Fear and hope, two powerful emotions that tug at our heartstrings, reveal the depths of humanity, and shape the world we live in each day. Hope is the feeling of expecting something positive or exciting to happen in the future that improves your life. Fear is the overwhelming feeling that danger or hardship is coming your way, making you anxious and paranoid. Both are present in William Golding’s book Lord of the Flies, and Ayn Rand’s novella Anthem. In Lord of the Flies, a group of boys go through the highs and lows of being stuck on a stranded island with no adult supervision. In Anthem, a man is torn between his controlling society, and the discovery of something new. Both books take on the struggle of characters grappling with what they will choose to motivate…show more content… Each person is so afraid of accidentally slipping up and saying something they aren’t supposed to, that they would rather just not speak at all. This illustrates the constant terror that everyone has about standing out and being their own individual. Eventually, Prometheus breaks free of the hold that this society has on him and runs away to the Uncharted Forest, yet only Gaea is willing to follow in his footsteps. When Gaea meets Prometheus in the Uncharted Forest and he asks her how she found him, she explains, “We heard that you had gone to the Uncharted Forest, for the whole City is speaking of it,” (Rand 82). Their entire society learns that Prometheus finally faced the fear that the world was living in and was shunned by society to hide in the forest. Despite this, they are still too afraid of the consequences of leaving their society to join him. In typical books and movies, one person takes a leap of faith to better the world, and the whole group follows. Although, in Anthem, only Gaea followed, demonstrating the harsh reality that hope cannot overcome
