Fear, a very Powerful Thing

Author’s Note:  This is a theme analysis to The Always War by Margaret Peterson Haddix.  There is one theme that really stood out to me; and that is fear.  Look for examples of this theme in the story.  I am going to work on the semi-colons and colon in this writing piece. 

Bats flying around at night, big rumbles of thunder and bright lightning that lights up the night sky, and encountering  spiders are all examples of fears that someone could have.  Fear is a reality, yet  sometimes we do not realize it.  Everyone is afraid of something; most of the time people do not want to admit it.  In the book The Always War  the characters have extreme levels of fear due to the situations that they are in.

Tessa is the main character in the book The Always War; she has a lot of trouble channeling in her fears.  Most of the time her fears get to her and she reacts differently than other people would.  An example of this is when she got on a plane trying to protect her friend Gideon.  The problem with that; is that she did not know what she was getting into.  After the plane took off, she sat there for hours not knowing where she was.  She eventually began to sob in fear.   Her luck unfortunately did not change; Gideon the pilot did not know how to fly this specific type of plane.  The plane ran out of fuel and crashed.  Tessa screamed and screamed as the plane went down.   She had a fear that she was going to die when the plane crashed. After the plane landed, Tessa had many seizures.  Yet the cause was unknown, but she would be unconscious  for long periods of time. Tessa would have horrible nightmares.  She would explain to Gideon what they were, and his reaction was as if he knew what already happened.“There was a time when I was in a battle, and I was being sacrificed, let there to die. And in another, I was engulfed in a fire and there was no way to escape.” She would have these bad dreams for several days to come. Tessa was one of those people who wanted to always know where she was.  Gideon was unable to tell the location of where they were at; so that got Tessa really upset.  Also, they crash-landed in enemy territory so that had Tessa really worried.  Tessa thought that at any moment men with guns would jump out and shoot both of them.  Plus, Tessa complained several times thought out the story of being home sick. 

Another book with the theme of fear is Mockingjay,  by Suzane Collins.   Throughout the book Katniss and her allies are on a journey to the capital to kill President Snow.  They meet  new people throughout the journey and in order to complete their mission they must trust those that they met.  That is difficult  because they fear that these people could betray them in ways of telling the authorities or killing them.  What makes their journey more difficult is that there are many obstacles set by the capital in order to stop them.  Some may have increased the fear in them just like some obstacles in the situation effected Tessa.  They had to hide their fear or else the capital would easily pounce and kill them. 

Fear is a very powerful thing.  Our actions can depend on what we fear and what we don’t. Throughout the story Tessa tried to overcome her fears; sometimes it worked, and sometimes it did not. Overcoming fear is a very hard thing to do in life.  It is very normal for someone to have a fear of multiple things.  Look at Tessa, she had so many fears in this story.  She learned to control herself and that is how she got out of the enemy territory alive.  Though in ways we are afraid to show others our fears, yet if you do display them; people would get to know a whole different side of you.