Once Upon a Time...
Karen Thompson Walker: What fear can teach us
Read the transcript here.
Karen Thompson Walker compares human fears towards the components of stories. All stories involve characters, plots, imagery, and suspense. Our fears contain all of these aspects as well, in our fears we are the main character that goes through a sequence of suspense, that can create a vividly terrifying image in our imagination, and usually contain the questions of "what would happen?" and "what if?" Its human nature to not only think about the future but also worry about it. Karen Thompson Walker also mentions the case of the whale ship Essex, in which the crew was swayed by the artistic rather than the scientific temperament. When faced with the choice of possible cannibals and possible starvation, the crew decided against the idea that was most vivid to them, being eaten by cannibals, and chose the idea that appeared to be less vivid, slowly starving to death. Finally she makes the point that truest fears that we can experience are the ones that are slow and subtle.
The speaker, Karen Thompson Walker, tries to persuade her audience towards her way of thinking, that fears are nothing more than fictional stories, and can provide us with wisdom and insight about the truth. She accomplishes this through her use of ethos, logos, and pathos in her speech.
As a fictional writer, she uses her experience of writing her novel, The Age of Miracles, to how humans are able to think about the future, and how the future can bring up questions of fear. Since she is an experienced writer, the audience believes her correlation between the components of stories and fears to be true. The speaker also mentions famous novels like, The Origin of Species, Jane Eyre, and The Remembrance of Things Past to ensure her credibility as a well-educated, and successful author. This use of ethos allows the audience to trust the speaker's perspective because of her credibility as an author, and persuades the audiences towards her purpose.
Aside from using famous novels and authors, Karen Thompson Walker references to the whale ship, Essex, throughout her speech. The story of the ship and the crew inspired Herman Melville to write Moby Dick. She uses direct quotes from Herman Melville and Vladimir Nabokov to support her support her purpose of reading our fears in a more scientific temperament than an artistic one. Karen Thompson Walker also uses a study concerning "Productive Paranoia" to inform the audience that how they read, and studied the fear can help them prepare for their fears. This use of logos successfully supports the speaker's claims and contributes to a more persuasive, and convincing argument in her favor.
The story of the Essex also allows the audience to sympathize for the crew members that were placed in the tragic situation. Karen Thompson Walker adds to this emotional response form the audience by including a fear from her childhood, and including more common fears in her examples. As a child she feared the earthquakes that happened in California, and was always worried that "the Big One might strike while we were sleeping." The inclusion of her own fear makes the audience feel a personal connection with her, and creates a relatable, and sympathetic or empathetic mood in the audience. While describing the relationship between stories and fears, she uses common fears like, flying on a plane as an example to create that further understanding and connection between herself and the audience. The use of pathos in the speech allows this connection to reach the audience on a personal and emotional level that makes the speaker a relatable person. Due to this, the author seems very passionate about her beliefs concerning the subject of fear, which further persuades the audience to her purpose.
I decided to analyze this talk because fear has been a big aspect of my life. I have been questioning several things like, whether I'll get into my dream school or not, and where I'll attend college if I don't. I really connected to the speaker's point that "the most nuanced stories in literature are often the richest, so too might our subtlest fears be the truest" because I agree that the worst fears that you can face are the fears that are unexpected or that move very slowly. I also agreed with Karen Thompson Walker that how we read our fears determines what we can gain from them.
