The Roar

In Emma Clayton’s dystopian future, the world’s population has been forced behind a massive concrete wall and fed the lie that everything beyond the wall is a toxic wasteland, decimated in order to control the deadly animal population. The story is so vivid—perpetuated by the government and its media outlets, and carefully crafted to trigger the deepest of human fears—that no one questions it. Like the isolated citizens in M. Night Shyamalan’s The Village who are too terrified by stories of monsters lurking in the woods to venture outside their small community, the characters in The Roar are held in check by fear of ravenous, plague-ridden animals and the poisoned landscape “necessary” to eradicate them. Fear is one of the most common tactics used by authoritarian regimes to keep their subjugated populations compliant. Dictators such as Stalin and Pinochet have long used fear of imprisonment, torture, and death to control their people. Likewise, Gorman and the Northern Government use the fear of plague and toxic ash to keep residents from venturing over The Wall since the other side holds a secret that would reveal the lie and threaten the government’s hold on power.

An essential component of the lie is the media’s complicity, evoking the