Author's Note- This is my essay for Life As We Knew It. We were supposed to take a theme from our group novel and write an essay on that theme. I kept rewriting this and going over it- I'm not quite sure if I like it or not, still. I've never written anything like this, so it feels really weird, and I ended up changing my theme three times. I tried to work on making my introduction more hook-like.
Hunger. It gnaws at your stomach. The pain is slow and sharp-- it eats at your insides, gradually, but definitively. Isolation. Even worse than hunger. It eats at your brain, slowly sucking all the sanity from your mind. Fear. It starts as a seed, a rumor or superstition planted in your head. It sneakily spreads throughout your body, racing through your blood and crawling down your spine, causing sweat to cover your brow and paranoia to fill your head, as if something could be lurking around the corner any second. When you're trying to survive with little food or communication and no knowledge of what's lurking around the corner, all of these things course through your body and mind. They affect your decisions-- they drive you to insanity. Things like your beliefs, your friends, or even your family are no longer near as important to you as before. You will be tempted to do things that hurt them to get what you need. Sometimes, the temptation will be too strong. When faced with the chance that our lives could end at any moment, and with others dropping like flies around us, we will be tempted to things to aid our survival without regard to others.
Temptation goes back all the way to the first story of the bible, with Adam and Eve. The devil, disguised as a slithering snake, comes to Eve and crafts his conniving words, planting them in her head, telling her that eating that delicious-looking apple is totally fine, no matter what God says. He tempts her to disobey God. Even though this isn't a situation where lives are at stake, it's still an important lesson.
In the bible story "Tempted in the Wilderness", Satan brought Jesus out into the wilderness for forty days and forty nights with no food, water, or shelter. Satan tempted Him with these necessities. He whispers lies into Jesus' ears, trying to lead him away from God. But Jesus will have none of it. Jesus knew that worshiping the devil, or even entertaining the devil's thoughts, could only lead to harm. But still, the devil tried to tempt Jesus. He even quotes the bible to support his case! If the devil can cite the Scriptures for his purpose, it can't be harmful, can it? It's has to be right, doesn't it? Of course it's not right! He's just trying to convince Jesus by misusing God's words. The Nazis quoted the bible to support their case while disposing of "filthy Jews". That doesn't make them right for doing it.
The theme of temptation in dire situations can also easily be related to the bestselling series Gone by Michael Grant. This series is about a small town in California called Perdido Beach. One day, an unbreakable dome, later named The Barrier, forms around the entire town, twenty miles in diameter. But that's not the only problem…anyone over the age of fifteen that was living in the area that The Barrier now surrounds has also disappeared, just like that, and the second anyone turns fifteen, they disappear as well. And of course, since there's this unbreakable barrier around the town, there's no way to import food. But nobody realizes this for the first couple weeks, and without moms and around to tell them what they can and can't eat, naturally, everybody pigs out. All the frozen hot dogs and pizzas, along with cookies and chips, immediately run out at the grocery store. And with people too focused on eating unhealthy and non-perishable items, all the healthy, perishable foods, like lean meats, fruits and veggies, go bad right away. So before they know it, they have a major food situation on their hands. People step up and form a rationing system as soon as they realize that the barrier might never disappear and all they're stuck with is whatever food they have left inside of it, but not many of the kids like it, and soon, armed guards are required at the grocery store. Instead of people caring about their neighbors and friends, they start to fend for themselves, doing whatever it takes for that extra can of soup or nibble or beef jerky. Some even turn to cannibalism to satisfy their empty stomachs.
And of course, even with parents, kids and teenagers form cliques and groups, where they exclude others for what they wear, their weight or their race, or even their intelligence level. Now, with the parents gone and no one to guide them, the cliques go to the extreme. One clique in particular, though. This clique gets involved in many evil things that could destroy the entire town. But these people also have a lot of power and charisma. They can easily tempt people into joining them with not only their amount of influence, but their indifference to death and the pleasure they find in violence.
But that's not the only temptation going on at Perdido Beach. Soon, everyone discovers that disappearing at the age of fifteen is not something that just happens. It's a choice. At the exact moment fifteen years after their birth, time freezes for everyone except that one person. They're faced with someone-or something. He (or it) tries to convince them to leave. It tells them that their family is waiting on the other side, that they can see them only if they choose to leave. It tempts them to leave this hell, where kids kill and eat pets and even other kids, where they run rampant and free with guns, where marijuana and scotch are traded to eight year-olds. It is, of course, lying. Their parents aren't waiting for them on the other side, and neither is that normal world they once knew. And the children know this is true. But they're so desperate to get away that they don't care. They go anyway.
Another book where this theme is prominent is Life of Pi. Piscine Patel is a vegetarian boy who has a deep connection with religion. He's not only Hindu, but Christian and Muslim as well, and he follows the three religions with equal devotion. But when he's thrust into a lifeboat with a tiger, where his survival is affected deeply by his beliefs, he has to chose between religion and survival. He is tempted to kill the most sacred animal of his religion just to fill his empty stomach. He lets temptation take over and abandons his beliefs on everything from turtles to vegetarianism to murder to survive. He throws away all that he believes in so he can live another day.
This is also the case in the popular novel Life As We Knew It by Susan Beth Pfeffer. Miranda must resist the temptation to gorge herself on all the food her family's saved up, even when she feels like she has no strength left in her entire body. She has to resist the temptation to indulge so that her family has enough to eat, even though she's slowly dying from hunger. Miranda has to resist the temptation of guzzling a bottle of water when her throat feels like sandpaper, when it's dry as a desert. She has to resist the temptation of using more firewood than her mother permits so that she can have one night where she doesn't feel like her toes are on the verge of falling off. The poor girl even has to resist the urge to kill her poor cat named Horton for food.
Temptation is a very powerful thing, especially when your survival may depend on whether or not you indulge in that temptation. Sometimes, you have to choose between your beliefs and survival. Sometimes, you have to choose between family and survival. Sometimes, you just have to put faith in whatever higher power you believe in that you can pull through, and let them guide you and help you resist the devil's temptation, no matter how magnificent his lies may sound. Even though we are tempted to make decisions that will aid only ourselves and not our family and friends, we need to refrain from giving into it.
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