People all deal with fear differently. Some people scream, some people shrivel away and hide and some people cry. Some people push it away and don’t acknowledge it. The same fears are being shown but people all react differently to it. In the novel “Lord of the Flies” by William Golding there are a few examples of how people react differently to fear. When people are afraid they project their fear in a way that they see is reasonable because it’s their natural impulse.

Medically when people are afraid a part of their brain called the amygdala is activated. This part of the brain controls how humans react to fear. Fear is processed differently than any other emotion. Before fear gets to the amygdala it bypasses the sensory cortex which processes what the things people see, hear, feel, taste, or smell.  LeDoux is a neuroscientist that focused on emotions specifically, fear and anxiety. According to Bigthink,  “To become consciously aware of a particular stimulus takes 250-300 milliseconds, says LeDoux. But a fear-evoking stimulus can reach the amygdala in a mere 12 milliseconds, which is evolutionarily advantageous if one's response time means the difference between life and death.” This quote explains how quickly people process fear and how it is helpful to human life. Fear can become a thing of advantage or disadvantage. If there was no fear, people wouldn’t know when to protect themselves or run away. It has helped make advances to protect people. Fear can also be used to trick people into doing certain things that they unwillingly could have to do. In a place run by a tyrant or a monarchy, when fear is set in place it can scare people into following their leader. If a tyrant threatened to remove someone's family then that one person would be inclined to do whatever the tyrant asked for.

When people are faced with fear they will do one of two things, “fight or flight”. According to a recent article by Verywell Mind, they wrote:“The fight-or-flight response plays a critical role in how we deal with stress and danger in our environment.” Based on this quote it can be seen that the reaction that someone gives to fear can have a big impact on what happens next. This quote relates to the novel in the sense that all these boys are faced with the same fears but they each chose either fight or flight, and each character is different in the way they respond. When Ralph, the main character, hears a noise that sounds like a monster he gets people to arm themselves with spears, so his reaction was to fight. Another character named Piggy was confronted by a scary noise but instead of sticking his ground he ran away scared. These different reactions show how even though all of the boys are going through the same situation, they handle it in different ways which shows who they are underneath.

In the novel “Lord of the Flies” Jack is a major character. He's characterized as having a confident facade when in reality he's equally as scared as the other boys on the island. “ ‘…fear can't hurt you any more than a dream. There aren't any beasts to be afraid of on this island . . . Serve you right if something did get you, you useless lot of cry-babies!’(82-83). ” Jack’s way of dealing with fear is by making others feel bad. Deep down he feels scared but he plays it off by putting others down and acting less afraid than them. This puts him in a position where he feels more powerful and can hide his true fears. Jack also uses his words to play off his anxiety. This quote also shows part of Piggy’s fear of speaking to the other boys, because they talk to him like this and call him names and make him feel bad constantly. Jack doesn’t see how his words are affecting other characters and even though he may be trying to comfort them by telling them not to be afraid, it makes them fearful of him instead of the “beast”.

Piggy is a crucial character to the story who plays the smart, anxious, and self conscious character. Piggy has good ideas, but he does not have the confidence to speak up and tell the other children. Piggy is known as the shy kid and the one people can easily pick on. He is very sensitive about the way people speak to him or about him.  Interactions with these other boys made him very fearful. “ ‘You’re talking too much,’ said Jack Merridew. ‘Shut up, Fatty’ (21).” By jack calling him the slang word of “fat” it demonstrates a clear disrespect to piggy and his feelings. This gives him all the more reason to be fearful of the other children. It shows that jack thinks that Piggy is inferior and picks on him to make himself feel stronger and more incharge.

When people are scared they may show their fear because it is impulsive. Fear applies to everyone in a unique way. By showing the example of Piggy being too scared to speak up this shows one way people show fear differently than others. Everyone's reaction to fear will decide what happens next whether they chose “fight or flight”. Each of the boys in the story has a different fear, showing how everyone has something they’re afraid of and everyone has their own way of dealing with that fear.

Works Cited

Golding, William. Lord of the Flies. New York: Penguin, 2006.

Mohney, Gillian. “The Science of Fear: What Happens to Your Body After a Good Scare.” ABC News, ABC News Network, 30 Oct. 2015, abcnews.go.com/Health/science-fear-body-good-scare/story?id=34855202.

“Your Fear Reaction Is Lightning Quick.” Sciencenordic.com, sciencenordic.com/your-fear-reaction-lightning-quick.

Monitor on Psychology, American Psychological Association, www.apa.org/monitor/mar06/fear.aspx.

Adolphs, Ralph. Current Biology : CB, U.S. National Library of Medicine, 21 Jan. 2013, www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC3595162/.

Cherry, Kendra, and Steven Gans. “How the Fight-or-Flight Response Prepares Your Body to Take Action.” Verywell Mind, www.verywellmind.com/what-is-the-fight-or-flight-response-2795194.

Amani Harb

November 21,2017

Band C

Final Countdown

Takes place on bed

*It’s the final countdown. The final countdown. Oh….* ← ( song playing in the background)

I remember when Cora and I…. Ughh whenever I hear this song I think of her. We were laying on my bed and… ha it was pretty funny because I stubbed my toe while the song was playing and I was wimping around but then the chorus came on and I started singing anyway and we started cracking up. Oh uh well now that I look back at it, it’s not that funny (laughs a little bit)… She was my best friend for 9 years. We met on the first day of kindergarten she had short blonde hair and glasses.

“Hi my name is Cora what’s your name?” I remember she said this in such an excited voice.

All I could say was, “Anna.” God, I was so nervous to talk with her!

For nine years we shared secrets. For 9 years I asked her for advice. In the fifth grade, she told me about a boy she had a crush on. In sixth grade, we worked together to get all A’s in each class for all four marking periods. In eighth grade we wrote the valedictorian speech together and presented it on stage during graduation. *sigh*

I guess it was the summer of 8th grade that I realized things weren’t the same. Cora became more and more distant. She started to hang out with Sara. Sara transferred to the elementary/middle school that we went to in 7th grade. Sara the girl with the perfect long blonde hair and bright blue eyes. I felt so left out (says in a hurt voice). They started wearing the same clothes like we used to do. Even their voices became intertwined they sounded the same….Cora didn’t need me anymore from there everything was always about Sara. It was Sara this, Sara that I even asked her if she liked Sara better than me, and she would say

(says in a snobby voice) “What kind of a ridiculous question is that? Anna we have been friends forever”

She said that yet she started to hang out more with Sara rather than me. I guess she lied straight to my face. What did I do wrong? Did I annoy her at some point? Was it because of Brandon, ‘our’ crush? Was Sara prettier than I was? Or more popular? I always try to go back to times where I did Cora wrong, but there were very little. One time we hung out and she asked if her hair was a mess and of course I answered honestly and said that yeah she looked like she just woke up, did that do it for her? Is that why she won’t talk to me anymore? You know what I don't even care about Cora anymore. I have other people in my life right? I have all of my other friends, I guess i’m not as close with them but we are still friends. I will survive. This is all just part of life. I don’t think that we will ever be the same again, even if we talk about everything that has happened. It has just been too long without her and the trust between us is gone. Cora doesn’t care about me, so I shouldn’t care about her. Like I’ve tried to fix things but she is just not willing to change. I miss her but she doesn’t seem to miss me. Maybe she has changed too much from the girl I met in Kindergarten.

*I guess there is no one to blame. We're leaving ground (leaving ground). Will things ever be the same again? It’s the final countdown* (song plays in the background and slowly gets quieter)

Misjudged

All my life, I have been judged based on how I look. People assume that I am white because my skin tone is white. When I tell them that I am not, they can start to see how I do not look as white as they thought. They look deeper than my skin color and see features of me that they do not recognize as white. For example, my nose is very arab looking, It is long and round at the end. My hair is also very thick and dark. Does having green eyes and light skin make me look less Arab? Arab people have an olive toned skin color but it is still light skin. So I ask myself what part of how I look hides the Arab looking features?

It was the first day of freshman year and I walked through the crowded cafe in my school where it was loud and chaotic. There were people all running around trying to find their classes. I started to search for my room too. I finally found it- room 301, it was the art room. The other students and I that were waiting to go into the class walked into the room. We all sat in random seats because almost no one knew each other. There were so many new faces and people to take in and names to remember. The walls were covered with windows and you could see the busy streets below. I liked this room, it was a very free and open space, it left a lot of room for imagination and creativity. When class started, we were told that we would have to work in groups of two and draw a picture of someone else’s clothing item or anything that they had on them. I turned to the boy next to me. He had dark brown hair and olive toned skin.

We simultaneously asked, “Do you want to be my partner?”

We both laughed at the timing of our question, and then we introduced ourselves.

“My name is Amani.”

His name was Naseem. As I was talking to him, I noticed that he had a hat that had an embroidered Palestinian flag on it. It was black which made the green, red, and white colors of the flag stand out.

I immediately asked, “Are you Palestinian?”

My smile reached from ear to ear. I have never met someone that is my age and is my ethnicity.

“Yeah, my mom and dad are both from there,” He said. “Why?”

“I am Palestinian too! My dad grew up in Ramallah (a city in Palestine).”

We were both smiling now, but he found it hard to believe that I was Arab. I started to get annoyed, as if I would purposely lie about my ethnicity . Why did he not believe me? I continued to try to convince him. I spoke a few words in Arabic, like hello how are you, to prove to him that I am indeed Arab.

“You look so white though! I still can not believe that you’re Arab.”

After all this he still would not have been able to tell that I was Arab if i did not tell him. I was relieved that he finally believed me. I automatically felt close to him even tho we just met.

This happens to me very often where I have to prove myself as not white. When someone tells me I look white, I get offended even though I am partly white. It makes me feel closer to the part of myself that is Palestinian and the culture that goes along with it. It gets very annoying when people point out that I do not look like my ethnicity. I can not change what I look like. I wish my ethnicity could be recognized more clearly before people start to judge me. Ethnicity is a complicated thing because your appearance can deceive what people think about where you are from. After going through these experiences it made me realize how easily people can misjudge based on something that person can not change, their appearance.

Amani Harb

Soy yo

La hija de padres inmigrantes

Niña con un hermano

Padres de Palestina y Austria

Un ave que emigra

Yo veo ave

Yo saborio Schnitzel y Topfen strudel

Yo oigo las olas

Yo huelo naturaleza

Yo toco la arena

Hablo con mi abuelos

Necesito mi mama, todo mi corazón

Tengo un hermano

Escucho música

Somos productos de Palestina y Austria
Hablamos aleman

La lengua

No somos Americanos. Vivimos en America.

No somos españoles.

1) ​Negative space is the area around the main point of an image, it is the space around an object.

2) I found negative space around the subject and the subject itself. Half of my cutout the pink was the subject and the other half the pink was the surrounding area of the subject.

3) It helps define boundaries to see the shapes you are drawing. It will make a silhouette of the main point.

4) Negative space does enhance the drawing because it it makes your eye concentrate more on the drawing because you try to find the subject.

I used contrast to make my images and writing stand out. My pictures bleed off the page making it easier to see because they are bigger and your eye travels toward the bigger things first. I used a lot of open space to make it easy on your eyes. There is also not too much information because otherwise it would be too crowded.