In the short story “Safe” by Cherylene Lee reveals the narrator’s divulgence of her experience with “true danger”. During the reading, we find that she and her brother live with fearfully careful parents while, ironically, the brother dives from great heights for a living after engulfing his body in flames. He is the narrator’s first example of peril. Paragraph six especially exemplifies the naivety of our narrator, clarifies her misunderstandings of danger, and establishes her warped expectations of consequence. She finds revelation in this example and learns from her brother instead of being conditioned to fear the future. Through this epiphany she distinguishes between the ways her parents and brother view danger, and how she now perceives
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The only way that she understands what fear is like is through specified-to-their-particular-environment reactions from two insecure adults whose fear and self-doubt both inspire each other in a detrimentally cyclical process. Her parents want her to understand how to recognize a lack of safety, but as the daughter states, “I have never been in danger, never known a need for risk” (206). Not only has she never been able to handle a dangerous situation, but also she has never even felt what risk is like in the first place. Her parents think that they are teaching her well, but what they are doing, in truth, is preventing her from gaining necessary life …show more content…
She may even understand the necessity of it, or view it as a stepping-stone to positivity. In the final paragraph she sheds new light on her view of his flame diving, describing how he is a phoenix, rising from the ashes of his own flame, leaving behind the jump as a new man, a man who can face danger and live. The narrator notes that because he lived, everyone around him feels safe because he relieves their worry. Through danger he changes them, and himself for the better (214). She notes that “Everything is normal” (214) because this is the clockwork of life, danger is supposed to happen, and growth comes from experiencing
The only way that she understands what fear is like is through specified-to-their-particular-environment reactions from two insecure adults whose fear and self-doubt both inspire each other in a detrimentally cyclical process. Her parents want her to understand how to recognize a lack of safety, but as the daughter states, “I have never been in danger, never known a need for risk” (206). Not only has she never been able to handle a dangerous situation, but also she has never even felt what risk is like in the first place. Her parents think that they are teaching her well, but what they are doing, in truth, is preventing her from gaining necessary life …show more content…
She may even understand the necessity of it, or view it as a stepping-stone to positivity. In the final paragraph she sheds new light on her view of his flame diving, describing how he is a phoenix, rising from the ashes of his own flame, leaving behind the jump as a new man, a man who can face danger and live. The narrator notes that because he lived, everyone around him feels safe because he relieves their worry. Through danger he changes them, and himself for the better (214). She notes that “Everything is normal” (214) because this is the clockwork of life, danger is supposed to happen, and growth comes from experiencing