter, who show how facing one’s fears can have a positive outcome while defending oneself from their fears can have detrimental consequences.
Monsters are the physical embodiment of fear. Monsters are the physical embodiment due to a wide variety of reasons. The most important being: Monsters’ apparent invulnerability/incredible strength, represent the bad part of society, most often look ugly, represent evil/nightmares itself, are intelligent, and some deviate from the norms are the reasons why monsters are the physical embodiment of fear. Monsters’ incredible characteristics are what strike fear into the hearts of others. In many myths, monsters are a weakness to societies. For instance, the heroes of Rome fight these monsters in order to overcome them which is the symbolic overcoming of weakness by the community. The fear monsters represent is primarily human fear as monsters are generally on good terms with animals and human fear is far deeper than animal fear.
Fear is an unexplainable feeling that is caused by a certain someone or something. Fear plays a significant role in the novel We Have Always Lived in The Castle. With tiny details she gnaws away at things that seem unimportant until the ending of the book. As Shirley Jackson first introduces Merricat, making the reader love this strange, broken girl, then revealing her true nature, one will see how everyone fears Merricat. Constance’s fear of Merricat, the fear that the villagers have for the Blackwoods, and Merricats fear of being without Constance, shows it is evident that fear caused all the major issues in this book.
When writing a story that is meant to scare the reader, authors use a variety of different literary elements to intensify fear. This is apparent in the stories “The Fall of the House of Usher,” “beware: do not read this poem,” and “House Taken Over”. It is shown through transformation in the character, setting, and sometimes even the story or poem itself, adding to the scariness that the reader feels when reading it. While there are some examples of transformation not being scary or not playing a role in stories meant to scare us, transformation plays a crucial role in making the reader of these stories scared.
The boys in the book, The Lord of the Flies, are controlled by their fear of the beast. This fear is not of the beast itself, but of the unknown. It comes from not knowing whether or not a beast exists.
Fear is a potent emotional response developed by the intrinsic need to learn in order for one to better their means of self-preservation. Though often overlooked, fear is a mental construct which presents great importance in understanding an individual’s thoughts and mannerisms. Children can help scientists to better recognize how these fears emerge. The early years of life can be considered the most daunting; everything in the environment surrounding a child is fairly new, strange, and unfamiliar. In the psychological community, it is widely accepted that fears are determined from two main constituents: biological and environmental factors. Both factors play an essential role in defining fear as well as the determination of what a child may
Fear brings forth a certain atmosphere which compels us to act upon it. The era in which the book was published allows us to see how common these fears were. Shirley Jackson's The Haunting of Hill House is an excellent portrayal of how fear controls the human mind by using the characters as examples. In the book Eleanor, Theodora, Luke, and Dr. Montague have all been influenced by fear in the story, whether it be the fear of love, the unknown, family, rejection, expression, or loneliness. These different types of fear plagued their minds causing their actions to reflect upon them. Jackson explores the theme of fear in The Haunting of Hill House by creating a cast of characters that in turn are manipulated by the inner workings of their minds and the
The fear being incited by minor characters like the boy with the mulberry birthmark that speaks of “the beastie, A snake like thing. Ever so big” (34) that could hurt them and poses threats to their survival, strikes fear in their hearts, though it has not been seen in detail. The fear felt by each individual is increasing by the fear surrounding them. The little ’uns who nudge the other boy forwards are already afraid and their fear escalates from the threat. Fear is generated not just from the hypothetical beast but from the distraction where they can start off having a constructive, rational assembly on what has to change and can alter into a vote on whether or not ghosts exist. Ralph begins this assembly with a “Not for fun” (84) atmosphere and everything is fine until “people started getting frightened” (88) o...
Fear from death, from becoming an Undead and feasting on your loved ones was definitely a big fear in the book and the Undead refers to the morally ill people in society where Stoker messages not to be heartless and morally ill throughout your life or you will turn into a living Undead. Lucy’s acts during her life with being engaged with 3 men was not at all acceptable in Victorian Society and was considered almost a crime to be an adulteress for the females. Fear from turning into evil from these acts can be seen in the book’s main theme.
In William Golding’s novel, Lord of the Flies, and Kendra Cherry’s article, “The Milgram Obedience Experiment”, the comparable fear factor, and naive mindset of individuals put under dire circumstances leads to the corruption of society and rise of evil in humans. Fear factors are an influential resource, and useful tactic leaders use to instil dominant power in their citizens, if this power is abused, evil and chaos occurs. For example, in Lord of the Flies, when Samneric get captured by Jack, Jack terrorizes them, snapping, “What d’you mean coming here with spears? What d’you mean by not joining my tribe?” the twins try to escape but fear takes over their morals and they, “...lay looking up in quiet terror” (Golding 182). As Jack threatens
The paper compares two short stories (Poe’s “the fall of The House of Usher” and Perkins-Gillman’s “the Yellow Wallpaper”), in order to develop arguments about the relationship between characters’ fears and the main theme of each story. In the two short stories, the characters are suffering from various forms of fear under different circumstances. Such fears include fear of fear, fear of death, fear of other people, fear of isolation, fear of punishment, and fear of loss of reputation. Such different forms of fears can assist readers in understanding the motives of the characters.
Many people have irrational fears like the fear of dots or the fear of fears, but the truth lies in the rational fears like the fear of abandonment, or the fear of failure and the fear that is discussed in the text Oedipus the King, the fear of losing loved ones. After the death of his spouse and mother, Jocasta, Oedipus decided for his actions he must pay the ultimate price by exiling himself as a result of him killing the king: