Full Tilt By Neale Hesterman Use Of Fear

In the novel Full Tilt by Neal Shusterman, the main character, Blake, is trapped in an amusement park where he has to fight against his biggest fears to save his younger brother, Quinn. In order to survive, Blake must ride a total of seven rides. Each ride represents one of his secret fears. The ride that represents his absolute biggest fear was the Kamikaze.
The Kamikaze is a plane ride that represents his fear of leadership and bringing people down with him. As he is controlling the Kamikaze plane, he “realized [he] was not one of a dozen planes, [he] was the squadron leader.” (114) Blake also states that “they were all following [him] to their doom.” (114) Blake was a bundle of nerves. He is terrified that he will be the reason for all the plane pilots deaths. Blake later mentions that “once more this place had tapped into my secret fears. Fear of flying, fear of falling, but even worse than that, the fear of taking everyone down with me.” (114) Clearly, Blake is

Blake also shows that he is nervous when he states “everything I did...was suspended safely by strings, too high up for anyone to damage...now those strings have been cut, and I was going to die.” (115) According to a conversation Blake has with Cassandra, she was the one that “pulled in front of our bus, cutting it off, and that’s why the driver lost control.” (128) Blake was the only one to survive, and he blames himself for that. He mentioned that he was “pounding the emergency exit...hitting the door, banging, kicking... [He was] not strong enough to open the emergency exit door.” (34) Even ten years later, Blake still feels guilty for not being able to open the door. He mentioned that “ [he] had survived when [he] wasn’t supposed to.” (129) When anyone mentions the accident, Blake becomes uncomfortable, and he shows that he would rather die than feel guilty for the rest of his