Creating Significant Learning Experiences

Least Successful Essay Fake Things are Not Scary!

Asma, T. Steven. Monsters and the Moral Imagination. Web. 18 January 2012.

Rudin, Seymour. The Urban Gothic: From Transylvania to the South Bronx. Kent State University Press. 1974 , p115 - 124 Scary situations that seem real are considerably scarier than things that the reader or viewer deems fake. Authors use this tactic to play tricks on the reader’s mind. Stephen Asma makes this point in his article, Monsters and the Moral Imagination. When a scary situation seems real it tends to instill a certain emotion in the reader or viewer. This certain emotion is total fear that the situation could happen to their own self.

Amsa retells a story in his article about a man that entered a coffee shop and randomly started attacking people with a knife (Asma 2-3). The point of the story is to get the reader to begin thinking about what they would have done if there were in the same situation. This is easy for the reader to use their imagination and play out the situation in their own mind because the event is very real. The fact that the story is real makes the story scarier. A story about a masked man going after a family in the middle of the night over a series of nights tends to be scarier than a mythological creature. The reason for this is because when the events seem real, it is easier for the reader to put himself in the same situation. It is human nature for the reader or viewer to imagine and put themselves in the same situation and ask themselves, “what would I have done?” Whenever someone goes and sees a movie, there is always that one person that says, “Oh, she should have picked up that pair of scissors on the table.”

We use our imagination and put ourselves in certain situations so that we may learn more about our morals and ourselves. Authors use real settings and things that seem like they could