The Use Of Social Terror In The Hunger Games

The art of writing can bring upon a multitude of emotions, simply through words. In Suzanne Collins’s Hunger Games, readers feel Katniss’s twangs of grief, rage, and determination through vivid and detailed imagery. In Meyer’s Twilight, the audience feels Bella’s fears, embarrassments, and joys through the basic cadence of speech between characters. And similarly, Kazuo Ishiguro and Mary Shelley can introduce a complex uneasiness into the minds of readers. Shelley, while using gruesome details, also uses the actions of characters to inspire a certain type of fear. Ishiguro utilizes the deceivingly tranquil environment of his story to induce a type of dread. Kazuo Ishiguro uses social terror and Mary Shelley uses intellectual terror to evoke

Mary Shelley drew inspiration from the likes of Giovanni Aldini and Andrew Ure, who were known for stimulating the limbs and full bodies of cadavers with electricity (Micheletti). So when Shelley was tasked with creating a scary story with her friends, the current events concerning science entered her mind via nightmare. The story of Frankenstein follows a scientist of the same name who creates a man-like creature by using the parts of corpses to invent a superior human race and revel in the glory of his innovation. However, as he progresses, Frankenstein realizes that his intentions are not reflected in the creature and that it has become undesirable. His studies and actions have pushed the boundaries of everything he had been taught, yet he continued. Frankenstein explains to Robert Walton amid his account of these events: “learn from me, if not by my precepts, at least by my example, how dangerous is the acquirement of knowledge and how much happier that man is who believes his native town to be the world, than he who aspires to become greater than his nature will allow” (Shelley 31). He then goes on to narrate his blatant violations of the edge of human possibility. As a result, intellectual terror is inspired in the minds of readers. Intellectual terror can be defined as “fear of the loss of control over the outcome of human

But when he was tasked with repeating the same process, it became less about his initial endeavor and more about the potentially catastrophic consequences of introducing a new and unpredictable species capable of reproduction. The accumulation of these unknowns and questions resulting from Shelley’s writing is what evokes the most permanent fear in readers. The terror of not knowing the scientific and intellectual boundaries by which humans should live is the most permanent impression this novel