I believe there’s a monster that each of us know very well, regardless of the cultural backgrounds and language. That monster is the face you see in the mirror every morning when you brush your teeth. Yes, the truly horrific monster is you. At some point in our life, some people more often than others, we can be seen and considered, by our peers and by ourselves, as heinous monsters with a thin layer of human skin. We are naturally born selfish. We do things to satisfy our desires and sometimes disregard those around us. Some of us are more benevolent than others and some of us are more sinister than others. At the end of the day, we would feel very pleased if our actions did ourselves good. But often than not, there are many other people get trampled by our actions in achieving our goals and satisfy our desires. In the eyes of those who suffer, we are no better than monsters, who terrorized their day and brought it to ruins. The same goes for vice versa; when our days are leading to a downward spiral of unhappiness by our peers when their selfish actions make themselves the beneficiary, and us the victims. We can even be the monsters to our own lives. There are times when we doubt, suspect, and lie to others and to ourselves. The paranoia causes distrust between you and your peers and, this paranoia can lead you to commit actions that are regrettable and monstrous. The doubt, suspect, and lie can also be applied to ourselves. Sometimes, we would doubt our own capabilities, suspect our own confidence, and lie to ourselves that we are really not that amazing, when in truth, we are all very amazing people. This leads us to self-destruction and a road to somewhere where the happiness doesn’t linger and positive thoughts fade to nothingness.
Author Archives: r.zhu
The Unknown
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We, as a specie, have always been afraid of what we don’t understand. Whether it is eccentric behaviors of our fellow peers or objects of unknown origins, we view and condemn them with such a biased mind because of what we don’t comprehend simply terrifies us. Since the beginning of history of mankind, we’ve been creating tales or stories to compensate our lack of understanding of objects that weren’t clear to us. We try to implement some kind of definite shape or meaning to things, so we can feel like we have a firm grasp on them. But even with them, our subconscious fear leads us to creating tales of horrifying creatures; the countless monsters that, apparently, reside in the dark, beyond the exuberant light that shines above humans.
Horror movies pry on this primal fear of the unknown. The protagonists are always left in the dark, literally and figuratively, and constantly unsure of what the future beholds for them. Carroll mentions this in his definition of threatening, in the senses of psychological. The minds of these protagonists are put to the test against the other characters as the distrust spreads due to uncertainty, but also with themselves, as they they are losing a firm grasp on the reality as they know it. Their gradual loss of reality would eventually lead to their downfall, as a group and as individuals. Their abilities of reason and logic deteriorate, which leads them to be physically threatening to others, and sometimes even to themselves