Many factors can and do contribute to decisions that are ethical or unethical. In my opinion, fear is the most important factor that influences a person’s decision to make a decision that is either ethical or unethical. To many fear is a distressing emotion aroused by impending danger, evil, or pain. Fear is shown through in Life of Pi by Yann Martel, Lord of the Flies by William Golding, and exemplified in “What Fear Can Teach Us” presented by Karen Thompson Walker, located on TED.com.

Life of Pi (Martel), a story about a young boy, Pi who becomes stranded out in the middle of the Pacific Ocean with male bengal tiger. becomes questioned with many fears like, if he will survive and are his parents alive? In the Author’s Note of Life of Pi, Martel refers to fear as an object.

“I must say a word about fear. It is life's only true opponent. Only fear can defeat life. It is a clever, treacherous adversary, how well I know. It has no decency, respects no law or convention, shows no mercy. It goes for your weakest spot, which it finds with unnerving ease. It begins in your mind, always ... so you must fight hard to express it. You must fight hard to shine the light of words upon it. Because if you don't, if your fear becomes a wordless darkness that you avoid, perhaps even manage to forget, you open yourself to further attacks of fear because you never truly fought the opponent who defeated you.” (Martel).

This quote talks about how fear, itself can take on a human figure and control you. How it can conquer your whole mind by taking over your thoughts and giving illogical thinking.

"Maybe there is a beast… maybe it's only us." (80 Lord of the Flies). William Golding’s Lord of the Flies, a story about a group of boys for Europe who become stranded on an uncharted island, refers to the emotion state of the boys at being beast because fear has taken over their minds making their decisions illogical and more risky, daring, or corrupt. Like Jack becoming more vulgar wanting to kill all the time. Also, the beast being one of the major thing many of the “littluns” are afraid of , Golding meant the beast to be the boys fear taking on a larger role like how Martel used fear in Life of Pi.

Lastly, answered by Karen Thompson Walker in “What Fear Can Teach Us”, we know to “Turn our fears into possibilities” (Karen Thompson Walker, TED.com). All you need is 10 seconds of random, spontaneously courage, fear should be pushed out. Never a factor in anybody’s decision making. In “What Fear Can Teach Us”, Walker also proclaims: “Our fears are an amazing gift of the imagination … a way of glimpsing what might be the future when there's still time to influence how that future will play out.” (Karen Thompson Walker, TED.com), which proclaims how fear can control life, the future and how you take life and living in . One step at a time or jumping right in.

Many factors contribute to ethical and unethical decision making. Fear is one of the most important factors, because of how fear control one’s actions, thoughts, ways of thinking logically, and future.