Into the Woods

I got a similar message from the episode, “Fear, Itself” as Nicole discussed in her blog post; however, I found that the "Fear, Itself" and The Castle of Otranto not only suggest controlling your fear, but accepting fear and not allowing it to skew things out of proportion. From the very beginning of the episode, we see Buffy as feeling emotionally fragile and being distant from her friends because she is afraid that if she allows herself to open up and be close to people than she will get hurt. Thus, we she enters the haunted house and her fears become real, she ends up isolated and deep in the filth with monsters beneath the house. This relates to Buffy’s fear that she’s somehow wrong or messed up, and that she isn’t loveable. Similarly, we see Xander, Willow, and Oz dealing with individual fears that they then have to face later in the episode. Willow feels as though she isn’t powerful enough to be a strong witch, and that Buffy doesn’t take her seriously enough. The conversation with Buffy while getting food from the cafeteria demonstrates that Willow feels frustrated by the lack of support for her interest in Wicca. These feelings come to a head in the haunted house when she confronts Buffy, saying, “I’m not your sidekick.” She tries magic and, as predicted, it goes horribly wrong because her deepest fear is that she isn’t a good enough witch. As Anya rightly targets in her conversation with Xander earlier in the episode, Xander fears that he doesn’t fit with his friends anymore. He feels as though he’s invisible guy since he doesn’t go to college or live in a dorm, so he literally becomes invisible in the haunted house. Oz, as usual, is terrified of being a monster, specifically a werewolf. I think the interesting message from this episode is that fear only has power if you allow it to overcome you. The characters allow themselves to be overwhelmed by their fears, and this is what causes them to be separated and terrified. Common objects become imbued with terror when we give them that power. The skeleton with the knife turns back into a plastic decoration as soon as Buffy punches it. We get a similar comic effect with the demon. The characters have faced their fears and no longer feel weak in the face of terror; thus, the demon of fear himself manifests as tiny and easy to squash. This suggests that nothing is actually as horrible as it seems when we allow it to overpower us.

I think this idea of being overpowered and overwhelmed by fear also relates to The Castle of Otranto. Manfred is terrified of breaking his lineage and having the title of Otranto move to someone beyond his bloodline. This fear dominates his reason and morality; thus, causing him to act as a tyrant in order to prevent his fear from manifesting. However, the more he fights against his fear, the worse the situation becomes. At first, we get the death of his son at the hand of a giant helmet, which is fairly unnerving. Then, when he tries to rape Isabella, we see giant legs in the castle—again, pretty creepy; and things just keep getting worse as he struggles against his fear. Eventually, his actions against his fears become so irrational that he kills his own daughter. The novel also demonstrates that you can’t allow your fear to take over your life. If Manfred had faced his fear and accepted that the throne of Otranto wasn’t his to have, then the damage to his home and family wouldn’t have been so horrific. Struggling against your fears only gives them power. Both the novel and the episode seem to suggest that accepting fear as best you can, and not allowing it to cloud your vision or guide your actions, is the only way to master your fear and achieve the desired outcome.