The last story reviewed was ?Survivor Type’ by Stephen King, about a doctor that became shipwrecked on a desert island. More deserted than desert would be applicable for its description, as it was barely twenty yards across with only rocks on it for shade. As the story progresses the doctor is left with no water or food, and the story is told from the perspective of his journal, as he sees the events happen. The primal fear of death is told through this man’s journal, and the instinct to survive is his only outlet. As time goes on the island he attempted to catch a seagull for dinner and broke his ankle on the rocks. Now that he is immobilized there is nothing to do to try and survive, and he becomes greatly depressed and thinks of how he ended up in that situation. While his ankle festers he comes up with the idea to amputate it, since he is a doctor. Well, amputate he does, and instead of disposing of the foot, he eats it in order to survive. As one can see, the fear of death is so overwhelming in this man that he has resorted to eating his own foot in order to survive. Since he ate his foot, he really has nothing, so as time goes on he begins to amputate various other body parts all the way up until his journal becomes so garbled and unintelligible that the reader can only fear the worst for the good doctor. The fear of death, and a bad stroke of luck, was what caused the doctor’s death. If he were able to control his fear, he may have survived.
Short stories are a major player when it comes to scaring readers, some stories would have the reader looking over their shoulder to make sure the feared thing in the story is not walking up behind them to do something. Fear is easily taken out of short stories since the premise of them is to scare the reader, but the genre of Plays is a lot harder to become frightened in. Plays are live action movies, and have been going for a very long time; almost the same amount as poetry. It takes a lot to scare an audience when there are only a few actors dressed up performing something directly in front of them, but when there is a scare it tends to stick.
The first play reviewed was ?The Tempest’ by William Shakespeare and is a play about a group of people coming back from a wedding that become stranded on a vast island in small groups, without the knowledge if the others had survived. Prospero the wizard is actually in control of the entire island and he is the one who staged the shipwreck so that he may rightfully reclaim his place as Duke. As the play goes on, the characters begin to fear for the lives for the other people that were on the ship and then fear for their own safety on this uncharted island. As the story progresses, more characters are introduced such as Ariel and Caliban, Prospero’s slave. Caliban is a slave because he is afraid of Prospero’s power as a wizard since Prospero killed his mother and claimed Ariel as his own. Sebastian and Antonia turn out to fear the king’s wrath so they plot to kill him, but Ariel intervenes and saves King Alonso. Sebastian and Antonia of course come up with an elaborate cover as to why their swords were drawn, and Alonso believes them. Later in the play, Trinculo and Stephano get Caliban drunk, and he forgets Prospero’s powers and decided to try and kill him. Being drunk often keeps the brain from thinking accordingly and forgetting a fear is a bad situation indeed. Eventually, everyone finds there way to Prospero’s encampment and all of the problems are resolved. Prospero forgives Sebastian and Antonio, and is restored to his rightful place. This story played on the fear of being alone in an unfamiliar place, such as being separated from your group while in a faraway place. The other fear exploited is the fear of someone’s power, as in between Caliban and Prospero, if one is frightened of someone more powerful, there is not much to change one’s mind about not bothering them.
The next play reviewed was Arthur Miller’s ?The Crucible’ and play about the Salem witch trials and the paranoia caused by the Puritan lifestyle. The play opens with a little girl Betty struck by some malady which causes her to remain unconscious and the person looking over her fears that dark forces had caused it. After a few of the other girls in town come to see her, she sits bolt upright and begins accusing, along with the other girls, almost all the people in town of witchcraft. The fear of witches sweeps Salem as almost the entire town is arrested for fear of them being a witch or warlock. The Puritan religion has people living by strict rules, and to alleviate boredom some girls went dancing in the forest and were caught. To shift the blame away from themselves they say that witches caused them to do it. The fear of getting in trouble started the witch purging, with the fear of witchcraft fueling the flame so to speak. One of the girls that caused the witch hunt to escalate even further was Abigail, who was in love with John Proctor, whom was already married. She then accuses his wife of being a witch out of fear of losing him because she wants nothing but to be with him. Proctor then tries to save his wife from being put into prison, but the plan backfires and he ends up in prison for a very long time. Then as Act III starts it is a number of months later, and the view is focused on Proctor who is finding out what has happened in the past months. It turns out that the populace of Salem was so afraid of witches that almost every person in town was arrested except for a select few. The who are arrested are soon forced to confess, which in turn brings about their execution. Proctor is forced to confess, but refuses to sign it, and as a result is eventually executed. Fear is somewhat over exaggerated through the course of the play, but since it is based on a real event, it certainly could not be too far from the truth, which is a frightening thought in itself.
The genre of plays has some fear to it, but it can never match the fear instilled from reading a good novel. There are many scary novels around, Stephen King specializes his work on scaring the living daylights out of his readers. Novels are able to articulate the feelings of the procrastinator as well as those around them more than a short story would ever be capable of. The novels discussed here have to deal with a fear of dying, and a fear of truly living.
The first novel is 1968 by Joe Haldeman, a novel about a young man who goes to Vietnam, and returns a far different man. The novel begins as a new man to Vietnam nicknamed Spider tells about the situation there. He has currently never seen combat, and works way out in the middle of nowhere. As his company receives word of the combat becoming more intense Spider begins to fear for his safety, as well as his life. The army has a small group, including Spider, going out on frequent ?search-and-destroy’ missions, which means to kill anything that is not identified. At first no one was truly frightened of the true danger, but as they were out on one of their missions a man was shot in the groin, and everyone realized the danger that they were truly in. After Tet 1968, which was the famous Tet Offensive by the North Vietnamese Army (NVA) strategies changed and they were out in the jungle more than they were in the base. On one such outing Spider’s group was assaulted in one of the most gruesome scenes ever depicted in a novel. Spider turns to run, smacks his head on a tree, and is knocked unconscious. When he comes to, he is more afraid for his life than ever, as he sees the lone man that assaulted them that will haunt his dreams forever. He sees the NVA troop going to each body and putting a bullet in the head to be sure, and when he gets to Spider he sees that Spider is still alive. Just as he was about to kill Spider his gun jammed, and he walked off, leaving Spider to a life of misery and constant fear. After Spider was rescued he was diagnosed as a paranoid schizophrenic, which is having to control of your fear, a bad thing to happen indeed. Life for Spider became simply unbearable but eventually he learned to come to grips with his problem, and eventually tried to live a normal life. When Spider finally arrives home to see his parents, his father believes he is a homosexual because of his doctor’s report, and his mother is all but frightened of him. As Spider realizes that he is no longer wanted he moves out and tries to get a job in a doughnut shop. When he was there the first day training he gets splattered with boiling grease, and is forced into the hospital, unable to even move. Spider has feared for his life through the course of the novel, but now he fears for his very existence, he wonders if it is possible that his life could become any more unbearable. Eventually Spider heals and is released, and his parents have moved with no forwarding address, the stuff he had in his apartment was given away, and Spider is fearful that he is truly alone in the world now. Spider then takes a bus to Florida, where he gets beat up and his stuff stolen, Spider lives the rest of his days as a bum, never knowing what to do. The twist to the novel was that in the last chapter it gave the perspective of the NVA troop during that fateful day in 1968. When his gun jammed, he said to Spider ?May you live in interesting times.’, and live in interesting times Spider did, filled with constant fear, misery, and hopelessness.
The novel 1984 by George Orwell has to do with a world where truly living one’s life as one sees fit is against the law. The procrastinator, Winston Smith is living in a life that he considers pointless, and by all standards, that is exactly what it was. Life is controlled by The Party, the ruling factor in Oceania, and they maintain control with two way ?viewscreens’ in every person’s house, keeping an eye on them. As the novel starts out, Winston has begun writing a journal, a highly illegal thing in itself; not only that but he was writing bad things about the party inside of it. Just as things could not get worse, Winston meets a girl named Julia. Of course the entire relationship has to remain in secrecy because if they were found out they would be put to death. As their relationship blossoms, they can never shake the fear of being found out, the fear of death, as well as the fear of being alone in the world. Even though they took all the precautions they could, Winston and Julia were eventually caught by the Though Police and brought to the Ministry of Love, a truly frightening place. At first nothing is done to Winston, but eventually the torture inflicted on him was unimaginable. The Thought Police use psychological means for torturing their victims, and the things that these people fear. Winston is incarcerated for a number of months, and the pure horror of the place is that they cannot kill one until one truly loves The Party and Big Brother (the leader of The Party). Since Winston could not grasp the truth of things, he was tortured until near death, let recover, and tortured again. The final torture was entitled ?Room 101′, which was pure fear to anyone who even heard another person being sentenced to it. The torture was to take the person’s worst fear in the world, and use that to finally break them. Winston’s fear was rats, and this caused him to collapse like a tower of cards in a gust of wind; Winston was changed, and certainly not for the better. At the end of the novel, Winston’s fear is gone because there is nothing they can further do to him, he is to just live out his ?life’ till the day they feel it necessary to shoot him in the head and end it all. A place where the fear of living is stronger than the fear of dying is a place that is not worth existing in, it would be better to simply end it all by one’s own means.
Through the material presented and the discussion done as the material was being presented the thesis aforementioned proves entirely true. That statement was that fear is an emotion that is prevalent throughout all genres, regardless of topic or plot. This statement proves true as one looks over all of the genres. Every author, playwright, poet, and film maker proves it by what they write and show the audience. The results of this research show that fear is an emotion easily manipulated and instilled through mere words on paper of pictures on a screen. Since it is known that fear is impossible to control, it is a favorite of those writers to use to their advantage. As one looks through the different genres it becomes clear how widely used the emotion of fear is used, that all genres work in the same manner to bring about fear. A famous quote said that ?The only thing we have to fear, is fear itself.’ and that may be true to some extent, but many people are just as afraid of an object or person as they are of the atmosphere they create. Sometimes people become more afraid simply by thinking of fear, not from fearing something, but simply being afraid in general; the fear of fear itself. Those who produce these novels, plays, short stories, poems, and films know what it takes, and things are not going to change anytime soon.
Bibliography
Cited in work.
337