When we encounter obstacles throughout our lives, we often turn to external sources to justify the internal conflict. This tendency to assign blame is evident in Laurie Halse Anderson's Fever 1793, in which refugees fleeing Santo Domingo are blamed for spreading the yellow fever epidemic in Philadelphia. Similarly, in Charles Burns' Black Hole, teenagers are ashamed of having contracted "the Bug", a sexually transmitted disease that turns them into social outcasts. In both cases, human carriers are shunned and used as scapegoats for epidemics. By naming an "otherness" to the infected characters, they are dehumanized. Say no to plagiarism. Get a tailor-made essay on "Why Violent Video Games Shouldn't Be Banned"? Get an Original Essay Set in the post-revolutionary era, Anderson's Fever 1793 depicts the life of a 14-year-old girl living in Philadelphia during the outbreak of yellow fever. A work of historical fiction, the novel is a first-person account of the epidemic from the point of view of the young protagonist, Mattie Cook. Mattie's voice offers readers a fresh and engaging perspective on her experience with the fever and the suffering she endured. When the plague began to take hold of the city, the citizens of Philadelphia looked for someone to blame. Rumors, much like the virus itself, quickly began to spread: “Philadelphia suffers from fevers every August,” Grandpa said. "This season it's the cursed refugees' turn. They brought it, just like the ships brought it from Barbados thirty years ago. The mayor should quarantine them on Hog ​​Island for a few weeks and the fever would go away." He raised his mug to King George. The parrot drank” (Anderson, 38 years old). The refugees were held responsible, as they were in the midst of fleeing Santo Domingo as part of the Haitian Revolution. This strongly touches on the "epidemic as oriental" stereotype discussed in Professor Heather Schell's article, Outburst! A chilling true story about emerging virus narratives and pandemic social change. Outbreak narratives often insist on the foreign origin of the virus, absolving the West of any responsibility. Throughout his text, Schell offers a wealth of evidence demonstrating how pandemic science fiction thrives on this stereotype: “Constructing human responsibility can serve as a way to maintain a narrative of control over ourselves as well as the natural world, even if that control is destructive” (Anderson, 9). While many of the refugees fleeing Santo Domingo were actually infected with the fever, the disease was transmitted through misquotes. However, a divide had already been established between the refugee community and the people of Philadelphia: the outside versus the inside. Refugees were used as scapegoats for the spread of yellow fever. It was “they” who were responsible for the epidemic, not “us”: “Don't be cowardly, Jeannine,” her mother snapped. "Those filthy refugees and creatures who live in the crowded shacks by the river, are always sick with something. But it is a grave injustice that my gala should suffer because the lower classes get sick. Don't you agree, Lucille?" (Anderson , 51). Anderson uses a great deal of descriptive language to characterize sufferers, evoking intense images of illness and disease in readers. His use of imagery effectively supports the underlying themes of hardship and misery that dominate his text. The innate prevalence of blame persists, as the Ogilvies clearly hold the refugee community responsible for the outbreak of the virus, referring to them as “dirty refugees and creatures.” ”. ThereMs. Ogilvie is therefore dehumanizing the foreign population by treating them as less than human. However, assigning blame will not stop yellow fever: “Sailors babbled in their own language, fearing they would die on the wrong side of the ocean in a world far from people who knew their names. The vinegar-soaked cloth tied around my nose could not protect me from the stench of the dying men cooking in the old house” (Anderson, 193). Although people may belong to different cultures, we are all vulnerable to disease. The city of Philadelphia shamed the refugees and treated them like outsiders, assigning them an unjustifiable “otherness,” which ultimately led to their dehumanization. Set in Seattle during the mid-1970s, Charles Burns' Black Hole comic series is the archetypal high school experience about a group of teenagers who contract a sexually transmitted disease commonly referred to as "the Bug." While its origin remains unknown, the virus causes its carriers to undergo strange physical mutations that turn them into social outcasts: "At first I couldn't figure out what it was... It looked like one of those cheap rubber Halloween masks that you see in the dime stores. He was just too fucked up to be human, but somehow, deep down, I knew he was” (Burns). alienation, desire and sexual confusion – elements that are not foreign to the typical adolescent. Burns directly assigns a sense of "otherness" to the characters themselves by using physical deformities to strategically and symbolically exemplify the ways in which adolescents are stigmatized within. of our society. Throughout the text, the most changed adolescents leave for a camp in the woods, seek refuge and exclude themselves from the rest of society. In addition to returning to the city to scavenge food from dumpsters, the infected have become social outcasts, alienated and exiled from the rest of humanity. When exposed to the public, infected teenagers feel ashamed of their condition. They get picked on and criticized: “Yeah, move on… Hide it! Just like you do at school! But you know what? You can't hide the truth!” (Burns). The story mainly focuses on the two protagonists, Keith and Chris, who fall victim to the virus after interacting sexually with their love interests, Eliza and Rob. The infected, Eliza, sports a ponytail that Keith finds very attractive: “Eliza sitting naked on a pink towel. So beautiful I could die. Concentrated, all focused on her sketchbook, but oh, God... Her tail. Its graceful tail slowly moves back and forth, forming a fan shape in the dirt. She's the one. It really is. Now I know” (Burns). This illustrates the underlying theme of teenage love, desire and the acceptance that often coincides with it. Keith finds beauty in Eliza's deformity, while Eliza herself learns to tolerate it. Chris started out as someone who was admired by his peers. However, once infected by the “bug,” she falls into a downward social spiral. Chris isolates himself from society and metaphorically lives in his little "black hole" in the woods. The characters in Burns' Black Hole are literally dehumanized, as they are given monstrous and bizarre physical attributes once infected with the virus. They are shamed by the rest of the population due to their conditions, forcing them into exile in the woods. This sense of shame and responsibility for their actions that is imposed on them is unjustifiable. Sexual interaction is part of growing up, and teens should not be blamed or made to feel guilty for their experimentation. After all, the.