Fear in Different Genres By Michael J. Mizov Fear is defined as a conditionbetween anxiety and terror either natural and well-grounded or unreasoned andblind. Fear is one emotion that everyone dislikes, and it is as unavoidable asnight or day. Through the use of novels, plays, films, short stories, and poemsit becomes clear that fear is an emotion that the writer like to heighten notonly in the protagonist, but also in the reader. After reading great works bypeople such as George Orwell and Stephen King, it becomes clear that fear in themost uncontrollable emotion, quick to come, and long to last. The horror moviesof today may bring about a cheap scare, but to truly fear something is the sameas dying a thousand times over. All people have a worst fear, be it heights orducks, that an author or film maker can use to their advantage. Their goal is tomake the hairs on the back of one’s neck raise, as well as have them lookingover their shoulder as the story progresses with more twists and turns than aroller coaster. Aforementioned, the main purpose of this research is to provethat fear is an emotion that is prevalent throughout all genres, regardless oftopic or plot, and through meticulous research of all genres, the fear presentedin all shall be revealed. The first genre to be discussed will be film. Afterviewing such classics as Last of the Mohicans, The Red Badge of Courage, andBartleby, it becomes clear that the film making industry is not at a loss forinstilling fear. There are films that make one’s pulse quicken as the storybecomes more involved, or some that have one lying awake in bed at nightthinking of the frightening stuff they had just seen. The whole concept of fearin a film is not a prolonged fright, but a short lasting one, that may concludeafter the end, or in some cases, a few days afterwards. The first film that wasviewed was The Last of the Mohicans. It was a story that encompassed all theemotions, from love to fear. The first instance of fear was short-lived butstill present, it began as the opening credits finished, and three men arerunning through the forest at high speeds. The viewer begins to speculate as towhat they are running after, or more importantly, from. That instance of fearwas a letdown and also quickly forgotten, but the emotion was still presentnonetheless. A short ways into the film the viewer is introduced to an Indiannamed Magua, and through his speech and body movements it becomes noticeablethat he is concealing an ulterior motive, but the viewer can only wonder atwhat. Magua then acts as scout leading two women and a regiment of troopsthrough the woods it becomes clear that something is about to occur. As thesigns of impending action come one’s pulse quickens and one may even leanforward in the seat in anticipation. The rising fear is rewarded as a group ofIndian braves attack them from the woods and then as the battle is happening onebegins to fear for the lives of the main characters that were only recentlyintroduced. In all predictability, they survive, but for a moment the viewer wasfearing the worst. As the group proceeds to the fort which is under attack fearis of course stirred to life. Not very strongly, but like a splinter in one’smind, it is always there. Through the film the fear for the lives of the maincharacters comes into play quite often as they are involved in manylife-threatening situations and whatnot but the real heart stopped comes at theend of the film. Magua has captured the two female characters and the Mohicansare racing up the mountain after him to save them. As they approach the peak, the Mohicans catch up, and a brutal fight ensues. Magua then fights one of theMohicans one to one, and the viewer begins to think, good always beats evil.
Although not in this case, as the Mohican plunges to his death off the side ofthe mountain, the viewer is in shock, than the viewer remembers that his newlove witnessed the whole thing. The horror is too much as she is taken over byfear of having to live without him, and she too hurdles to the jagged rocksbelow, to live with her love in eternity. Such scenes rarely occur in films thatinvoke such fear, because it is a rare occurrence that the not one, but two ofthe main character die. The title then has meaning, as the father of the fullMohican and half-Mohican men truly becomes the last of his race, the last of theMohicans. The next film viewed was Bartleby, a short film based on the novel byHerman Melville. Throughout the film, there is not much hair raising fear, but amore subtle level. The kind of fear caused by this film comes into play latenights when one has trouble falling asleep. Bartleby was a normal man at first, but as the film progresses, he becomes stranger and stranger. In the world, thefear of the strange and or unknown tends the come about a lot as a result of themisunderstood. Bartleby is one such misunderstood fellow, and this in turncauses all other characters in the film to fear him, even though he has donenothing menacing. Bartleby is a different kind of fear, and it is shown throughthe given examples or by simply picturing someone that looks normal, but youcannot quite grasp what they are thinking. Another film viewed was The Lottery, the main aspect of fear in that film was simply the fear of death. There are afew underlying fears that come forth such as the fear of change. The people oftown have been doing the lottery more than likely since it was founded in orderto reap a good harvest in the fall. The premise of the lottery is to randomlypick someone from within the populace, and stone them to death so that theharvest will be bountiful. An old man brings up that a nearby town has abandonedthe lottery, and everyone in town agrees that this was a foolhardy gesture, andthey are only in for ruin; those statements brought to light the fact that theycould not give up the lottery, even if they had wanted to. As time passeseventually all families are called and the family with the black dot has to takea second lottery to see which one of them would be killed. The woman whoreceives the black dot shows her fear of death by making such allegations as itwas a mistake, or the lottery is worthless, but to no avail, she is promptlykilled because the fear of the townspeople of dealing with a bad harvestovertakes the fear of one doomed woman. The Red Badge of Courage was thanreviewed and the emotion of fear is what drives the story along. Henry Fleminghad recently joined the army and now his battalion was going into battle for thefirst time. Henry is scared out of his wits by the course of action presented tohim, and looks to his friends for comfort, but the all claim that they areunafraid. The viewer begins to worry about Henry, because for all they know hemay not survive the battle, or he could be badly wounded. Henry eventuallygathers his courage and proceeds into the raging battle of the Civil War. Uponseeing his comrades killed or wounded next to him he makes a mad dash for thewoods, in order to save his own skin; this action goes unnoticed by hissuperiors and they congratulate him on being so brave when he finally doesreturn. While walking back to camp after the battle Henry spies one of his closefriends wounded and lying in the road, he goes over to help him, and his friendasks him to make sure he does not get run over when he passes. Henry carries himover to a field where he soon dies, and Henry is devastated by this. Henry nolonger is afraid, he is full of rage that he was too afraid to stand by hisfriends who remained steadfast and died in the line of duty. The viewer thenbegins to fear for Henry’s life even more so for the fact that now he would beon a rampage into the next battle, because everyone knows that foolhardysoldiers have even less of a chance than those trying to be heros. Henry’sfriends then confide in him that they had the most fear in battle than in theirentire lives, and this fact holds true for the real world as well. Theycongratulate Henry on being so brave while most of then were cowards, and thisprompts Henry to be guilty instead of afraid, and he feels that it is up to himto win the upcoming battle. In the next battle Henry performed bravely but thenonce the battle is over more Union soldiers come over the hill to tell them thatthe real battle was over there, not here. This of course sets all the troops onedge with fear for their lives, because if what they had just lived through wasnot the battle, then what could real war be like? That fact would remain amystery for Henry, and the rest of his battalion, because they would all be tooafraid to go over the next hill. The fear for one’s life is present almost everyday, be it in a war, or walking down the street to buy a newspaper. The lastfilm reviewed was based on a short story entitled Dr. Heidegger’s Experiment andit was about the fear of aging and losing one’s looks. The people that are inthe opening scene are all old, withered people that were once young and robust, and the viewer is able to assume that they do not like it one bit. The actualexperiment presented in this film is with an elixir to reverse the agingprocess, the Dr. first shows how it works on an old rose, long dead, saved formhis wedding day. It comes back to life almost instantly and the four old peopleare amazed, and all want to try the amazing elixir. These people do not taketime to think of the consequences of such a miracle; they are all too afraid oftheir age and impending death to think of such things. The viewer has a littletwinge of fear for these people because it is quite predictable how it will turnout in the end for these unfortunate souls. They grow young again, and end upfighting over the old woman that had turned beautiful again. They squander theshort time they have to be young as the elixir only last for a few minutes andin their fighting they had knocked over what remained of the elixir. Theold-turned young-old again character’s worst fear became quite noticeable in theclosing scene as they all knelt on the ground around where the last of themiracle elixir spilled. The genre of film has many, many examples of fearthroughout the many movies made over time. There are many different types offear presented, as shown through the examples given; the fear of losing a love, a life, change, or one’s looks. Fear is a terrible emotion to experience, andfilm has only been around for almost a hundred years. Poetry on the other handhas been playing with our fears since the beginning of recorded time. The genreof poetry has had quite a jump on film, and contains just as much fear throughverse as shown in a horror movie. The first poem read was Lenore’ by EdgarAllen Poe, a story about a lost love and trying to struggle on in the speaker’sown life. The speaker mentions that all of her friends were simply getting closethe her for the money she owned, while the speaker held her as his reason forexistence. The fear of losing a loved one that special is shown through theverse of Poe’s speaker in this poem. One of the worst fears is having to liveout the rest of one’s life without the only person that brought meaning into it, and it is a deep fear that lies in the hearts of everyone. When the speaker sawthe death upon her eyes, his world is crashing down around him; life becomesmeaningless. The speaker then tries to find some sort of memorial for Lenore, but alas, nothing on this earth is worthy enough for her memory. Edgar Allen Poewas a master of fear and the macabre, this poem was one type of fear he wascapable of expressing very strongly, and a different type is present in the nextpoem by him. The poem The Haunted Palace’ also by Poe presents the fear ofthe unknown to the reader. As the poem starts there was once a glorious palacesitting in the middle of a very prosperous and great land. Travelers through thevalley saw the spirits of happiness dancing in the windows at night, and thisalways comforted them as they passed. Then, one fateful day, evil began toassail the castle and the valley, all but destroying it as the wickedness passedthrough. The king was killed and the entire kingdom was collapsing without himand the happy times became but a dim memory in the elderly’s minds. Nowtravelers fear going through the valley because of the evil spirits now dancingaround inside the once great palace, while lies decimated and useless. Thepeople that still live in the kingdom fear going near the palace because of theevil the vibrates from the very foundation of it. The people in the kingdom maylaugh, but they smile no more. That type of fear is the fear of evil, and theunknown, the people have no idea what horrors await them inside the palace, andthey are in no hurry to find out. Poe was definitely a master of fear, andanother person the brings about fear through novel writing wrote a poem for achange, and will be discussed next. The poem For Owen’ by Stephen King is avery vague poem, but the fear inside of it begins to surface after numerousreadings of it. The fear presented in this poem is the fear of those that aredifferent, as two young men are walking down the street to school, they begin todiscuss the other schools around. There is one dressed in army fatigues and theother’s dress is not known, but as they make fun of the other kids, the one inthe fatigues makes fun of fat kids; which reveals the fact that the other childis fat. The poem takes a drastic turn from there, as it delves into the mind ofthe fat child, and he thinks of the horrible things he could tell the childwearing the army fatigues. How badly he is treated, how the fat kids can’t reachdown to tie their own shoes, and how he has died a thousand deaths already. Thispoem presents the fear of those that are different, little children areespecially fearful of the unknown. Those children’s only defense to suchoverwhelming fear is to put down or make fun of those that are different fromthem. There are thousands upon thousands of poems that convey the emotion offear quite well. Poems may seem vague or hard to understand at first, butviewing them between the lines brings out the true emotions that the poet orspeaker is trying to bring about. Sometimes reading about scary things is enoughto get one going, poetry is a good example of such, but the short story genre iscertainly the harbinger of fear. Some short stories’ sole purpose is the makethe reader fear for their very lives from just a short plot and some details inwhich everything is wrapped up in twenty or thirty pages. The short story is byfar the easiest of the genres to examine because of such abundant resources. Thefirst short story that was reviewed was Here There Be Tygers by Stephen King itwas a story about a little boy who was afraid to go to the bathroom. Charles, the protagonist, was in Miss Bird’s class, and she was the meanest teacher inthe whole school in his opinion. In the middle of class one day Charles had touse the bathroom, but because he feared Miss Bird, and the word bathroom insteadof basement, he tried to play it all off. Charles having a fear of his teacherwould be a common thing in most small children, but a fear of going to thebathroom is a very strange fear indeed. Charles soon gets noticed by Miss Birdand she forces him to leave class and go to the bathroom. When he arrived at thebathroom and went in, he turned the corner and saw a large tiger, lying in waitfor someone to come in. He had no idea how it got there but he knows that it isthere to eat him. Charles runs for his life and the reader begins to wonder ifthe tiger is a figment of his imagination created by his fear of the bathroom, or is there a real tiger escaped from the local zoo hiding in there? Afterstanding around a few minutes Kenny, another boy from class comes to see whathappened to Charles, and he finds Charles standing outside the bathroom in fear.
Kenny laughs at Charles and tries to drag him in, but Charles breaks free andKenny goes in. There is a scream as the tiger devours Kenny and Charles cringesoutside the bathroom. Soon after that incident Miss Bird comes by to see whathappened to the two boys, and she goes right into the bathroom and is devouredas well. Charles then noticed that the tiger was satiated and he proceeds to usethe bathroom, and heads back to class. The fear in this story may also be a fearof growing up. Charles sounds to be in about first grade and is getting used toacting more mature and being a responsible young man. The fact that Miss Birdmade him say bathroom instead of basement is something that may have playedtricks on Charles’ mind, and maybe the tiger was his fear come out into theopen, and devouring Miss Bird to show Charles could be any way he wanted. Thenext story, also by Stephen King, is the short story Gramma’ about anotheryoung boy that is alone for the first time with his extremely old, dying gramma’.
The boy named George had moved in with his grandmother with his mother and olderbrother when he was six to take care of her in her declining years, and Georgehas been afraid of her since day one. Normally, grandparents are warm lovingpeople, but this grandmother is old, mean, and decrepit, and this frightensGeorge immensely. As George sits alone while his mother goes to the hospital tosee his big brother Buddy who broke his leg, he begins to recall past instanceswhere his grandmother particularly frightened him. George begins to work himselfup as the evening progresses and becomes frightened for his life as duskapproaches. George had never been alone for that long, or at all in fact, withhis grandmother. George begins recalling strange things that his grandmother wasinvolved in a long time ago, things he overheard in his mother’s conversationswith relatives and friends. Then, as a strong storm began approaching the littlehouse, George’s grandmother up and died. George then thought he would remaincalm and call for help, but the phone’s were out, then he began to get extremelyfrightened. As it turns out, George’s grandmother had made a deal with the devila long time ago, and he in turn gave her books of spells which made her a witchof sorts. George, who thought his grandmother was dead, saw her rise up andstart going after him. Much later, when George’s mother came home, George wascalmly sitting at the kitchen table and he told her that his grandmother haddied. The story ends with a twist, as the narrator mentioned that George’smother would be curious when he develops a taste for herbal tea. That was afrightening story with a twist, as most people who have read this were lookingover their shoulders as they got towards the end. A good story is one that isable to cause the reader to experience the same emotions as the protagonist, andthat story certainly did a good job at it. The next story reviewed had a sort ofprimal fear expressed through it. The last story reviewed was Survivor Type’by Stephen King, about a doctor that became shipwrecked on a desert island. Moredeserted than desert would be applicable for its description, as it was barelytwenty yards across with only rocks on it for shade. As the story progresses thedoctor is left with no water or food, and the story is told from the perspectiveof his journal, as he sees the events happen. The primal fear of death is toldthrough this man’s journal, and the instinct to survive is his only outlet. Astime goes on the island he attempted to catch a seagull for dinner and broke hisankle on the rocks. Now that he is immobilized there is nothing to do to try andsurvive, and he becomes greatly depressed and thinks of how he ended up in thatsituation. 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 thefoot, he eats it in order to survive. As one can see, the fear of death is sooverwhelming in this man that he has resorted to eating his own foot in order tosurvive. Since he ate his foot, he really has nothing, so as time goes on hebegins to amputate various other body parts all the way up until his journalbecomes so garbled and unintelligible that the reader can only fear the worstfor the good doctor. The fear of death, and a bad stroke of luck, was whatcaused the doctor’s death. If he were able to control his fear, he may havesurvived. 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 thefeared thing in the story is not walking up behind them to do something. Fear iseasily taken out of short stories since the premise of them is to scare thereader, but the genre of Plays is a lot harder to become frightened in. Playsare live action movies, and have been going for a very long time; almost thesame amount as poetry. It takes a lot to scare an audience when there are only afew actors dressed up performing something directly in front of them, but whenthere 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 awedding that become stranded on a vast island in small groups, without theknowledge if the others had survived. Prospero the wizard is actually in controlof the entire island and he is the one who staged the shipwreck so that he mayrightfully reclaim his place as Duke. As the play goes on, the characters beginto fear for the lives for the other people that were on the ship and then fearfor their own safety on this uncharted island. As the story progresses, morecharacters are introduced such as Ariel and Caliban, Prospero’s slave. Calibanis a slave because he is afraid of Prospero’s power as a wizard since Prosperokilled his mother and claimed Ariel as his own. Sebastian and Antonia turn outto fear the king’s wrath so they plot to kill him, but Ariel intervenes andsaves King Alonso. Sebastian and Antonia of course come up with an elaboratecover as to why their swords were drawn, and Alonso believes them. Later in theplay, Trinculo and Stephano get Caliban drunk, and he forgets Prospero’s powersand decided to try and kill him. Being drunk often keeps the brain from thinkingaccordingly and forgetting a fear is a bad situation indeed. Eventually, everyone finds there way to Prospero’s encampment and all of the problems areresolved. Prospero forgives Sebastian and Antonio, and is restored to hisrightful place. This story played on the fear of being alone in an unfamiliarplace, such as being separated from your group while in a faraway place. Theother fear exploited is the fear of someone’s power, as in between Caliban andProspero, if one is frightened of someone more powerful, there is not much tochange one’s mind about not bothering them. The next play reviewed was ArthurMiller’s The Crucible’ and play about the Salem witch trials and the paranoiacaused by the Puritan lifestyle. The play opens with a little girl Betty struckby some malady which causes her to remain unconscious and the person lookingover her fears that dark forces had caused it. After a few of the other girls intown come to see her, she sits bolt upright and begins accusing, along with theother girls, almost all the people in town of witchcraft. The fear of witchessweeps Salem as almost the entire town is arrested for fear of them being awitch or warlock. The Puritan religion has people living by strict rules, and toalleviate boredom some girls went dancing in the forest and were caught. Toshift 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 ofwitchcraft fueling the flame so to speak. One of the girls that caused the witchhunt 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 fearof losing him because she wants nothing but to be with him. Proctor then triesto save his wife from being put into prison, but the plan backfires and he endsup in prison for a very long time. Then as Act III starts it is a number ofmonths later, and the view is focused on Proctor who is finding out what hashappened in the past months. It turns out that the populace of Salem was soafraid of witches that almost every person in town was arrested except for aselect few. The who are arrested are soon forced to confess, which in turnbrings about their execution. Proctor is forced to confess, but refuses to signit, and as a result is eventually executed. Fear is somewhat over exaggeratedthrough the course of the play, but since it is based on a real event, itcertainly could not be too far from the truth, which is a frightening thought initself. The genre of plays has some fear to it, but it can never match the fearinstilled from reading a good novel. There are many scary novels around, StephenKing specializes his work on scaring the living daylights out of his readers.
Novels are able to articulate the feelings of the procrastinator as well asthose around them more than a short story would ever be capable of. The novelsdiscussed 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 toVietnam, and returns a far different man. The novel begins as a new man toVietnam nicknamed Spider tells about the situation there. He has currently neverseen combat, and works way out in the middle of nowhere. As his company receivesword 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 onfrequent search-and-destroy’ missions, which means to kill anything that isnot identified. At first no one was truly frightened of the true danger, but asthey were out on one of their missions a man was shot in the groin, and everyonerealized the danger that they were truly in. After Tet 1968, which was thefamous Tet Offensive by the North Vietnamese Army (NVA) strategies changed andthey were out in the jungle more than they were in the base. On one such outingSpider’s group was assaulted in one of the most gruesome scenes ever depicted ina novel. Spider turns to run, smacks his head on a tree, and is knockedunconscious. When he comes to, he is more afraid for his life than ever, as hesees the lone man that assaulted them that will haunt his dreams forever. Hesees the NVA troop going to each body and putting a bullet in the head to besure, and when he gets to Spider he sees that Spider is still alive. Just as hewas about to kill Spider his gun jammed, and he walked off, leaving Spider to alife of misery and constant fear. After Spider was rescued he was diagnosed as aparanoid schizophrenic, which is having to control of your fear, a bad thing tohappen indeed. Life for Spider became simply unbearable but eventually helearned to come to grips with his problem, and eventually tried to live a normallife. When Spider finally arrives home to see his parents, his father believeshe is a homosexual because of his doctor’s report, and his mother is all butfrightened of him. As Spider realizes that he is no longer wanted he moves outand tries to get a job in a doughnut shop. When he was there the first daytraining he gets splattered with boiling grease, and is forced into thehospital, unable to even move. Spider has feared for his life through the courseof the novel, but now he fears for his very existence, he wonders if it ispossible that his life could become any more unbearable. Eventually Spider healsand is released, and his parents have moved with no forwarding address, thestuff he had in his apartment was given away, and Spider is fearful that he istruly alone in the world now. Spider then takes a bus to Florida, where he getsbeat up and his stuff stolen, Spider lives the rest of his days as a bum, neverknowing what to do. The twist to the novel was that in the last chapter it gavethe perspective of the NVA troop during that fateful day in 1968. When his gunjammed, he said to Spider May you live in interesting times.’, and live ininteresting times Spider did, filled with constant fear, misery, andhopelessness. The novel 1984 by George Orwell has to do with a world where trulyliving 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 allstandards, that is exactly what it was. Life is controlled by The Party, theruling 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 onlythat but he was writing bad things about the party inside of it. Just as thingscould not get worse, Winston meets a girl named Julia. Of course the entirerelationship has to remain in secrecy because if they were found out they wouldbe put to death. As their relationship blossoms, they can never shake the fearof being found out, the fear of death, as well as the fear of being alone in theworld. Even though they took all the precautions they could, Winston and Juliawere 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 eventuallythe torture inflicted on him was unimaginable. The Thought Police usepsychological means for torturing their victims, and the things that thesepeople fear. Winston is incarcerated for a number of months, and the pure horrorof the place is that they cannot kill one until one truly loves The Party andBig Brother (the leader of The Party). Since Winston could not grasp the truthof 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 whoeven heard another person being sentenced to it. The torture was to take theperson’s worst fear in the world, and use that to finally break them. Winston’sfear was rats, and this caused him to collapse like a tower of cards in a gustof wind; Winston was changed, and certainly not for the better. At the end ofthe novel, Winston’s fear is gone because there is nothing they can further doto him, he is to just live out his life’ till the day they feel it necessaryto shoot him in the head and end it all. A place where the fear of living isstronger than the fear of dying is a place that is not worth existing in, itwould be better to simply end it all by one’s own means. Through the materialpresented and the discussion done as the material was being presented the thesisaforementioned proves entirely true. That statement was that fear is an emotionthat is prevalent throughout all genres, regardless of topic or plot. Thisstatement 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 theaudience. The results of this research show that fear is an emotion easilymanipulated 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 thosewriters to use to their advantage. As one looks through the different genres itbecomes clear how widely used the emotion of fear is used, that all genres workin the same manner to bring about fear. A famous quote said that The onlything we have to fear, is fear itself.’ and that may be true to some extent, butmany people are just as afraid of an object or person as they are of theatmosphere they create. Sometimes people become more afraid simply by thinkingof fear, not from fearing something, but simply being afraid in general; thefear 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 anytimesoon.
