Alyia Hall
English 1- 4th
4-1-15

Fear Affects People’s Lives

Fear, something that rules over many peoples lives and makes them hesitant to try different activities. Whether standing up for yourself or someone else, or just talking in general. Fear can rule your life causing a person to always be nervous and hold the reputation of a coward.
Every person alive knows that feeling of nervousness but some people allow that fear to overcome them into “backing down”. For example, when Rick was in school he was bullied for the way he walked, talked, and dressed. He had never stood up for himself, instead he just “put up with it” though now he is graduated, and still so nervous to leave his own house because of the fear of what other people say of him on the streets. By never standing up to the people that mentally hurt him, he had to live with that fear that consumed him and not being able to look proudly in the mirror.
Being labeled as a coward is a tough name to carry around with you, it’s not exactly the reputation anyone would like to hold for themselves . For example, in Elie Wiesel’s memoir “Night”, Ellie is forced to watch his father be beaten, standing speechless with no expression but shock on his face. Instead of helping his dad, or chancing himself to be hurt to, he takes the “coward’s way out” which follows him with the feeling of guilt of not helping his father. Not facing your fears and stepping out of your comfort zone could hurt others as well as yourself, and also could change your viewpoint on the way someone feels about another.
Therefore, whether being like Rick and not ever standing up for himself, or being like Ellie and not ever standing up for his own father. Those reasons, among others, are how fear can change a person’s life in numerous ways.