Its Men You Should Be Afraid Of, Not Monsters

"Its men you should be afraid of, not monsters"

Niccolo Ammaniti's novel "I'm Not Scared" explores the playful and interesting world of childhood through the eyes of a nine-year old child. Michele discovers a boy in the hole and his morality is changed in many ways. Michele's world gets confused between the imaginary creatures and the real creature, but later learns his father was the one person that affected his life the most. Michele's childhood innocence is destroyed by the cruelty of his own father, it is then Michele realizes the monsters can be controlled, but men are the ones to fear.

The creatures Michele has fears of eventually learns to control them. Michele's innocence is present with the certain thought that the only real threats to children were creatures of dreams and his imagination, as he says "I knew witches met at night in abandoned houses and had parties and if you joined in you went mad and that ogres ate children". Michele's thought was, that the boy was being kept a prisoner. When Michele's curiosity brings him back to the hole his thoughts of why the boy might be there is "ogres" capturing him. His thoughts were still innocent "What if I arrived and found witches and ogres there?" this illustrated that Michele was scared of "Ogres", "Monsters" and "Witches". Michele's character development is later shown when he is actually shown to control the monsters of imagination. Michele's imagination explains his innocence and understanding of the real world.

The destruction of Michele's innocence begins when his opinion of his father is changed. Michele clearly states, "I felt as I'd been stabbed in the side, nobody had ever talked to my father like that". This is shown when Sergio is controlling Pino. It was even more of a challenge for Michele when he realizes that his father was part of those "men", he had warned him about. Pino acts harshly and monstrous when he states" two ears we will cut, two" which is relating to Filippo. Michele soon comes to realization that the creatures he had fear of were in fact "just ordinary people". Michele also believed that "papa was the boogey man", by day he was good, but at night he was bad. Michele's monsters were actually described as the men in this novel.

Sergio is one of the main monsters from Michele's perspective. Sergio is a sixty-seven year old man who has come to stay with Michele's family. Michele starts to see Sergio differently when he discovers that " he had achieved notoriety, twenty years... as a result of robbery". When Michele goes searching through Sergio's luggage bag, he loses his innocence of seeing a gun. "I opened it and inside was a pistol". A gun can symbolize