Comparing Fear In Once Upon A Country And A Quilt Of A Country

Omphalophobia is the fear of belly buttons. Strange thing is, we are all connected through those bizarre digs in the middle of our stomachs. Everyone grew and came from the same place, cut from the same cord. A lot of times no one remembers this, and they strike out against each other, or hide from each other in fear, because of skin color or religion. Fear is something that inhabits all of us. Writhing underneath our skin just waiting to find a reason to be unleashed. This feeling can be used in different ways, bringing everyone together, or tearing people from civilization. In the same way, the written works “Once Upon a Time”, “A Quilt of a Country” and “The Vietnam Wall” show the contrast between these two types of fear.

In the

In Anna Quindlen’s work, “A Quilt of a Country”, she has accounted the tragedy known as 911 and the power it had over the United States; the power that brought everyone together. That power was avoided in “Once Upon a Time” and consequently, the couple had secluded themselves and their son behind a wall and bars, trying to prevent one kind of tragedy, but only bringing on a different kind. Anna Quindlen and Nadine Gordimer have written works of polar opposites. One a kind of cautionary tail, and the other a written work with a bad beginning but a relatively okay outcome, “Terrorism has led to devastation - and unity,” (5 Quindlen). In both written works, there is an element of fear within them though they are both used very differently the authors probably have the same kind of view on the subject. A view in which fear can be used as a good thing as long as you don’t try to avoid the unavoidable. “A Quilt of a Country” is an article that tells of people becoming united when a terrorist attack occurs despite color, race or culture; “Once Upon a Time” is a story in which the parents judge others for their differences, it scares them so they push the people of color away from their home. Maybe if the parents had embraced everyone else's differences they could have overcome their fear and lived happily for what could have been years. They let their fear of

The poem written by Alberto Rios, “The Vietnam Wall”, is a very powerful one which describes the way things tend to change in people when they are around such a solemn place such as the Vietnam Wall, or the actual names inscribed on the wall which are written in the order from which they died, not alphabetically or by their race. Not a single one of them is isolated. Unlike “The Vietnam Wall”, “Once Upon a Time” is isolated throughout the entire story. In fact, the couple isolate themselves and their kid more and more throughout the fractured fairy tale. This, as is written above, is where the couple went wrong. Race didn’t matter on the wall, but it mattered to the couple who just wanted to keep their family safe. “No rules, something just persists like pinching on St. Patrick’s Day every year for no green. No one knows why,” (34 Rios). Just like this quote, the fear that the couple is experiencing is something that’s just there. It was there before the burglaries occurred in their neighborhood, or the riots before they put up the walls. The violence only gave them reason to put bars on their windows and build a seven foot wall around their house strung with barbed wire. In “The Vietnam Wall” people act differently because of the power that radiates from the wall, overwhelming the people that stand there, searching for names of relatives or