Fear

Passages

Every passage tagged with this emotion in the Vela corpus. Search the body text, narrow by source or register, click through to a book’s profile to see how the passage sits with the rest of the work.

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• From The Glass Castle: A Memoir (2005)

  out of the wooden box where I kept my geode, put it in my purse, and brought it back to the store. All morning I nervously waited for Mr. Becker to leave for lunch. When he was finally gone, I opened the display case, slipped the watch inside, and rearranged the other watches around it. I moved fast. The week before, I had stolen the watch without breaking a sweat. But now I was terrified that someone would catch me putting it back. IN LATE AUGUST, I was washing clothes in the tin pan in the living room when I heard someone coming up the stairs singing. It was Lori. She burst into the living room, duffel bag over her shoulder, laughing and belting out one of those goofy summer-camp songs kids sing at night around the fire. I’d never heard Lori cut loose like this before. She positively glowed as she told me about the hot meals and the hot showers and all the friends she’d made. She’d even had a boyfriend who kissed her. “Everyone assumed I was a normal person,” she said. “It was weird.” Then she told me that it had occurred to her that if she got out of Welch, and away from the family, she might have a shot at a happy life. From then on, she began looking forward to the day she’d leave Little Hobart Street and be on her own. A few days later, Mom came home. She seemed different, too. She had lived in a dorm on the university campus, without four kids to take care of, and she had loved it. She’d attended lectures and she’d painted. She’d read stacks of self-help books, and they had made her realize that she’d been living her life for other people. She intended to quit her teaching job and devote herself to her art. “It’s time I did something for myself,” she said. “It’s time I started living my life for me.” “Mom, you spent the whole summer renewing your certificate.” “If I hadn’t done that, I never would have had this breakthrough.” “You can’t quit your job,” I said. “We need the money.” “Why do I always have to be the one who earns the money?” Mom asked. “You have a job. You can earn money. Lori can earn money, too. I’ve got more important things to do.” • • • I thought Mom was having another tantrum. I assumed that come opening day, she’d be off in Lucy Jo’s Dart to Davy Elementary, even if we had to cajole her. But on that first day of school, Mom refused to get out of bed. Lori, Brian, and I pulled back the covers and tried to drag her out, but she wouldn’t budge. I told her she had responsibilities. I told her child welfare might come down on us again if she wasn’t working. She folded her arms across her chest and stared us down.

• From The Glass Castle: A Memoir (2005)

  “You make me, Mr. Tough Guy!” she screamed as she ran away. Dad jerked the steering wheel to one side and drove off the road into the desert after her. Lori, Brian, and I braced one another with our arms, like we always did when Dad went on some wild chase that we knew would get bumpy. Dad stuck his head out the window as he drove, hollering at Mom, calling her a “stupid whore” and a “stinking cunt” and ordering her to get back into the car. Mom refused. She was ahead of us, bobbing in and out of the desert brush. Since she never used curse words, she was calling Dad names like “blankety-blank” and “worthless drunk so-and-so.” Dad stopped the car, then jammed down the accelerator and popped the clutch. We shot forward toward Mom, who screamed and jumped out of the way. Dad turned around and went for her again. It was a moonless night, so we couldn’t see Mom except when she ran into the beam of the headlights. She kept looking over her shoulder, her eyes wide like a hunted animal’s. We kids cried and begged Dad to stop, but he ignored us. I was even more worried about the baby inside Mom’s swollen belly than I was about her. The car bounced on holes and rocks, brush scratching against its sides and dust coming through the open windows. Finally, Dad cornered Mom against some rocks. I was afraid he might smush her with the car, but instead he got out and dragged her back, legs flailing, and threw her into the car. We banged back through the desert and onto the road. Everyone was quiet except Mom, who was sobbing that she really did carry Lori for fourteen months. • • • Mom and Dad made up the next day, and by late afternoon Mom was cutting Dad’s hair in the living room of the apartment we’d rented in Blythe. He’d taken off his shirt and was sitting backward on a chair with his head bowed and his hair combed forward. Mom was snipping away while Dad pointed out the parts that were still too long. When they were finished, Dad combed his hair back and announced that Mom had done a helluva fine shearing job. Our apartment was in a one-story cinder-block building on the outskirts of town. It had a big blue-and-white plastic sign in the shape of an oval, and a boomerang that said: THE LBJ APARTMENTS. I thought it stood for Lori, Brian, and Jeannette, but Mom said LBJ were the initials of the president, who, she added, was a crook and a warmonger. A few truck drivers and cowboys had rooms at the LBJ Apartments, but

• From The Canterbury Tales (2009)

  In the wood, at the time and place appointed, Arcite and Palamon confronted one another. They both tried to gain their composure, and master their countenance, just like the hunters of Thrace who stand waiting for the lion or the bear to be flushed out. When they hear the beast come rushing through the branches and the leaves, they think to themselves, ‘Here comes my mortal enemy. One of us must die. Either I will slay it when it comes rushing forward or, if fortune is against me, it will kill me.’ Palamon knew the strength of Arcite, and Arcite was well aware of the might of Palamon. They did not greet or salute each other, but without any words they helped one another to put on his armour. They were so courteous that they might have been brothers. But then they sailed out in deadly combat, their swords and lances at the ready. How could they maintain their contest for so long? Well, as you may imagine, Palamon fought like a ferocious lion while Arcite attacked him with all the savagery of a tiger. No. They were more beastly than that. They fought like wild boars, their jaws frothing with white foam. They fought up to their ankles in blood. CRASH. BANG. OUCH. There I will leave them, fighting, to their destinies. Destiny is the administrator, the general surveyor, of God’s plan. Providence lies in the mind of God. Destiny is the means whereby it is worked out in the world. It is so powerful that it overrules all contradiction. That which is deemed impossible may be determined by destiny, even if it happens only once in a thousand years. All our instincts and appetites on earth - whether for war or peace, for love or hate - are ruled by destiny. So in that spirit I turn to Theseus, lord of Athens, whose instinct and appetite were for hunting. In May, particularly, he was eager to chase and kill the royal hart. The day did not dawn when he was not dressed and ready to mount his horse, accompanied by huntsmen and hounds and horns. He loved the chase, and he loved the kill. He cried out, in the pursuit, ‘So ho!’ and ‘Ware! Ware!’ He worshipped the god of war, of course; but after Mars he venerated Diana, the goddess of the hunt. Clear was the day, and bright the trembling air, when Theseus rode out. He was in the highest spirits, accompanied as he was by his queen, Hippolita, and by fair Emily dressed all in green. He had been told by his men that there was a hart lurking in a nearby wood, and with all speed he rode up to the spot; he knew well enough that this was the place where the beast might break cover, and fly across the stream to make its escape. So he slipped the leashes of the hounds in preparation for pursuit. Yet wait. Call off the dogs.

• From Summer Sisters (1998)

  we angry?” “I’m not angry,” Vix said. “Good ... because neither am I.” “Maybe we’re scared,” Vix said. “Scared?” “Of being apart. Of losing each other.” “We’re never going to lose each other,” Caitlin said, holding Vix in her arms. It was strange staying at the house without Caitlin. Their bedroom, with all its memories of past summers, felt empty. Vix played a tape they’d made singing “Dancing Queen” ... and laughed at how young they sounded. She lay awake on her bed running through the details of every summer, but she could feel the panic of her last morning in this room, too, the morning she’d packed and left at sunrise a year ago, never to return. “Would you rather stay in the boys’ room?” Abby asked when she’d arrived, anticipating her feelings. Neither Sharkey nor the Chicago Boys were coming back that summer. They were off doing their own things. She would finally have her chance to be an only child, the focus of Abby’s and Lamb’s attention, not that she wanted it now that she had Bru. She was grateful when Abby began to fill the house with guests— her college roommate, who lived in San Francisco; her parents, whom Vix had never met; old friends from Chicago; new friends from Cambridge. They’d eat dinner late and Vix was invited to join them anytime she wished, but after work she’d head for Bru’s cabin in Gay Head. He’d moved in mid-July—one room, woodstove, no plumbing or electricity, but cozy, with a real bed and curtains made by his aunt. Sometimes, as she slept in his arms after making love, she’d dream of Nathan. One night Nathan, his body straight and tall, was pushing her through the woods in a baby carriage. When they reached their destination, a beautiful vista at the top of a mountain, he tilted the stroller so she could see. But she wasn’t strapped in and she slid out, then down, tumbling through space, her arms and legs splayed, a look of terror on her face. She cried out in her sleep, waking herself and Bru.

• From The Canterbury Tales (2009)

  ‘Ma dame,’ Chanticleer said, ‘thank you for your advice. Can I bring up the subject of Cato? You are right to say that he was of great renown as a teacher and that he did dismiss the importance of dreams. But there are other authorities, all of them mentioned in the old books, who are even more learned than Cato. They take quite the opposite position. They have proved by experience that dreams are intimations of the joys and woes that people will suffer in this existence. There can be no argument about it. It is a fact of life. ‘One of the greatest authors tells the following story. Two young men had gone on pilgrimage, in sincere devotion, when they came into a town so full of fellow pilgrims that they could not find an inn for the night. There was not a bed to be had for either of them. So they decided to split up, and separately find whatever accommodation there was. One of them ended up for the night in a cattle-stall, surrounded by oxen, while the other had more luck and secured reasonable lodgings. That is what luck does. It favours one over another. It is the way of humankind. ‘So the more fortunate of them was sleeping in bed when he was visited by a bad dream. He dreamed that his companion was calling out to him in distress. “I will be murdered,” he cried, “in an ox-stall! It will happen to me tonight! Come and help me, friend, before it is too late!” The sleeper woke with a start and sat up in bed; but, when he was fully awake, he turned back to sleep again. It was just a dream, after all. But then he had the same nightmare again. It was followed by a third vision, when his friend appeared before him covered in blood. “I am slain,” he said. “Behold the wide and deep wounds that cover me. Arise at dawn tomorrow and walk down to the west gate of the town. You will find there a cart-load of dung. My corpse is hidden there. Be bold. Arrest the carter at once. I was murdered for my gold, you see.” Then the apparition, with pale face and sorrowful eyes, told the whole story of his killing in the cattle-stall. This was no false dream, I can assure you.

• From The Case for God (2009)

  There had probably been some kind of festival at Eleusis since the Neolithic era. But in the sixth century, an enormous new cult hall was built, and for over a millennium the Eleusinian Mysteries would remain an integral part of the religious life of Athens. 10 Each autumn, a new set of mystai voluntarily applied for initiation. What happened inside the cult hall was kept secret because a mere recital of events would sound trivial to an outsider, but the secrecy means we have only partial glimpses of what went on. It seems, however, that the mystai reenacted Demeter’s sojourn in Eleusis. Like any ancient initiation, these rituals were frightening. The mystai understood that the rites and the myth of Eleusis were symbolic: if you had asked them if there was sufficient historical evidence for Demeter’s visit, they would have found the query somewhat inept. Mythos was theologia (“speaking about a god”), and like any religious discourse, it made sense only in the context of the disciplined exercises that brought it to life. 11 The fact that the myth could not be understood literally made it more effective. “What is surmised (but not overtly expressed) is more frightening,” explained the Hellenistic writer Demetrius. “What is clear and manifest is easily despised, like naked men. Therefore the mysteries too are expressed in the form of allegory, in order to arouse consternation and dread, just as they are performed in darkness at night.” 12 The rites enabled the mystai to share Demeter’s suffering. Her cult showed that there was no life without death. Seeds had to be buried in the depths of the earth before they could bring forth life-giving food, so Demeter, goddess of grain, was also a mistress of the underworld. The Mystery would force initiates to face up to their own mortality, experience the terror of death, and learn to accept it as an integral part of life. But it was a hard, exhausting process. It began in Athens, where the mystai fasted for two whole days, sacrificed a piglet in honor of Persephone, and set off in a huge throng on the long, hot march to Eleusis. By this time, they were weak and apprehensive. The epoptai, who had been initiated the previous year, walked with them, abusing and threatening the mystai while they called hypnotically on Dionysus, god of transformation, driving the crowd into a frenzy of excitement. By the time the mystai arrived in Eleusis, confused, elated, exhausted, and scared, it was evening, and they were herded to and fro through the streets by flickering torchlight until, thoroughly disoriented, they finally plunged into the pitch darkness of the initiation hall. From this point, we have only brief, disconnected glimpses of the rites.

• From Birthday Girl (2018)

  Aunque repentinamente, agarra la parte posterior de mis muslos y me levanta, obligando a que mis piernas se envuelvan alrededor de él. Fijándome contra la pared, me mira y niega con la cabeza. —No vas a ir ninguna parte. Y luego se lanza hacia mí, capturando la parte inferior de mi barbilla en su boca. Jadeo, mi cabeza cae hacia atrás y mis párpados se cierran, mientras muerde y besa, enviando cosquillas a lo largo de mis brazos. Me aferro a sus hombros y cedo, retorciéndome contra él y anhelando la fricción de él entre mis piernas. Uno de sus brazos me sostiene mientras el otro se arrastra hasta el tirante de mi sostén, tirando hacia abajo, así puede besar la piel de mi hombro. Jadeo, desesperada. —Quítalo. Por favor. Su mano se mueve a mi espalda, pero en lugar de desabrocharlo, tira del tirante y lo lleva hacia abajo. Sin embargo, solo estoy desnuda por un momento antes que ambos escuchemos una puerta cerrándose de golpe en el interior de la casa y nos sobresaltamos. —¿Papá? —dice Cole en voz alta—. ¿Estás despierto? —Mierda —sisea Pike entre dientes. —Oh, Dios. —Me retuerzo fuera de su agarre y me suelta. Me agacho, recogiendo mi camiseta y mis zapatos de nuevo, levantándolos para cubrirme. Veo la luz de la cocina encendiéndose a través de la puerta trasera y rodeo el costado de la casa, escondiéndome fuera de vista. Mi corazón late con fuerza en mis oídos y no puedo tragar. Echo un vistazo alrededor de la esquina hacia Pike y él mira alrededor como si no estuviera seguro de qué hacer, pero finalmente toma la manguera, el agua sigue corriendo y continúa lavando sus brazos y manos ya limpios. —¡Sí, aquí afuera! —llama, su manzana de Adán rebota de arriba abajo. Oigo el crujir de la puerta mosquitera al abrirse y me retraigo, asegurándome de estar fuera de la vista. —Hola, ¿qué estás haciendo? —pregunta Cole. Rápidamente vuelvo a abrochar mi sujetador y me pongo de nuevo mi camiseta empapada. —Solo limpiando —responde Pike—. El río casi inundó al puerto hoy. Intenté llamarte. —Sí, lo siento. Hay un momento de silencio y todo lo que puedo escuchar es el agua derramándose sobre la hierba ahora inundada. —¿Dónde está Jordan? —dice Cole. —No sé... ¿adentro? Mis ojos caen y la culpa me golpea como una puñalada. Tuvo que mentirle. Quiero decir, por supuesto que lo haría. Yo también lo hubiera hecho. Pero la realidad se asienta respecto a que puedo dejar a Cole y alejarme y la vida continuará. Pike no puede hacer eso. Es su hijo. —¿Te quedas? —pregunta Pike. —Solo voy a recoger algunas cosas —explica Cole, sonando solemne—. No creo que ella me quiera cerca por lo menos durante un tiempo. Gracias por dejarla quedarse aquí. La voz de Pike apenas está por encima de un susurro. —No hay problema. Hay más silencio y luego escucho que el agua se detiene y algo de movimiento.

• From The Canterbury Tales (2009)

  ‘Dear heart,’ she asked him, ‘what is troubling you? Why are you crying out in this way? You are asleep, I suppose. Please wake up.’ Chanticleer opened one eye. ‘Ma dame,’ he replied, ‘don’t be alarmed. God knows I have just had a frightful dream. My heart is still fluttering beneath my feathers. I hope everything turns out for the best. I hope that my dream does not prove prophetic.’ ‘Tell me.’ ‘I dreamed that I was walking up and down the yard here, when I saw a savage beast very much like a wolfhound. It was about to take me in its jaws and swallow me. It was a tawny colour, somewhere between orange and red, but its tail and ears were black. It had a horrible little snout, and its eyes glowed like burning coals. It gave me such a fright, I can tell you. That must have been the reason I was groaning.’ ‘Shame on you,’ Pertelote replied. ‘What happened to your courage? Now you have forfeited all my love and respect. I cannot love a coward, for God’s sake. Whatever we women may say, we all want husbands who are generous and courageous - and discreet, too, of course. We don’t want to marry misers or fools or men who are afraid of their own shadow. And we don’t like boasters. How dare you say, to your wife and paramour, that you are afraid of anything? Do you have a man’s beard without a man’s heart? For shame! And why are you afraid of dreams? They mean nothing. They are smoke and mist. They come from bad digestion or from an overflow of bile. I am sure that this dream you describe is a direct result of your bilious stomach, which leads people to dream of flaming arrows, of orange flames, and of tawny beasts that threaten them. Bile is the red humour, after all. It stirs up images of strife and of yelping dogs, just as the melancholy humour provokes the sleeping man to cry out about black bulls and black bears and black devils. I could give you a list of the other humours, and their effects, but I will forbear. ‘Suffice to say what Cato said. That wise man declared that there was no truth in dreams. So, husband, when we fly down from our perch, remember to take a laxative. I swear on my life that you need to purge yourself of all these bad humours. You must shit out your bile and your melancholy as soon as possible. I know that there is no apothecary in the town, but I will teach you what medicinal herbs to chew. We can find them in the farmyard here, and they will cleanse you below and above. ‘You are choleric by complexion, of course, with your red crest and comb. Beware that the midday sun does not find you full of hot properties.

• From The Canterbury Tales (2009)

  ‘On the very next morning the man went down to the cattle-stall and called for his companion. The carter came up to him and told him that his fellow had already left town. He had gone at dawn. Of course the young pilgrim was suspicious, having in mind the dream of the night before. So he went at once to the west gate of the town and there, just as he had been informed in his dream, he found the cart-load of dung ready to manure the land. Then he cried out “Harrow!” and “Vengeance!” He told the townsmen that the body of his friend and companion lay buried here, having been foully murdered. He called out for justice. He demanded that the authorities of the town take action. “There has been a murder! The corpse of my friend lies here!” What do I need to say? The people tipped the cart on to its side and there, among the shit, was the body of the dead man.’ Chanticleer ruffled his feathers, with a little shiver of disgust, before going on. ‘Oh God in heaven, You are just and true. See how You have revealed the truth. “Murder will out.” That is the saying. Murder is so abominable a crime that God will not allow it to be concealed. It may take a year, or two, or three, but eventually it will be revealed and seen for what it is. The authorities took the carter and tortured him until he confessed; then he was hanged and his corpse cut down from the scaffold. ‘So you see, dear Pertelote, the real meaning of dreams. In the same book - in the very next chapter - there was another true story. Two men were about to pass over the ocean to a distant country, but the wind was against them. So they decided to stay in the city beside the harbour. Then, on the following day, in the evening, the wind had become favourable. The two men went to their beds in good spirits, in full expectation of being able to sail the next day.

• From The Canterbury Tales (2009)

  According to Ovid and other learned writers, Midas had two great ass’s ears concealed beneath his long hair. He was terrified lest anyone should find out about his deformity. That would be the end. So no one knew anything about it, except his wife. He loved her, and he trusted her. So he told her to keep quiet about this - this unfortunate development. Could she do that? Could she hell! Of course she swore to him that she would lose everything in the world rather than reveal his secret. It would be evil, she said, to besmirch the honour of her dear husband. It would shame her, too, beyond reckoning. Yet she almost died with the effort of suppressing the truth; she was sure that she would burst, that the words would make their way out somehow. Do you know that feeling? I do. She had promised to tell no one. So what was she to do? She ran down to some marshland near the house, her heart pounding, and put her mouth close to the reeds and the water just like a heron. ‘Now,’ she said to the water, ‘don’t betray me. Don’t repeat this. I am going to tell you something that I will never tell anyone else. My husband has the ears of an ass! God. I feel so much better now that I’ve said it. I am so relieved that I have let go of the secret.’ It just proves that we women cannot keep a confidence for very long. The words will pour out. If you want to learn the rest of the story, you will have to look it up in Ovid. When the knight realized that he was never going to find an answer to the question - what do women love most - he felt ill at ease and unhappy. But the day for his return had come. He had to go home and attend the queen’s court. On his way back, full of care, he happened to ride through a forest. There, by the side of the track, he saw a most amazing spectacle. There were twenty-four or more young maidens dancing in a ring among the trees. He was drawn to them, in the hope that he might acquire some secret wisdom from this circle of young women. Yet as he came up to them, they vanished into thin air. The dance had gone. He looked around in bewilderment. It was then that he saw an old crone, sitting on the upturned trunk of a dead tree. He had never come across an uglier woman. ‘Sir knight,’ she said, ‘this is not the way for you. Tell me what you want here. What are you looking for? It may be that I can help you. Old women are sometimes wise women.’

• From The Canterbury Tales (2009)

  In the good old days, in the time of blessed King Arthur, this island was filled with spirits. It was a magical land. The queen of the fairies danced over green mead and meadow, with all her elves and pixies in attendance. That was what people believed, in any case. It must have been hundreds of years ago, by my reckoning. Now we live in the modern world. We no longer see fairies. Do you know why? They have been chased away by monks and friars who are forever purifying and sanctifying the different parts of the country. These clericals seek out woods and streams; they spread out over the land as thick as specks of dust in the sunbeam. They bless the halls, the chambers, the kitchens and the bedrooms; they bless cities, towns, boroughs, castles and high towers; they bless villages, barns, stables and dairies. That is why there are no more fairies. The friars now tread upon the elvish paths, morning and evening, saying their matins and their other holy offices; where there were once pixies there are now prayers. Of course a woman can feel much safer, knowing that there won’t be an evil spirit beneath a bush or tree. She may meet a friar, of course. But he will take only her chastity, not her soul. Once upon a time there was a knight at the court of King Arthur. One day this knight was riding by the riverside, without any company, when all at once he saw a young maid walking ahead of him. She was also alone. He took advantage of the situation, and raped her. She tried to fight him off, but she did not have the strength. This sinful deed caused such an uproar, and provoked such criticism at court, that the king ordered the knight to be executed. He would have been beheaded, according to the law, were it not for the fact that the queen and the other ladies of the court pleaded for his life. They cried, ‘Mercy! Mercy!’ so long and so loudly that the king eventually gave in and delegated the decision to his wife. She would decide whether the knight lived or died.

• From The Case for God (2009)

  Writhing seized Philistia’s settlers, and then terrified Edom’s chieftains, Moav’s “rams”—trembling did seize them; then melted away all Canaan’s settlers.21 Scholars think that the song was originally sung during the spring festival at Gilgal, where, it was said, the waters of the Jordan had miraculously parted before the Israelites to enable them to enter the Promised Land22—an event that utterly confounded “the kings of the Amorites on the west bank of the Jordan and all the kings of the Canaanites in the coastal region.”23 Every year, when the Jordan flooded its banks, this crossing (pesah) was ritually reenacted at Gilgal. Priests and laypeople would process past the floodwaters and enter the temple, where they ate unleavened bread (mazzoth) and roasted corn in memory of their ancestors, who had “tasted the produce of the land there for the first time.”24 It seems, therefore, that not only did the old cosmological myths shape the Israelites’ understanding of their history but that the rituals of Gilgal helped to form the myth of the exodus from Egypt.

• From The Case for God (2009)

  The Palaeolithic caves may have been the scene of similar rites. Some of the paintings include dancing men dressed as animals. The Bushmen say that their own rock paintings depict “the world behind this one that we see with our eyes,” which the shamans visit during their mystical flights.14 They smear the walls of the caves with the blood, excrement, and fat of their kill in order to restore it, symbolically, to the earth; animal blood and fat were ingredients of the Palaeolithic paints, and the act of painting itself could have been a ritual of restoration.15 The images may depict the eternal, archetypal animals that take temporary physical form in the upper world.16 All ancient religion was based on what has been called the perennial philosophy, because it was present in some form in so many premodern cultures. It sees every single person, object, or experience as a replica of a reality in a sacred world that is more effective and enduring than our own.17 When an Australian Aborigine hunts his prey, he feels wholly at one with the First Hunter, caught up in a richer and more potent reality that makes him feel fully alive and complete.18 Maybe the hunters of Lascaux reenacted the archetypal hunt in the caves amid these paintings of the eternal hunting ground before they left their tribe to embark on the perilous quest for food.19 We can, of course, only speculate. Some scholars believe that these caverns were likely to have been used for the initiation ceremonies that marked the adolescent boy’s rite of passage from childhood to maturity. This type of initiation was crucial in ancient religion and is still practiced in traditional societies today.20 When they reach puberty, boys are taken from their mothers and put through frightening ordeals that transform them into men. The tribe cannot afford the luxury of allowing an adolescent to “find himself” Western-style; he has to relinquish the dependency of infancy and assume the burdens of adulthood overnight. To this end, boys are incarcerated in tombs, buried in the earth, informed that they are about to be eaten by a monster, flogged, circumcised, and tattooed. If the initiation is properly conducted, a youth will be forced to reach for inner resources that he did not know he possessed. Psychologists tell us that the terror of such an experience causes a regressive disorganization of the personality that, if skillfully handled, can lead to a constructive reorganization of the young man’s powers. He has faced death, come out the other side, and is now psychologically prepared to risk his life for his people.

• From The Glass Castle: A Memoir (2005)

  A LOT OF OUR NEIGHBORS on North Third Street were kind of weird. A clan of Gypsies lived down the block in a big, falling-apart house with plywood nailed over the porch to create more indoor space. They were always stealing our stuff, and one time, after Brian’s pogo stick had disappeared, he saw one of the old Gypsy women bouncing down the sidewalk on it. She wouldn’t give it back, so Mom got into a big argument with the head of the clan, and the next day we found a chicken with its throat cut on our doorstep. It was some kind of Gypsy hex. Mom decided, as she put it, to fight magic with magic. She took a ham bone out of the beans and went down to the Gypsies’ house, waving it in the air. Standing on the sidewalk, she held up the bone like a crucifix at an exorcism, and called down a curse on the entire Gypsy clan and their house, vowing that it would collapse with the lot of them in it and that the bowels of the earth would open up and swallow them forever if they bothered us again. The next morning Brian’s pogo stick was lying in the front yard. The neighborhood also had its share of perverts. Mostly, they were shabby, hunched men with wheedling voices who hung around on street corners and followed us to and from school, trying to give us boosts when we climbed a fence, offering us candy and loose change if we would go play with them. We called them creeps and hollered at them to leave us alone, but I worried about hurting their feelings because I couldn’t help wondering if maybe they were telling the truth, that all they wanted was to be our friends. At night Mom and Dad always left the front door and the back door and all the windows open. Since we had no air-conditioning, they explained, we needed to let the air circulate. From time to time, a vagrant or a wino would wander through the front door, assuming the house was deserted. When we woke up in the morning, we’d find one asleep in a front room. As soon as we roused them, they shambled off apologetically. Mom always assured us they were just harmless drunks. Maureen, who was four and had a terrible fear of bogeymen, kept dreaming that intruders in Halloween masks were coming through the open doors to get us. One night when I was almost ten, I was awakened by someone running his hands over my private parts. At first it was confusing. Lori and I slept in the same bed, and I thought

• From The Case for God (2009)

  At a Pentecostal service, men and women fell into tranced states, were seen to levitate, and felt that their bodies were melting in ineffable joy. They saw bright streaks of light in the air and sprawled on the ground, felled by a weight of glory. 20 This was a form of positivism, because Pentecostalists relied on the immediacy of sense experience to validate their beliefs. 21 But the meteoric explosion of this type of faith indicated widespread unhappiness with the modern rational ethos. It developed at a time when people were beginning to have doubts about science and technology, which had shown their lethal potential during the Great War. Pentecostalists were also reacting against the more conservative Christians who were trying to make their Biblebased religion entirely reasonable and scientific. As A. C. Dixon, one of the founding fathers of Protestant fundamentalism, explained in 1920, “I am a Christian because I am a Thinker, a Rationalist, a Scientist.” His faith depended upon “exact observation and correct thinking.” Doctrines were not theological speculations but facts. 22 Evangelical Christians still aspired to the early modern ideal of absolute certainty based on scientific verification. Yet fundamentalists would also see their faith experiences— born-again conversions, faith healing, and strongly felt emotional conviction—as positive verification of their beliefs. Dixon’s almost defiant rationalism indicates, perhaps, a hidden fear. With the Great War, an element of terror had entered conservative Protestantism in the United States. Many believed that the catastrophic encounters at the Somme and Passchendaele were the battles that, according to scripture, would usher in the Last Days; many Christians were now convinced that they were on the front line of an apocalyptic war against Satan. The wild propaganda stories of German atrocities seemed proof positive that they had been right to fight the nation that had spawned the Higher Criticism. 23 But they were equally mistrustful of democracy, which carried overtones of the “mob rule” and “red republic” that had erupted in the atheistic Bolshevik revolution (1917). 24 These American Christians no longer saw Jesus as a loving savior; rather, as the leading conservative Isaac M. Haldeman proclaimed, the Christ of Revelation “comes forth as one who no longer seeks either friendship or love. ... He descends that he may shed the blood of men.” 25 Every single fundamentalist movement that I have studied in Judaism, Christianity, and Islam is rooted in profound fear. 26 For Dixon and his conservative Protestant colleagues, who were about to establish the first fundamentalist movement of modern times, it was a religious variation of the widespread malaise that followed the Great War, and it made them distort the tradition they were trying to defend. They were ready for a fight, but the conflict might have remained in their own troubled minds had not the more liberal Protestants chosen this moment to launch an offensive against them.

• From City of Night (1963)

  They stood momentarily at the draped door, the two cops, looking back into the bar as if to engrave each face here threateningly—indelibly—on their minds: the look of someone who says: “This is only the beginning of the game—a hint; we’ll get you eventually; if not here, then somewhere else.”... Typically cop-swaggering, armed with invisible bully-sticks, they walked out. The frozen scenes about me resume, as if a movie film had begun again at the exact point at which it had paused. The blackhaired woman says to me: “They try to bug everyone before the tourists come in. Mostly the hustlers,” she added pointedly. “But after a while, the closer it gets to Mardi Gras, it cools off; they lose control—too many to take care of.” Coming from a woman—a woman with whom I havent even spoken—those words, aimed so surely at me, embarrass me curiously. “Where are you really staying?” she asked me. “At the Y,” I told her. “You sure?” Then: “Look, boy, Im not trying to pry. I know your scene. And I dont give a damn. But if you dont have a pad, theyll bust you for vag.... Hey! Desdemonal Drusilla!” she calls out to the two look-alike queens. “Theyre real sisters,” she explains to me, “twins: Desdemona and Drusilla Duncan. And theyre cool.” “You callin us, sweetheart?” one queen says, and they both slide off their stools simultaneously and come over demurely. The woman introduced us. “Chawmed,” says Desdemona Duncan. “Dee-lighted, Ahm sure,” says Drusilla Duncan. “I really have a place,” I said to the woman, realizing why shes asked the two queens over. The two queens perched on nearby schools. “Too bad,” sighed Desdemona and Drusilla Duncan almost at the same time. The woman shrugged. The bartender refilled her glass—with Seven-Up. “Im Sylvia,” the woman introduced herself. “I own this bar.” “And shes a real darling, too,” trilled Drusilla Duncan. Someone entered. Sylvia squinted, leaned forward. Then she turned away. “I hate the vice cops as much as you do,” she told me. 2 Two youngmen near the Bourbon House face each other on the street—one, blackhaired and meanfaced, threatening the other with a large stick; the other, a small blond boy of about 18 (turned-up nose, cleft-chin, blue eyes, masses of blond hair over his forehead—a replica of the current, boyish, blond-faced teenage idols of rock-n-roll), tensely and imminently uncertainly menacing the other with a knife poised gleaming in the blind sun. Behind the dark one hovers a small skinny girl like an anxious vulture. Her painted mouth seems to have been slashed carelessly across her pinched face in a gaping, scarlet gash. The stick and the knife are ready to attack. Eyes starved for violence, the girl shouts malevolently to her dark boyfriend, pushing him forward: “Go, man! Kill the motherfucker!”

• From Summer Sisters (1998)

  Gus HE WOULD HAVE gone but he’s got a paper due Monday and on top of that his grandmother’s sick. It doesn’t look good. They’re keeping a bedside vigil. He can’t stand the idea of her suffering even though they keep telling him she’s not in pain. He and his grandmother have a special bond. He doesn’t want to lose his Baboo. And he knows how badly she wants to make it to his graduation. He calls during the party to wish Lamb a happy fiftieth. Just before they hang up he asks to speak to Vix. Hello, she says. Hey, Cough Drop ... how’s it going? What? she says. There’s a lot of noise. I can’t hear you. Gus Kline, he shouts. Just wanted to say hello. Is this really Gus? He laughs. Because if it is ... I can’t hear a thing. Never mind, he says. He’d like to see her again. He’s curious. AFTER THE CHAMPAGNE and cake, the poems and songs and silly gifts, Vix went upstairs with Caitlin, to the room that had always been reserved for her visits. Like Caitlin’s room on the Vineyard, Abby hadn’t touched this one either. Caitlin sat on the edge of the bed and hugged a pillow to her chest. “I suppose you can tell I had an abortion.” Vix was stunned. “God, Caitlin, I had no idea! Why didn’t you tell me?” “Do you tell me everything?”

• From The Canterbury Tales (2009)

  The uproar of the people continued. There were shouts and oaths resounding through the streets, and Nero could hear them asking one another: ‘Where is that false tyrant? Where is Nero?’ He was almost out of his mind with fear. He prayed to his heathen gods for help, but of course they could not assist him. He knew that he was about to die, and he ran into a nearby garden to hide himself. There he found two peasants, sitting around a large bonfire. He begged and pleaded with these two men to kill him and to cut off his head. He did not want to be recognized and shamefully mutilated after his death. Then he killed himself in front of them. He had no choice. Dame Fortune looked down, and laughed at his fate. Holofernes Behold Holofernes, the general of Nebuchadnezzar. There was no king’s soldier more famous or more victorious. There was no one stronger in battle. There was no one more filled with pride and presumption. Fortune kissed him, fondled him and then led him to a place where his head was cut off. It happened before he knew it. For the sake of their wealth, and their liberty, men held him in fearful respect; he made his enemies renounce their faith. ‘Nebuchadnezzar is your god,’ he told them. ‘You shall worship no other deity.’ No one dared to disobey him - except in one city under siege, Bethulia, where an elder named Joachim was the high priest. Take heed of the death of mighty Holofernes. One night as he lay drunk among his army outside Bethulia, lying in a tent as spacious as a great barn, he was murdered by a woman. Despite his power and his strength Judith hacked off his head and, unknown to anyone, crept out of the tent and brought the severed head back to the town. The illustrious king Antiochus What need is there to describe the sovereign power of this man, proud in intent and evil in deed? There was no one in the world like him. You can read of him in the Book of Maccabees. You can read there, too, all of his vainglorious words. Then you will learn of his ruin and fall, and of his death on a bare hillside. Dame Fortune had so favoured him that he thought that he could touch the stars with his hand; he believed that he could lift mountains, and command the waves of the sea. Of all the people on the earth he hated God’s chosen; he tortured and killed them, believing that their God had no power over him. When he received the news of the defeat of his generals, Nicanor and Timotheus, he burned with wrath and hatred. He commanded that his chariot be prepared, and swore that he would not leave it until he had come to the gates of Jerusalem, where he would wreak his vengeance. But God forestalled him.

• From The Case for God (2009)

  In the years after the Thirty Years’ War, when religion seemed so badly compromised, it was thought that reason alone could create the conditions of a sustainable peace. The German philosopher Gottfried Wilhelm Leibniz (1646–1716) was also a diplomat who worked tirelessly to bring the new nation-states of Europe together.27 One of his chief projects was the construction of a universal language based on mathematical principles that would enable people to converse clearly and distinctly. The English philosopher John Locke (1632–1704) was convinced that the religious intolerance that had rent Europe apart was simply the result of an inadequate idea of God. If people were allowed to use their rational powers freely, they would discover the truth for themselves, because the natural world gave ample evidence for God. There was no further need for revelation, ritual, prayer, or superstitious doctrines. Where premodern theologians had been continually alert to the danger of God becoming an idolatrous projection, Locke argued that “when we would frame an Idea, the most suitable we can to the Supreme Being, we enlarge every one of these [Simple Ideas] with our Idea of Infinity, and so putting them together, make our complex Idea of God.”28 But the French mathematician Blaise Pascal (1623–62), a passionately religious man, returned to the older idea that God was hidden in nature and that it was no use trying to find him there.29 In fact, the mechanical universe was godless, frightening, and devoid of meaning: When I see the blind and wretched state of man, when I survey the whole universe in its deadness and man left to himself with no light, as though lost in this corner of the universe without knowing who put him there, what he has to do, what will become of him when he dies, incapable of knowing anything, I am moved to terror, like a man transported in his sleep to some terrifying desert island, who wakes up quite lost with no means of escape. Then I marvel that so wretched a state does not drive people to despair.30 Certainty did not come from the rational contemplation of “clear” and “distinct” ideas but from the “heart,” the inner core of the human person. In the “Memorial” stitched into the lining of his doublet, Pascal recorded an experience that had filled him with “certainty, certainty, heartfelt joy, peace.” It had come from the God of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob, not the God “of philosophers and scholars.”31

• From The Canterbury Tales (2009)

  ‘You are still in your green time, but youth will one day give way to age. The years come as silent as a stone. Death is the enemy of all, young or old, high or low. No one can escape. But even if we are all certain that we will die, sir, none of us know when that day will come. ‘Our intentions are good. You know that. We have never yet disobeyed you in anything. So very humbly we ask you to listen to our request. It concerns a marriage. If you agree, we will choose for you a wife in as short a time as possible. She will be of the utmost rank of the nobility, so that as your wife she will bring honour to you and to God. ‘Free us from fear and trembling, dear lord. Take a wife, for God’s sake. If it should happen - God forbid - that you should die and that your line came to an end, we might be ruled by some stranger from a strange land. We cannot think of anything more terrible. So we beg you to marry in all haste.’ Walter heard this humble and sorrowful request, and was moved by it. How could he be angry with such suppliants? ‘You well know, my dear people,’ he replied, ‘that before this moment I have never thought of the sweet constraints of a wife. I enjoy my liberty, and know well enough that it is not to be found in marriage. Where once I was free, I would be in servitude. ‘Nevertheless I understand your good intentions. I know your good will towards me. And I trust your judgement, as I have always done. So of my own free will I declare that I will be married as soon as I can. I know that you have promised today to find a wife for me, but I release you from that pledge. I wish to hear no more about it. ‘God knows that children are often very different from their parents. Goodness comes from God and not from noble ancestors or a rich family. I will put my trust in God. I place my life and estate - and my marriage - in His care. Let Him do with me as He please. ‘So allow me, please, to find a wife for myself. I will take the responsibility. But you must promise me this. I ask you to honour whatever wife I choose for as long as she may live. You must make the most solemn pledge to support her in word and deed, here and everywhere, just as if she were the daughter of an emperor.