Fear is an emotion brought on by danger, evil, or pain. Sometimes the threat is real and sometimes it can be imagined. A person who is walking through a dark alley in the middle of the night may experience fear because they do not know whether or not it is safe to continue on. The fear of the unknown is also expressed in 1984, The Lottery, and Harrison Bergeron. The government in 1984 uses fear to control the masses. They set strict rules but leave a level of life completely unknown. The Party uses the people’s easygoing, trusting personalities to their advantages. In Shirley Jackson’s The Lottery, the government holds an annual meeting where names are drawn and someone is toned to death. Not knowing through the whole process who will be chosen is a way for the government to instill fear in the people. Shirley Jackson used the fear of the unknown just as George Orwell did. In Harrison Bergeron people are afraid of what will happen if they disobey when putting Harrison’s case into consideration. They also do not know what the government does not want them to know because of their handicap. Not being able to finish a complete thought may bring the fear of the unknown as well. The government controls the masses using fear to keep total control over everything in their society, and in each story, Orwell, Jackson, and Vonnegut all use the idea of fear of the unknown to further control the people.
George Orwell and Shirley Jackson create a government in both stories in which their main tool to control the masses, is fear. In 1984 the Party uses telescreens to keep an eye on everything that the community does. The telescreen has no way of being turned off, the screen may be darkened but there is no way of completely shutting it off. Be...
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... only keep the population down, but to also allow the government to make the people fearful and easy to control. In Harrison Bergeron handicaps are used to make everyone alike, but when Harrison rips his off his body, the people become afraid of the consequences if they did the same. The fear of the unknown is a regular theme throughout each story and also plays a role in today’s society. An emotion such as fear is a genuine feeling and people make rash decisions when afraid. It is up to the government to either make them less fearful or to take full advantage of them and gain control over society.
Works Cited
Jackson, Shirley. “The Lottery”. New York City: The New Yorker, 1948. Print.
Orwell, George. 1984. New York City: New American Library, 1949. Print.
Vonnegut, Kurt. “Harrison Bergeron”. New York City: The Magazine of Fantasy and Science
Fiction, 1961. Print
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