When Fear Teaches

Engaging with emphases on the educational function of ecological awareness in children’s literature about forests, this article examines several contemporary Vietnamese works, asking how their portrayal of forests potentially provokes ecological teachings. Analyzing narratives of the complex fear children feel toward the forest in Vietnamese children’s literature, this article argues that the predominant fear is itself an ecological and environmental lesson, that is, respect for the forest as it is, whether good or bad, light or dark, safe or threatening. In these works, the forest is not appropriated to become merely a symbol or a metaphor for a cultural perspective serving the educational purposes of children’s literature, but rather the forest itself, as a complex living being, is recognized.

Ecocriticism · Mediation · Metaphor · Narrative · Vietnamese · Ecocriticism and Environmental Literature · Literature, Magical Realism, García Márquez · Vietnamese History and Culture Studies