My Fear

This poem stood out to me for some reason when I was reading through the poems tonight. I wasn’t sure why, then I remembered that we had briefly discussed nightmares in Spanish class. My subconscious must be telling me something.

Anyway, I think this poem is about a person having a nightmare. The whole thing aboviously deals with fear, which is an integral part of any nightmare. What makes me feel as if this is specifically about a nightmare is the last line: ‘before I slept, and met you’, thus implying that the person is asleep and dreaming.

The poem personifies fear as a person carrying a one’s fears in a sack in order to give these fears to the recipient/victim/dreamer. The Fear-man (I have a picture in my head of him looking sort of like the grim reaper) also keeps a list of what scares the person the most, including death. Death was probably mentioned because almost everyone can relate to having a fear of death, since very few of us actually want to die, or are unconcerned about our eventual demise.

The dreamer also wishes for whatever fears are brought to him in this nightmare to be simple and not very scary fears, like bats and crickets. ‘Small’ fears he calls them. These are fears that do not affect someone in a great way and are easily overcome. I, for example, fear bugs. They freak me out. Yet I am not extremely bugophobic and can deal with bugs and smash them when they invade my room. (Ants and cockroaches and silverfish and spiders are horrible things). I’ve found, though, that in dreams even little fears that aren’t serious can turn drastic. If one fears papercuts, for example, but only to the extent that one is usually careful turning a page but isn’t too upset when one actually gets a papercut, one might have a horrible nightmare about papercuts in which one dies from blood loss. In dreams our fears are often exaggerated to the point of ridiculousness and yet, while asleep, are still frightening.