the Personification of Fear

When You Are Engulfed In Flames is one of David Sedaris' collections of humorist essays. Told from his point of view as a sort of exaggerated memoir, each chapter tells the story of a certain period in his life. The novel is sometimes downright hilarious and other times serious, but there is no doubt that it is one of the most interesting books I have read. Once I got the hang of David's writing, I simply couldn't stop reading. One of the chapters, entitled "April in Paris," made me reflect on humans' reactions when they are afraid.

"April in Paris" starts off in David' house in Normandy, where he is living with his partner Hugh. One day, he finds a huge colony of spiders living just outside his window. For an unknown reason, he starts naming all of the spiders and giving them imaginary personal lives. He begins to obsessively feed these spiders and watches as they come and go. The spider that he finds most interesting is one that he calls April, who seems to be the queen of this spider colony. Nobody attacks her or steals her food, so David  decides she is special and dotes on her with flies. When he and Hugh move to Paris, he even takes April with him (hence the title "April in Paris") in order to take care of her. He finds it very hard to part with her when it turns out he cannot support her in the big city.

I believe that David's sudden spider obsession came from fear. When he found the spiders, he was probably deathly afraid of them. His mind subconsciously assigned them names and lives in order to make them less scary. If the spiders seemed like humans to him, then they somehow lost their factor of ugliness and scariness. I think that this happens to all of us: if something scares us, we automatically start finding ways to make it smaller and less threatening. Faced with a giant spider, we might name it April and start obsessing over it. The same with a boar or rat. This philosophy also works in reverse-- if a human scares us, we call it an animal and pretend that it has no feelings so that it seems inferior (this is called animalistic dehumanization). In our minds, if something is inferior, then it is nothing to be afraid of. Personification and animalistic dehumanization are coping mechanisms of a sort, deluding our minds and bodies in order to remain safe and alive.  

Delusion itself is also a way to prevent ourselves from being mentally or physically hurt. Someone might tell themselves that something doesn't exist (such as global warming) in order to stop worrying about that and go on with their lives. If someone is angry at us for something, we might repeat to ourselves that they have misunderstood something until we believe it. Delusion of this sort ties in with the saying that "a lie told often enough becomes the truth." While I think that personification and its opposite are good methods to relieve ourselves of terror, delusion isn't such a good thing. If we delude ourselves, we are tricking our minds and just making a mess of things. It's bad enough to trick others, but once someone starts tricking themselves, delusion has taken over. Life becomes a lie, a dream that that person is living without noticing the serious events that unfold around him or her. It is essential that we do not allow lies to control us! If everyone in the world believed their own lies, then we would all be confused and nothing would ever get done. Delusion causes more fear than it is meant to eliminate, so it is much better to simply accept things as part of reality and live with them.