Join Me in the Depths of Terror

• How does fear fuel hysteria and mob mentality?

Like a spark that ignites a bonfire, fear, the unknown, and change fuels the hysteria that spreads as people become dragged into the same anxious mindset. Lured by fear, people become ravaged with emotions that are louder than their brains. In The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn by Mark Twain, the lynch swarm displays that mob mentality emerges from the depths of fear. Following the murder of the heavily intoxicated Boggs, individual townsfolk remark that Colonel Sherburn “ought to be lynched.” Small whispers evolve into all-out yelling sprees. As the crowd submits to their ongoing terror, they grow rowdy and unreasonable. “Snatching down every clothes-line they come to,” the hysterical mob rushes towards Sherburn’s house. It is not the genuine care that the townspeople have for Boggs that causes them to resort to violence; their only goal is getting rid of a catalyst of fear. As humans, we are born with the tendency to imitate and follow. Our first words reflect the words that our mothers and fathers say daily. Therefore, humans are quite akin to the sheep in Animal Farm by George Orwell that bleat “four legs good, two legs bad,” and just go with the flow. Considering the analogous mental environments that people live in, society’s “fools” who go against the flow are humanity’s only hope for a turn-around. A different opinion can cause a part of the hysterical mob to convert their thoughts towards the right path. People must learn not to succumb to fear and smother the fire in order to open their minds to the sweet taste of psychological tranquility.