Fear In Robert Plutchik's Wheel Of Emotions

Story of Slavery or Misconception Through Fear According to Robert Plutchik’s Wheel of Emotions there are eight basic emotions that the human body can show. These emotions are joy, sadness, trust, disgust, anticipation, surprise, anger, and fear. (Wilkins, Quora.com) One these basic emotions shows more of a presence in the Octavia Butler’s short story Bloodchild than any other. This basic emotion would be fear but not in the way most of us would think of it in a literary work. This is due to the fact that it is not only the characters within Bloodchild that are experiencing the fear but also the reader. Within Bloodchild there are many things that would make the reader feel apprehensive, the lowest level of fear according to Plutchik’s Wheel of Emotions, but there are also some occurrences that are described by the characters that will make the reader feel terror, the highest level of fear on Plutchik’s Wheel of Emotions. These various …show more content…
This can be shown by the creation of nuclear missiles during the second world war, in our own society. This fear also influences our view of short stories and novels as shown by Octavia Butler’s Bloodchild using fears such as arachnophobia, and xenophobia to bring out the fear of the reader. This fear made readers misconceive the theme of Bloodchild to be a slavery story but instead this story is that of an interdependence relationship between the T’lic and the humans. This interdependence is shown by the T’lic relying on humans for reproduction in order to carry on their species while they give in return safety from the animals on the planet, medicine in the form of eggs, and a longer life span, but the audience’s fears act on this to make us not want to believe it. If these fears influence our outlook on a short story one must ask what else does it influence on a daily basis, but this a question for another