Fear

    Authors Note:This is a theme analysis piece that goes over the similarities between Safe Haven by Nicholas Sparks, Pretty Little Liars by Sara Shepard, and The Burn Journals by Brent Reynolds. 

Your body starts to sweat. All of your muscles begin to tense up. You begin to feel that heavy dark feeling that takes over your body and captivates your mind. It's a feeling that you can't escape and is driven by something deep inside you. Fear. When you're truly afraid, you experience a feeling like no other. Just how powerful fear can be is demonstrated in the book Safe Haven by Nicholas Sparks, and in the entire Pretty Little Liars series by Sara Shepard. In both cases, the main characters become greatly afraid for their lives, and their fear slowly starts to take over them. Both situations become intense and the character are forced to face their fears head on, which makes fear one of the main themes incorporated into these novels. 

     One of the many ways fear is involved in Safe Haven has to do with past experiences. The main character, Erin, escapes from her abusive husband and puts her life on the line. She describes her fear as being "too heavy and strong to allow sleep to come" (page 54) she lays low and tries her best to not become too close to anyone, for fear they would figure out her secret. While reading this book, I picked up on Erin's fear greatly when she was shutting out a completely innocent and gentle man from her life. She tries to end the conversation quickly, and the man describes her as being "very shy and nervous" (page 43) She lives a life that is surrounded by fear and insecurity. 

      Safe Haven isn't the only novel with fear as a theme, in fact the entire Pretty Little Liars series by Sara Shepard also has fear as a main topic. When four best friends start receiving texts from their dead best friend, threatening to spread their deepest secrets and ruin their lives, their lives become filled with fear and anxiety. They too, begin to shut out family members that are only trying to help because they are afraid for them, too. Quotes like " I can't do anything without the thought of it coming back to haunt me" (book 1 page 203) and "there's no way I can describe the fear that takes over my body and runs my life for me" (book 1 page 301) provide evidence of how the fear they all feel affect their lives and change them forever. 

     The characters in Pretty Little Liars aren't the only ones whose lives are affected because of the fear incorporated in their lives. The main character in The Burn Journals by Brent Reynolds, Brent, also lives a life lead on fear and nervousness. Although his fear is based on how he doesn't want to disappoint his parents, he soon has enough and tries to kill himself. When he wakes up in the hospital with burns from head to toe, he instantly realizes his life has changed.  He describes his time in the hospital as "a time that changed not only my outer appearance, but my view on life as a whole." (page 101)  Although Brent loses his fear of disappointing his parents, he grows a new one which involves getting made fun of his jaw dropping burns. On multiple occasions he goes out in warm weather, with long sleeve shirt and pants to help disguise himself all because of his fear of being judged. 

     Although Brent from The Burn Journals has a more self-inflicted fear, he still goes through similar experiences as the characters from Safe Haven, and Pretty Little Liars. They all start to close out family members, and become restless and anxious all the time. All of that comes from their scared of something, which makes fear a major theme in all three of these stories. No matter what kind of fear they had, they all got tense and sweaty and that heavy, dark feeling dominated their body and mine, and slowly started to take over their lives.