Fear of the Dark Essay

darkness is only the absence of light. However, many see the dark as an important symbol for evil in both life and literature. For some characters, the darkness is a place they can be free from social inhibitions and the behaviors. Darkness is also a symbol for the darker side of human nature. Many people have some level of apprehension in situations with darkness because of the ambiguity and naivety it makes them feel. When a setting is dark, the mood of a story is suspenseful and creepy to…

Bronte uses a wide variety of language features in order to create a suspenseful and tense scene. Firstly, the very name of this dreaded 'red room' sounds dark and evil in itself. Images of blood, haunted houses and ghosts instantly flood my mind when I think of it. After researching the physiological implications of the colour red, I found some important attributes include: strength, basic survival, aggression and strain[1]. This could suggest that there had been a struggle before Mr Reed's…

of these gothic style stories. They all clearly portray the sinful nature of mankind and the wicked each person has within them. The “Fall of the House of Usher” is unique in a way because of the haunted house feeling Poe gives. Though it deals with fear and spiritual entities, the lay out Poe describes so vividly separates this horror story from the rest. “Young Goodman Brown” and “The Minister’s Black Veil” are the most similar due to the corresponding theme of mystery, as well as humankind’s…

Dead Until Dark Dead Until Dark, a fantasy, mystery novel by Charlaine Harris, looks at changes in the structure of society as a point of crisis to explore identities of violence and sexual deviance, using the vampire as the abject or other that, ultimately, reflects the self. The society depicted in Dead Until Dark finds itself in crisis due to the revelation that vampires exist and want to become a visible part of the community. However, vampires must deal with abjection as they enter society:…

“There are three things all wise men fear: the sea in storm, a night with no moon, and the anger of a gentle man.” This quote by Patrick Rothfuss shows exactly what can be expected of fear. It is unpredictable, dark, and startling. In this way, fear is funny; it gives people different emotions in different situations. Fear is worry. It throws people into different situations, waiting for the reaction of worrisome. It sits in the waiting room at the doctor’s office patiently waiting to hear the…

We all have a dark side. Whether we embrace it or not, however, is another matter. In the case of Piscine Militor Patel or Pi he had no choice but to embrace his darkness in order to survive. The author Yann Martel has written a fictional story that is laced with truth in regards to overcoming Pi’s inner demon in the form of a Bengal tiger. Pi’s own inner tiger is Richard Parker. It is Richard Parker that teaches him to embrace his dark side, silence his childish fears and how to beat all odds…

enough of them to form a lasting impression and for a while, a lasting fear. Peer pressure led me to the dark side a few times with movies like “Rosemary’s Baby” and “Psycho.” Unlike some of my friends, I also do not like to be scared. Once friends learn that one of their own is a “scaredy cat” they (boys) like to jump from behind bushes or dart around buildings to scare the living daylights out of someone like me. The element of fear that most people find when they ride roller coasters or dive…

In Goodnight Moon, Tatar uses objects that are familiar to kids to provide a “protected precinct” for the readers, and more importantly, through them Tatar endorses connectivity through repetition, doubling and mirroring, introduces the element of the vertiginous. The framed portraits of the cow and three bears serve to introduce fantasy into ordinary life by taking the readers into the exterior space and back to the interior space. Tatar described a lot of paired objects. For example, socks are…

meets Clarisse at the beginning of the novel, Bradbury states, “the dark eyes were so fixed to the world that no move escaped them. Her dress was white and it whispered.” (Bradbury, Fahrenheit 451 5). Montag is the dark eyes Bradbury talks about and Clarisse is the girl in the white dress. Darkness is usually described as a bad trait and white generally symbolizes purity and goodness. In Something Wicked This Way Comes, the light and dark theme is shown through the characters and setting.…

“How Innocence Shapes Lord of the Flies” Two major themes of the novel The Lord of the Flues are fear and the loss of innocence. These two themes are prevalent through the entirety of the novel because the children on the island are exactly what they are: children. They are too young, scared, and innocent to know any better. With the lack of maturity and guidance from an adult, the older kids of the island, or the “bigguns,” begin to spiral out of control. Along with that, the youngest kids…