Theme of fear in Literature

In the articles, The Raven by Edgar Allan Poe, Hamlet by Shakespeare and Lord of flies by William Golding, fear is displayed in various ways. This essay expounds on how far is presented in the three articles. The Raven by Edgar Allan Poe The Raven by Edgar Allan Poe is a narrative poem published in early 1845 and has become one of his famous works (Poe). The fear in this article is brought forward by the revelation of the emotions when the narrator dives into books to avoid the thought of the loss of a loved one. The author characterizes a young man who has lost a loved one and is dark and gloomy; also he is in total despair. The play was basically about the indecisive Prince of Denmark, Hamlet. He finds himself at crossroads on what to believe and what not to believe.

He fears that his decisions might affect him in the future so he ends up with plans that he keeps pushing forward every time. Hamlet has a fear for hell and his conscience leads the path for him. He has taken a resolve after finding out that a ghost he had encountered had actually given him the right information on his father’s death as he uses a trap in form of a play to confirm the villain (Adelman). He also confesses his part in the plot and it is somehow seen as a way in which his fear of evil has caught up with him and he eventually decides to do one good deed before he departs from the face of the earth. Lord of the Flies by William Golding The Lord of the Flies by William Golding is a 1954 novel that was written with a clear picture that brings out fear (Dangar).

The author uses two main protagonists who possess totally different characters. He brings out his story from a point where the plane in which some school boys from a British school find themselves in a situation where they have to survive in a forest after the death of their pilot. The boys’ do not know what to expect in such situations and they are driven by the fear of the unknown (Dangar). They do not want to be caught in the fear that they might have committed an evil act. Getting themselves out of the blame by lying to themselves proves only right and the best that they can do since they viewed Simon as a beast. Conclusion With insight from all the three articles, one gathers that fear makes people act in different ways.

As a defense mechanism both the boys’ in Golding’s novel and Hamlet in Shakespeare’s play resort to some kind of violence state after being pushed by fear in bid. The boys’ started out as innocent until fear got the better part of them forcing hostility in to their minds and so did Hamlet who had once believed that evil was not good until he is pushed too far to the wall. Carey, John. William Golding: The man who wrote Lord of the Flies. Faber & Faber, 2012. Dangar, Joyanta. The Nightmare Beast, War and the Children in William Golding‘s Lord of the Flies. The raven. Noura Books, 2017. Wilson, Eric. Warring Sovereigns and Mimetic Rivals: On Scapegoats and Political Crisis in William Golding's Lord of the Flies. Law and Humanities 8.