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(2019
midterm assignment) Model Midterm answers 2019 (Index) Essay 3: Web Highlights |
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Eileen Burnett
March 27, 2019
Blinded by the Light: How
Narratives of the Future Animate our Hidden Fears
Fear is an incredible motivator. It starts wars, creates
heroes, and causes children to wake their parents from a midnight slumber. But
there is something about fears in written form that gives rise to the deep and
profound questions of our psyches, those questions that linger just beneath the
surface, awaiting form. These uncertainties can include the fear of
consequences, hopelessness, irrelevance, and the unknown. Within this Literature
of the Future class, therefore, essays by Clark Omo, Timothy Morrow, and Michael
Bradshaw were analyzed to address just such fears, revealing the hidden
motivations that are pervasive within texts such as The Bible’s
Book of Revelation.
Within the various essays I read, it was interesting to
note that other students also observed that there is a fear of the unknown at
the center of many of these texts we have read this semester. These texts have
caused me to consider more thoughtfully the just how impactful that fear can be
when considering our futures, both individually and collectively as a whole. It
was interesting to read Clark Omo’s article, because he seems to agree with this
presumption that
The Book of Revelation
is a prime example of our collective and inherent preoccupation with
consequences. In his essay, “Futuristic
Anxieties: Examining the Exploration of Fear and Anxiety in Literature of the
Future” for example, he states that such fears are predominantly expressed
within The Bible’s apocalypse scenario. “This idea” he concludes, regarding the
concept of consequence and divine judgement, “creates anxiety: will there be
such an Apocalypse, are we in such as state of decline that would justify an
event like this, and (perhaps most importantly) is there hope?” This question
seemed to hit the nail on the head for me, speaking directly to this inner fear
that motivates most Christian cultures.
This fear of the
unknown is highlighted in Timothy Morrow’s essay as well, though from a slightly
different viewpoint. In “A Phoenix Must First Burn: Analyzing Decline in Future
Narratives” Timothy Morrow also looks at the
Book of Revelation as a story of
decline, showing a world of the future as one of hopelessness, another real and
tangible fear of most people. “The world prophesied by the disciple John” he
says, “is one in complete disorder and decay”, echoing a real fear of a future
that is unstable and less than ideal. However, I disagree with his statement
that “The book of Revelations speaks of the current spiritual state of
the world under the Anti-Christ" as though the physical descriptions don’t play
a big part. On many instances, actual physical examples are given, including the
darkening of the sun, hailstorms, 1/3 of the earth’s trees, rivers, and fish
being destroyed, as well as great earthquake that levels cities and mountains
alike.
A lack of faith is
often credited throughout scripture as a reason for fears and calamities, and it
is within this vein that Michael Bradshaw makes his case. Though he does not
cite The Bible, he draws from texts like
The Parable of the Sower and the short story “Stone Lives” to raise a
question that is paramount to understanding why we read these kinds of texts.
Over and over, he hones in on the overwhelming hopelessness that permeates the
texts, leading with a depressing statement: “Very few of the readings discussed
in class have any faith that humanity's future will be anything but grim.” His
overall impression of Parable of the
Sower is one of a depressing state, a country “torn apart by famine, and
natural disasters”, and in Stone Lives,
his impression was not much better, describing a “cutthroat world of businesses
left unchecked, and a disturbingly plausible glimpse of a future.” In this I
have to agree, that the majority of the texts presented offer any real hope for
the unknown, a hope for a future. He then poses several questions regarding the
fear of the unknown within the various stories, but there was one that made me
look harder at the texts we have studied so far. He asks, “can the human spirit
withstand the hardships of the future to become something better than we are,
better than what these novels believe we become?” This very question raises some
important truths about the human psyche and the need for some kind of hope to
counter the almost overwhelming fear and depression encountered in many of the
texts we read.
These hopes, however,
can be mitigated by simply reading the rest of the
Book of Revelation, rather than just
focusing on the calamity described in the earlier chapters. This complete
reading of scripture is important when addressing the subject of fear, as it
relates to the impending doom and gloom often expressed within the narratives of
our class. Fear is not only about doom and gloom, but a motivator that gives way
to change if we let it. But perhaps getting glimpses of those real and
subconscious fears in literary form can motivate us to do something in the now.
I hope so.
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