Im Not Scared

I’m Not Scared is a coming of age text, written by Niccolo Ammaniti, and it is based on the journey of a young Michele Amitrano moving from childhood innocence to experience. Initially he is naïve and ignorant towards things that has no impact to his ‘perfect little world’, however, after encountering several events he changes his perspective. This takes form through the influences of his peers, adults and a reflection of himself.

Among Michele’s peers there are several whom that mould the journey of his increasing sense of morality and maturity. Skull, the tyrant leader of the children’s gang, is corrupted. He takes joy from tormenting and bullying others, he also enjoys giving orders but if they are not fulfilled he can ‘turn nasty.’
His innate sense subconsciously prevails at times of need. The first signs of awakening morality are already evident at the beginning of the text, when he resists Skull’s second attempt to force Barbara to do another forfeit which consisted of showing her ‘slit’. Regardless of the consequences he takes responsibility because of his sense of morality. He intuitively volunteers to do it in her place because of the guilt he felt from the first forfeit. “There was something dirty, something..I don’t know.” Although Michele is righteous he allows his greed to provoke him into revealing Fillipo’s whereabouts to Salvatore in order to gain the jinxed plastic football team that he does not really like. Yet upon reflection he immediately feels horrible and realizes that what he has done was bad, as he says ‘I was worse than Judas who had bartered Jesus for thirty pieces of silver”. Another similar challenge that Michele confronts is when his parents bribe him with a new bike to not see Fillipo. However, after his first encounter of being overcome by greed he knows better and decides to go against his father’s oath in order to save Fillipo which compensates for the ‘Judas