When Fear Erupts

Be afraid. Be very afraid. The one thing that everyone is afraid of is fear. No one wants to fear anything. We are all fearless and mighty in our own minds, but when the enormous shadow that is fear comes upon us, we realize we really aren’t all that powerful. In the story, The Things They Carried, by Tim O’Brien, all characters in First Lieutenant Jimmy Cross’s platoon are afraid of something. They were mostly afraid of dying because it’s their biggest threat in war. There were several scenes in which a couple of the soldiers in the book encounter some of their greatest fears. One example would be when Tim O’Brien spots a Vietcong soldier walking on a path and has to kill him. Or when Dave Jensen and Lee Strunk start a fight over a missing jackknife and Jensen ends up breaking Strunk’s nose. What is fear anyway? It’s the blank in your head. The point in which nothing other than you or what you care about is important. It’s when your instincts kick in and your thoughts ...