How we cite our quotes: (Chapter.Part.Paragraph)
Quote #1
They warned me not to touch him, that he was "cursed." (2.1.11)
These Chinese villagers mix fear with a dollop of irrationality. As the novel progresses, we'll see that these two flavors go well together.
Quote #2
The older ones, they just started running. They had a different kind of survival instinct, an instinct born in a time when they were slaves in their own country. In those days, everyone knew who "they" were ever coming, and if "they" were ever coming, all you could do was run and pray. (2.5.6)
Here, the novel connects the theme of "Fear" to the theme of "Man & the Natural World." We fear things because it's a part of our natural survival instinct. Thanks to a history of slavery, the older ones have that survival instinct honed to a sharp point. (And they're pretty good at using sharp points, too.)
Quote #3
If a neighbor's nuclear power plant might be used to make weapons-grade plutonium, you dig; if a dictator was rumored to be building a cannon so big it could fire anthrax shells across whole countries, you dig; and if there was even the slightest chance that dead bodies were being reanimated as ravenous killing machines, you dig and dig until you stike [sic] the absolute truth. (2.6.8)
Jurgen's country has trained itself to response to fearful scenarios by learning as much as possible to make informed decisions. As we'll see in the "Education" section, this response to fear seems to be the book's preferred one.
Quote #4
The TV was blaring in the background, riot police storming the front entrance of a house. You couldn't see what they were shooting at inside. The official report blamed the violence on "pro-Western extremists." (2.7.12)
We'll call Saladin's response the "fill in the blank" method. Take the thing you fear—here, the unknown—and identify it with something you hate, like pro-Western extremists. While not at all accurate, the method sure seems to make Saladin feel better.
Quote #5
Secrecy is a vacuum and nothing fills a vacuum like paranoid speculation. (3.1.2)
You know how they say, "you fear what you don't understand"? Well, that's basically the idea here, only written with a more artistic spin.
Quote #6
The only rule that ever made sense to me I learned from a history, not an economics, professor at Wharton. "Fear," he used to say, "fear is the most valuable commodity in the universe." That blew me away. […] Fear of aging, fear of loneliness, fear of poverty, fear of failure, Fear is the most basic emotion we have. Fear is primal. Fear sells. (3.3.3)
Breckinridge Scott links his dubious entrepreneurial exploits to fear. He who fears, buys. And he who buys, um, spends money?
Quote #7
[…] the weapon that really failed wasn't something that rolled off an assembly line. It's as old as… I don't know, I guess as old as war. It's fear, dude, just fear and you don't have to be Sun freakin Tzu to know that real fighting isn't about killing or even hurting the other guy, it's about scaring him enough to call it a day. (4.7.56)
The truly scary thing about zombies is their inability to feel fear. Any other animal, including humans, have the ability to fear. But zombies only feel a deep-pitted, ravenous hunger for humans and their brains. They're not even fearful that one day they'll run out of brain snacks.
Quote #8
You can't blame anyone else, not the plan's architect, not your commanding officer, no one but yourself. You have to make your own choices and live every agonizing day with the consequences of those choices. [General Lang] knew this. That's why he deserted us like we deserted those civilians. (5.2.25)
Fear of consequences is yet another type of fear explored in World War Z. The characters linked to the military have to consider this fear often in the novel.
Quote #9
Maybe we owe our survival to [North Korea], or at least to the fear of it. (7.3.14)
Can fear be a good thing? If it helps you prepare for the unexpected, then it seems so. What qualifies as unexpected? How about a worldwide zombie crisis?
Quote #10
It's comforting to see children again, I mean those who were born after the war, real children who know nothing but a world that includes the living dead. They know not to play near water, not to go out alone or after dark in the spring or summer. They don't know to be afraid, and that is the greatest gift, the only gift we can leave to them. (9.6.2)
The novel's ending suggests that the thing you fear can eventually become a typical part of your everyday life. After an undead apocalypse, that's about as happy an ending as you can hope for.