Week 5 Story: Fear

A mother and her son sat at the table on a cold winter night when, suddenly, the mother heard a faint noise, looked up from her hot bowl of stew, and ordered her son to go shut the front door.

The son, with a confused look on his face, asked his mother why she had ordered him to do such thing. 

She replied, "That noise scared me, son. I am fearful."

He wasn't sure what this "fear" word was and asked his mother what fear felt like.

Without hesitation, she said, "Fear feels like you're face to face with a tiger." 

Still confused by this, the boy got up from the dinner table and walked to the front door, looking for what had caused this noise that stirred up this feeling in his mother. When he reached the threshold, he saw two mice scampering about on the front porch. 

The boy giggled and and chased after the mice until he came across a group of men around a campfire. Upon seeing the boy, the men began talking about fear and this made the boy extremely curious.

The men began telling "scary" stories in deep voices and held flashlights over their faces, however the boy did not feel the same feeling that his mother described to him.

Although the boy was not fearful, he wanted to experience this feeling. The men told him that if he really wanted to be afraid, that he should wander through the woods that lined the nearby area. 

Overflowing with curiosity, the boy walked to the woods and walked through the tall trees. He heard the normal noises of the woods such as the blowing leaves, coos of the owls and the squeaks of small critters.

The boy was not fearful.

As he spent more time in the woods, the winds began to blow harder and thunder began to sound. Because he was so far from home, the boy found the tallest tree in the woods and sat under it. 

He ended up falling asleep.

While sleeping, a massive storm began brewing in the area, however the boy did not wake up. 

Meanwhile, a tiger was wandering through the woods and came across the sleeping boy. Aware of how the storms were in the woods, the tiger knew that it was dangerous for the boy to sleep under the tree. 

He picked the boy up and carried him on his back to a nearby cave. 

After setting the boy down, the boy awakened face to face with the tiger. Rather than being scared, he noticed that the tiger had moved him to a place of shelter from the storm. 

The boy was grateful and thought to himself, "This must be the feeling of fear"... 

(Tiger. Source: Wikimedia)

Author's Note:

I got my ideas for this story from the original story of "Fear" from the Turkish Fairy Tales unit. In the original story, the boy was so curious to experience fear searched for it among a group of robbers, in a graveyard, in an abandoned house, and at the bottom of the ocean. Similar to the story I created, the boy was never actually scared and in the original story, the boy was actually crowned king due to his bravery. Although I changed most of the plot, I kept the mother and son characters. I also wanted to change the overall message in the story to one that claims that fear is based on your perspective, and I appreciated how the boy wasn't fearful of things that might be "scary" to other people. 

Bibliography: The story of "Fear" from the Turkish Fairy Tales unit. Story source: Forty-four Turkish Fairy Tales by Ignacz Kunos, with illustrations by Willy Pogany (1913).