Section D
November 29, 2012
Fear
By: Nigel Schilling
In the book Neverwhere by Neil Gaiman, Richard Mayhew is trapped in a placed called London Below and his fear throughout the story is that he might not return to his home in London Above. In the story, the marquis de Carabas tells Richards that London Below is inhabited by people who fell through the cracks in the world and Richard’s anxiety is that he will become one of those people and remain in London Below for the rest of his life. At first, Richard was asking many questions about London Below and really didn’t understand what was happening because he saw and experienced many unusual things that he would not of seen in London Above. As the story continued, Richard slowly stopped asking questions and at some point in the book, he almost gave up the fact that he might actually return to his normal life in London Above. The element that made him continue and not give up his journey was fear. The fact on how Richard was perturbed on many dangerous incongruities in London Below, made him continue his journey until he returned home. In this case, fear can be related to hope in the way where they both made Richard regain the expectation and desire for him to return to his normal life, which he seemed to have lost during the middle of the book. Richard overcame his fear when he successfully returns to London Above, but his journey made him act very eccentric and his colleagues began to think he is crazy. When he returned to London Above, Richard had no longer the fear of being trapped in London Below, but since he was there for a long time, he began to feel out of place in London Above and he returned at the end of the book to London Below with the marquis de Carabas.
Neil Gaiman shows fear throughout Richard in the book Neverwhere in a fascinating way and now I want to talk about a time where I overcame a fear. When I was just starting off as a young child, I had stage fright. My fear was