Fear In Anna By Jonathan Hunt

The Fear Inside Anna

Most of us can say that something on this earth that terrifies us to our very core. This feeling leaves the mind debilitated which often leaves us with nervous waves of emotion. Everyone experiences fear in different ways as there are millions of fear-evoking settings in this dark world of ours. We may not understand the certain fears of others, but these fears overpower one’s mind to completely control them. In his short story, Anna, Jonathan Hunt analyzes the psychological aspect through the conflict and imagery to show how fear controls our minds without realization to make any situation seem worse. According to Merriam-Webster, fear appears as an “unpleasant, often strong emotion caused by anticipation or awareness

Al). According the National Alliance on Mental Illness, “when a brain can no longer effectively process a certain level of stress, the processing of information and emotions is impacted, resulting in trouble perceiving reality” (Tanap). To better understand any stress being put on Anna, we must look at her surroundings. The author informs the reader that the town in which Anna resides, experienced an epic fire and most of her town lay in rubble, as she describes that they “complicated everything” (Hunt). From this, it is easy to decipher that Anna remains under an intense amount of pressure, in search of food. As the story progresses, Hunt describes Anna’s escape from the vicious dogs. Once again, a clear sign of stress. An important obstacle Anna faces within the chase is the appearance of the dog. Anna believes the dog to have black fur as it begins to chase her, but the author later reveals that the dog’s fur was actually white, covered in the ash from the fire. Many see the color black as an “evil” color, while white is seen as a symbol of “purity and innocence”. Due to this mentality many possess, it is reasonable to believe that this is a trick Anna’s mind play to make the situation worse.

Once Anna escapes the dogs, she seeks refuge in a blue estate car. However, she is not alone for long. The beasts then proceed to scratch as well as bite at the car, attempting to retrieve her. The author uses this scene, not only to provide the feeling of fear in the audience, but this also represents the chaos inside of Anna’s mind. Hunt writes that “she imagines thousands of them surrounding the car...”, which suggests that this could be a delusion, created by the anxiety manifesting itself inside of the mind of Anna. To contrast this, as the dogs scratch at the car, the readers dive deeper into Anna’s mind as she imagines herself in a better place. Anna clamps her hands over her ears, choosing to “think about gelato”. As Anna falls further into her “happy place”, the reader is shocked to find that when she took her hands away from her ears, “the dogs were gone” (Hunt). This is another perfect example of Hunts hints at the idea of this situation being a manifestation of her mind. It seems that Hunt may entertain the idea of Anna having an anxiety