The Great Wall that Failed
Vanessa Yuen Kwan Ma, Group 3: Non-Fiction, Diocesan Girls' School
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The Great Wall of China is a series of stone and earthen
fortifications...to protect --Effectively, it’s a territorial protective mechanism. The essence of this
however, lies with the last two words--protective mechanism. And just as a chemistry mixture takes on
the characteristics of its parts, so does a country replicate certain aspects of the people that make up for
it. Case in point: All humans have security mechanisms.
Our security mechanisms are never quite the same, but for ease of analysis, the biggest few generic
categories do exist...
Firstly, the elegant, upper class lady. She searches to build up their repute as their form of security, falling
back on whatever creates their “best impression”. There are two ways in which such calculated exteriors are
achieved:
Lysander from Shakespeare’s A Midsummer Night’s Dream is an expert at wooing his love, Hermia, with
his sugar-coated, passionate, amorous language. In Act 1 Scene 2, he stages a stichomythia with her on the
ideals of true love--unaffected by age, external opinion, status and natural phenomenons. The real world sees
manipulators and playboys who worm their way into, out of, and around a situation whenever needed--the kid
who can always squirm out of detention even after being caught red-handed? The guy who dates and leaves a
girl per week, the string of broken hearts for him like a spool of thread rocketing down a mountain--never-
ending with rapid growth? The fact is that if we were to strip away the ability of verbal exploitation from this
group of people, we’d be left with possibly someone as raw and as helpless as any other: flawed, desperate, and
uncertain of the future. At the crux of developing such manipulative skills as a security mechanism is a person
in need of certainty; in some way or the other they must be able to guarantee themselves what they want to the
least possibly probability of failure, be it with girls, examinations, power, or their social circle.
According to Urban Dictionary.com, phonies are defined as people that are “all bark but no bite”. In another
sense, it’s called portraying false humility. The outspoken girls who make airy announcements claiming “oh no,
I didn’t get an A” when the rest of the class failed, and “WHAT, HE LIKES ME? DON’T SPREAD RUMORS!”
and inform everyone within a ten-metre radius? All the guys frustrated online about girls playing hard-to-get?
Fundamentally such acts all stem from insecurities due to self worth, and a craving for attention. The Lysander
upstairs managed to appeal to Hermia because she felt insecure of her outer beauty and needed him to assert her
worth; and when she couldn’t get such a fulfillment, she ranted and screamed and threw tantrums in the hopes
that he would, shown when they entered the woods in Act 3. Cutting out the exaggeration, such a mechanism
aims to assert self worth through claiming inferiority, asking for counter arguers to the statement.
Secondly, the autistic kid. From Jodi Picoult’s book House Rules, the kid Jacob has autism, and a very
telling trait of this disorder is that he tends to shirk behind words and quotes of famous literature or songs in
order to convey feelings, thoughts which an autistic person has issues with expressing directly. Scroll down any
random teenager’s newsfeed, and it wouldn’t be surprising to find that nearly 50% of all new, and popular
facebook statuses are ones which incorporate in some way literary allusions. Being arguably the most typical
form of a security mechanism, it stems from the fear of baring true, raw emotion, as such feelings and
revelations are easily likened to that of an open cut--if someone touches it, it’s easily hurt, gets inflamed, and
stings like no tomorrow. However, as they understand that expression is the key to connecting and relating with
others, they search for ways around the truth, and crouch under the exemplaries given to us through popular
culture and media, expressing themselves while putting a fancy veil on reality. The issue lies with not being able
to truly connect, for the experiences aren’t personal--they’re generic; and those with such a mechanism live lives
in a crowd of unanimous cries of agreement, but are in fact loneliest of all.
Thirdly, the toiling grandma. This is possibly the most rudimentary security mannerism of all, and also the
one which seems hardest to crack. Many a time we hear recounts on how old ladies and men, to seek purpose in
life--even after their bodies have entered the stage of decay--would resort to giving themselves work in order to
drive their focus away from their own insecurities (which may range from anything from their ability to their
social status). To illustrate, I’m a person who harbors this security mechanism. Recognising that I cannot rely on
the ways of the world to stay constant, I generate my own hope through the tasks that I submit my all to, be it
homework, debates or competitions, and expect to reap my own rewards. I seek to help others and give advice;
however at the crux of this whole issue is a very simple assumption that I am able to work, and I am my work.
F
Shortlisted
