Blog Log #3: Fear, A Hereditary Trait

Fear, the emotion that corrupts all our decisions. Whether the decision is tiny or huge, fear is always in the back of our mind calling the shots. A video published on the New York Times website named When Your Child’s Bogeyman Is Real by Ella Dobson and Margaret Cheatham Williams caught my eye while looking for articles. In an attempt to illustrate her past  the narrator reflects on her experience at the Virginia Tech Shooting. As well as, the effect that the Parkland shooting had on her son, even though they lived nowhere near. The first time I watched this video I was intrigued by how she manipulates the text and  her voice.

She manipulates the audio by slowing and speeding up the pace at which she talks, changing the tone in her voice and pausing for prolonged periods of time. When she pauses the reader is left to reflect on the past words and find a deeper meaning. She speaks with so much emotion and you can hear her voice fumble words as she illustrates these terrifying events.

She manipulates the text very well by using parallelism, metaphor and hyperbole. An example of hyperbole she uses is, “My son is a boy who quite literally has a light inside of him.”(1:42) She uses parallelism in two cases, “It was very very windy, very gray and very cold.”(0:36) As well as, “If safety exist on a spectrum, then a certain portion of that spectrum that was totally violated, and changed, and turned on its head.”(1:14) She also uses an amazing metaphor to illustrate the gunshots, “It jumps into a sort of crescendo of this waterfall of explosions.”(0:44)

I found that there was a common theme in this essay of light versus dark. At the beginning it is the narrator in her safe house going for walks around campus in the summer. Then the wind, cold and gray clouds and the shooting to represent the darkness. Furthermore, when she introduces her son she talks about this light inside of him. The light that dwindles and disappears after the parkland shooting. My favorite insight she reveals in this short video was when the she  introduces the concept that our fears can be passed down. I find this really interesting and it provokes my thoughts on if this could be possible.