Room 101 Argumentative

It is my opinion that spiders should be banished to Room 101 – the world would most likely be a better place without them. I am not arachnophobic, as I am not afraid of scorpions or other arachnids, but I am absolutely terrified of spiders. Merely the thought of them fills me with dread and causes me to shudder. Many people consider this fear to be irrational but in my opinion, these people are ignorant of the true nature of spiders; it is my belief that spiders are pure evil and quite possibly the sources of all the malice in the world. This is, of course, a perfectly rational explanation. For instance, the way in which most spiders feed – sucking the fluids of their victims – is reminiscent of vampires drinking their victims’ blood, a truly horrifying prospect.

Another reason for my hatred is that they have an unnatural number of legs, giving me a mental image of a disembodied, deformed hand, similar to the one in the film ‘The Addams Family’. These abnormal legs create a style of movement that can only be accurately described as scuttling, a motion that is undoubtedly sinister and full of menace. Furthermore, the majority of spiders move so rapidly that if you take your eyes away from them, just for a second, they will have disappeared. This leaves you growing increasingly nervous and paranoid, with your head twitching every few moments this way and that, each time expecting to find the spider disturbingly close to you or in your hair.

In addition, spider webs are frustrating because they are almost invisible in sunlight; it is undoubtedly intentional of spiders to spin their webs in the most inconvenient places, where people will walk into them regularly. In fact, I suspect that these webs are only decoys, spun to provide the spiders with some entertainment. Their real webs are probably safely out of the way nearby, where they can smugly observe humans walking ignorantly into the web, and then listen to their slightly disgusted exclamation, followed by childlike mutters as the humans struggle to remove the sticky web from their clothes and hair.

Despite my almost overwhelming fear, I pride myself on my limited compassion towards the hideous creatures; I will very rarely harm them, though of course this may have a connection with the fact that I cannot go within several metres of them. It is therefore usually my father’s or brother’s responsibility to despatch any intruding spiders in a relatively harmless manner. Unfortunately, both find this task exasperating and complain incessantly when they hear my frantic squealed calls.

I admit that spiders are not completely pointless, considering that they eradicate many flies and other equally irritating insects. However, I am uncertain about which I would prefer, swarms of irksome flies or billions of bloodcurdling spiders.