Relationships of Semester One and Two Literature

The Crate Case

In real life and in novels, people and characters fear what they can't comprehend. People take the things they fear and despise it, lock it away, and/or destroy it. In books like Station Eleven, the Tragedy of Julius Caesar, Fahrenheit 451, Night, and To Kill a Mockingbird, and Warehouse 13 characters have this irrational fear.

In the novel Station Eleven by Emily St. John Mandel, the Prophet despised and ignored what he doesn't preach. When members of his congregation left for thing unknown, he created graves for them, because, to him, they were dead. Everything he needed to understand is in one book, the Bible, everything else does matter.

In the play the Tragedy of Julius Caesar by William Shakespeare, the Roman Senate feared what it would be like to have Caesar as their king. The Roman Senate and the Roman people are used to their Republic, they didn't know what monarchy really was. People, like Cassius, feared the worse. Cassius would rather die than lived as a slave, as he thought he would, if Caesar became king. He feared the possibilities of what he did know.

In the novel Fahrenheit 451 by Ray Bradbury, the citizens of Bradbury's dystopian city fear, hate, and destroy books and the knowledge they hold. Once, Mildred Montag found out her husband, Guy Montag, stored illegal books in their house, she told on him. The society, so afraid of knowledge, planned to obliterate this threat, by incinerating the books that they no longer understood and fix Montag.

In the memoir Night by Elie Wiesel, Hitler and his Nazis took all of the fears and worries of Germany and blamed Germany's failings on the misfits: the Jews, gypsies, etc. After world war one, Germany had economical cascade failure, leaving Germany in ruins. But, why did this happen? How did it happen? Who is to blame? This is where Hitler and the Nazis come in. Hitler's answer to these question was the undesirables of Germany.

In the novel To Kill a Mockingbird by Harper Lee, many of the white citizens of Maycomb didn't know their African American neighbors. Caucasians know African Americans by their stereotypes or assumptions: "that all Negroes lie, that all Negroes are basically immoral beings, that all Negro men are not to be trusted around our women, an assumption that one associates with minds of their calibre" (Lee 204). Based on this assumption, Caucasians stay away from or are hostile towards African American.

In the novel As I Lay Dying by William Faulkner, the Bundrens occasionally feared Darl due to his ability that they can't understand. After coming back from France after WW1, Darl became strange, he looks beyond or through what he is looking at and, seemingly, can see the future and see things, not in his proximity. This scares people, the Tulls stay away from him and the judge him at a distance, Dewey Dell fears that he knows her secret and that he will tell their father, and everyone else thinks he has gone crazy, fallen off his rocker, or lost his marbles. In many cases, people push Darl away.

In the television show Warehouse 13, warehouse agents put things they don't understand into crates. They took this idea from Thomas Jefferson who took things he didn't understand and lock it away, "until he figured out it wasn't going to kill him" (Warehouse). These agents did almost the same thing, they take "mythical" ideas and put it in crates, so they wouldn't kill anyone.

In numerous entertainments portray the irrational fear of thing people don't or can't understand. Many people are textile or visual learners, they have to see and touch things to understand, but not everything is physical. Like, Andrew Smith said, "People fear what they don't understand and hate what they can't conquer" (A).

Work Cited

"A Quote by Andrew Smith." Goodreads. N.p., n.d. Web. 08 June 2017.

Bradbury, Ray. Fahrenheit 451. New York: Del Rey Book, 1991

Faulkner, William. As I Lay Dying: The Corrected Text. New York: Modern Library, 2012. Print.

Holt, Rinehart, and Winston. Elements of Literature - the Tragedy of Julius Caesar. Austin: Holt, 2005. Print.

Lee, Harper. To Kill a Mockingbird. Philadelphia: J. B. Lippincott, 1960. Print.

Mandel, Emily St. John. Station Eleven. Toronto, Ontario, Canada: Harper Perennial, 2017. Print.

Warehouse 13. Prod. Jack Kenny. Perf. Saul Rubinek, Eddie McClintock, & Joanne Kelly. Pilot. N.p., 07 July 2009. Web. 08 June 2017.

Wiesel, Elie. Night. New York: n.p., 1960. Print.