The Boy Who Went Forth To Learn What Fear Was Analysis

The Boy Who Went Forth to Learn What Fear Was: Analysis
The story of “The Boy Who Went Forth to Learn What Fear Was” fits a common structure in fairy tales – it is a coming-of-age story, a story that starts with a child that, by the end of the story, becomes an adult. It follows the tale of an ignorant younger brother, whose only skill he wants to learn is how to get “the creeps.” He goes through three trials filled with death and supernatural beings, which eventually earns him a bride and gold. In the end, he learns “the creeps” when a maid pours a bucket of water and fish on him. Interestingly, this story has two major lines of conflict – one that is external (the horrifying things happening in the world), which results in material gains, …show more content…
Then, a closer look at the different sources of fear and how they relate to society will allow us to understand that the story is in fact arguing for a delicate balance between integrating into society and preserving your own agency.
Let us first examine the first external line of conflict – that of the haunted castle with hidden treasures – through the lens of Warner and Shavit. Warner focuses on the gap between the center and the marginalized, but in particular the power of the margin that allows you to see different perspectives and nudge the center into the desired direction. Meanwhile, Shavit focuses on the concept of childhood – about our objective on successfully integrating children or ourselves into adult society, whether through education or other means. The margin/center dynamic in this first part of the story centers around the main character, who has been rejected since birth by his brother (“Dear Lord, my brother’s really a dumbbell!”), his father (“You’re just a hopeless case.”), and essentially everyone else (“He’ll always be a burden to his father.”). This marginalization came from his stupid-ness and lack of ability to “learn nor …show more content…
We can take a moment to look at some of the physical spaces in the trials – the bell tower and the gallows. The bell tower is a part of the church, and religion is often built on fear – with all the stories of hell, afterlife, and eternal suffering, believing is the only closest thing to escape and/or lessening of those undesirable situations in the afterlife. The hanged people at the gallows are a result of law – punishment for people who did something wrong, thus used to warn other people against the powers of the law so they will follow out of fear. Both religion and federal laws are institutional structures put in place for adults to “behave” through the power of symbolic fear. So perhaps this is why symbolic fear matters – to successfully learn the rules of adulthood, you need to obey the rules of the institutions out of fear. On the other hand, the physical fear of cold fish and water do not have these embedded social implications. They only contribute to integration into society on a more surface level – by stating that you have now learned the “creeps,” you are no longer an outlier that fears