The Bigger Picture: Understanding Terror Management in Thomas's The Hate You Give and its Relevance in the Wake of Recent Social Unrest

Abstract

Death is ever present and a truth that cannot be denied. Solomon, S., Greenberg, J., & Pyszczynski, T. (2015) were of the idea that the awareness of death shapes and moulds human behaviours and experiences in a way that shapes their action and behaviour in everyday life. The research aims to explore the presence of constant mortality salience primes in the life of the protagonist in The Hate You Give (2017) by Angie Thomas. The research also evaluates the selected novel to understand reliance on cultural worldviews in the face of existential dread. By employing theoretical framework taken from Worm at the Core: On the Role of Death in Life (2015), the study uses qualitative textual analysis research design to understand how characters react when faced with reminders of death. The findings show that how the events of the novel are related to the real-life occurrence of police brutality that occurred in the United States. The future researchers can make use of this study to apply the theory of terror management to other pieces of literature. The application of a theory on a novel and relating it to the incidents of real life gives the future researchers a chance to look for similarities in real world and the one depicted in their favourite novel.

Keywords

Cultural worldviews, mortality, salience, self-esteem, Terror Management Theory (TMT)

References

Arndt, J., Greenberg, J., Solomon, S., Pyszczynski, T., & Simon, L. (1997). Suppression, accessibility of death-related thoughts, and cultural worldview defense: exploring the psychodynamics of terror management. Journal of personality and social psychology, 73(1), 5.

Bates, J., (2021, October 1). Police Killings Happen Far More Often Than What’s Widely Reported. Here’s Why the Numbers Are Off by So Much. Time. https://time.com/6102324/study-police-killings-significantly-underreported/

BBC. (2020, July 16). George Floyd: What happened in the final moments of his life. BBC. https://www.bbc.com/news/world-us-canada-52861726

Dewa, L. H., Ireland, C. A., & Ireland, J. L. (2014). Terror management theory: The influence of terrorism salience on anxiety and the buffering of cultural worldview and self-esteem. Psychiatry, Psychology and Law, 21(3), 370-384.

Goldenberg, J. L., Pyszczynski, T., Johnson, K. D., Greenberg, J., & Solomon, S. (1999). The appeal of tragedy: A terror management perspective. Media Psychology, 1(4), 313-329.

Greenberg, J., Schimel, J., Martens, A., Solomon, S., & Pyszcznyski, T. (2001). Sympathy for the devil: Evidence that reminding Whites of their mortality promotes more favorable reactions to White racists. Motivation and Emotion, 25, 113-133.

Juhl, J. (2019). Terror management theory: A theory of psychological well-being. In Handbook of terror management theory (pp. 303-324). Academic Press.

Landau, M. J., Solomon, S., Greenberg, J., Cohen, F., Pyszczynski, T., Arndt, J., ... & Cook, A. (2004). Deliver us from evil: The effects of mortality salience and reminders of 9/11 on support for President George W. Bush. Personality and social psychology bulletin, 30(9), 1136-1150.

Martin, M., Adams, D., (2025, May 22). Who George Floyd was — and how systemic racism shaped his life. NPR. https://www.npr.org/2025/05/21/nx-s1-5396831/george-floyd-five-year-anniversary

Noles, E. C. (2007). Terror Management Theory and Racist Attributions: Mortality Saliency and Bias Level Among Black Americans (Doctoral dissertation, University of North Carolina Wilmington).

Pyszczynski, T., Greenberg, J., & Solomon, S. (1999). A dual-process model of defense against conscious and unconscious death-related thoughts: an extension of terror management theory. Psychological review, 106(4), 835.

Pyszczynski, T., Solomon, S., & Greenberg, J. (2015). Thirty years of terror management theory: From genesis to revelation. In Advances in experimental social psychology (Vol. 52, pp. 1-70). Academic Press.

Schmeichel, B. J., Gailliot, M. T., Filardo, E. A., McGregor, I., Gitter, S., & Baumeister, R. F. (2009). Terror management theory and self-esteem revisited: the roles of implicit and explicit self-esteem in mortality salience effects. Journal of personality and social psychology, 96(5), 1077.

Solomon, S., Greenberg, J., & Pyszczynski, T. (2015). The worm at the core: On the role of death in life. Random House.

Vergani, M., O'Brien, K. S., Lentini, P., & Barton, G. (2019). Does the awareness of mortality shape people's openness to violence and conflict? An examination of terror management theory. Political Psychology, 40(1), 111-124.

Young, I. F., Sullivan, D., & Palitsky, R. (2019). Applying Terror Management Theory to Art, Film, and Media: A Theoretical and Empirical Review. Handbook of Terror Management Theory, 535-558.

Young, I. F., Sullivan, D., & Palitsky, R. (2019). Applying Terror Management Theory to Art, Film, and Media: A Theoretical and Empirical Review. Handbook of Terror Management Theory, 535-558.