Fear And Change In Ishmael Reed's 'Beware'

Fear is something that everyone has. Fear can be found or created in every way shape and form. Some are scared of death, others are scared of mice. Fear can be found everywhere and for every reason. One thing that scares people is transformation or, change. Transformation scares people because it is unexpected or unnatural.
One place that change was found to be scary is in Ishmael Reed’s “beware: do not read this poem”. His poem starts with a story about an old woman who surrounded herself with mirrors, one day the villagers broke into her house and she disappeared into the mirrors. After that anyone who bought the house had been taken into the mirrors, by the old lady. Then the poem switches completely and writes “the hunger of this poem is legendary It has taken in many victims Back off from this poem” (Reed 103)
First it was gist a story of an old angry lady, then all of a sudden it's the poem that starts taking you in even tho you aren't supposed to read it, and it tells you not to, yet you finish the

As you ask yourself this question, imagine you're sitting at home and all of a sudden someone bursts in and yells “Pack one bag, you're leaving in ten minutes”. Would you be scared? Probably, for everything in your life is changing by an outside force that you can not controll. Julio Cortazar writes about this situation in his novel “House Taken Over”. A man and his sister live in a gigantic home, all by themselves. Then one day something takes over and they can't stop it, the brother is forced to lock off half of the house so that they won't be attacked by the things. “I heard it at the end of the passage which lead from thost two rooms toward the door. I hurled myself against the door before it was too late and shut it…luckily the key was on our side”(Cortazar 39-40). The threat of change scared the people to the point that they had to luck off their home. Fear of transformation is something that everyone