WATCH FOR THE MUTANT & COUNT YOUR TOES, THE VERY SORDID BOOK W/O
Written: Jul 16 '02 (Updated Jul 16 '02)
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Product Rating:
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Pros: It's only a story.
Cons: No it's not really.
The Bottom Line: Well what were you really expecting with this w/o?
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| JAMES23's Full Review: The Chrysalids Books |
This is a Very Sordid Book Review. The contents will likely be offensive. You have been warned!
David is a fairly normal and average young boy. That is to say he is both curious about the world he is growing up in and not yet possessed of that innate ability to prejudge that most adults seem to have. When he meets a new friend, Sophie he thinks nothing of the fact that she is different from him, and everyone else.
David quickly notices and just as quickly dismisses the fact that she has six not five toes on her feet as a trivial matter not deserving of any serious consideration. He certainly fails to equate it with the stern teachings of his parents and his community. It is after all such a little thing.
The problem is that the community that David and Sophie live in is a rather small place. A community that is in fact closed in more than one meaning of the word. The town of Waknuk and the surrounding farmlands in what was once called Labrador is almost all that remains of a world devastated by a nuclear holocaust.
Generations later the survivors have to an extent come to terms with their lot and all but forgotten the pre disaster modern society that preceded them. It is a basic agrarian society that has developed and one that barely allows them to survive. It is also a society dominated by one concept. It is in many ways a Theocracy, while actually a perversion of that concept.
The catastrophe that befell the human race is now seen as an act of God, the "Tribulation." Those that survive are intent that such a thing must never happen again. To this end they are a devoted people. The object of their devotion however is more than a bit suspect.
In this society they are forever vigilant. Always on guard for the appearance of the deviant, the mutant. The only way to ensure their survival is the belief that which is abnormal, is different, must be removed. That it must be banished from their closed little society at all costs.
This over time has become accepted behaviour. With a religious fervour anything that is not quite normal is purged. Everything that needs to be sacrificed is, crops, livestock, children.
David soon realises that his new found friend is included in this group, and the consequences of his discovery. He also makes another even more frightening discovery. He too is different. For David though it is something far worse than a mere extra digit or two. David, and several others like him have a very dark secret.
David is smart enough to keep his secret well hidden from the community. Especially so from his parents. They are two of the most vigilant, most devout supporters of those who strive to "protect" the purity of mankind. Years pass and David grows into a young man with none the wiser, aside from those like him who share this secret aspect of their life.
Then David discovers rather forcefully that his younger sister Petra too is "different." A series of events soon finds David, Petra and others like them forced to flee for their very lives from the community that once nurtured but now reviles them.
Like many before, and many more to come, I first read John Wyndham's The Chrysalids in High School. To be honest I cannot remember, but I'd like to think so, that I realised it was more than a simple sci fi novel. After all if it was just a simple tale why was it assigned reading, and why was it as likely to found in the literature section as the science fiction section of a book store or library.
On one level The Chrysalids is a simple science fiction tale. A story of survival in a post apocalyptic world. Beyond that it is much more.
Wyndham used a post nuclear war devastated earth as a backdrop to set what is basically a morality play in. The Chrysalids is in reality a study in prejudice, and acceptance in society. An attempt to answer that age old question, what really is evil, and for that matter what really is man.
The fact that he chose to set it in this less than brave new world is deliberate. Wyndham is not the only author who felt the need to destroy most of mankind, at least in a literary sense, so that he could then make some powerful comments on the concept of society as a whole. Stephen King would do it a generation later with The Stand.
Wyndham wrote The Chrysalids more than fifty years ago. At that time it was naively thought that something more than cockroaches would actually be able to survive a couple of rounds of pass the Hydrogen bomb.
Remember this was an era when it was thought that covering your head with your arms and ducking under your school desk would protect you when the big one went off. King writing a generation later of course knew better. That's why he wiped out most of humanity with sometime more credible to his audience, the flu.
One must give Wyndham some credit though. He set his two societies in rather remote and isolated areas, New Zealand and Labrador. If anyone was going to make it through that kind of war, it would most likely be those as far from the population centres of Europe and Eastern North America as possible.
He also seemed to have a grasp on the concept of global warming well before it became a popular and easily understood term. I've been to Labrador and it would take several nukes to change the climate to the one he presents in the novel.
Why go to such lengths to set the stage for the tale you're trying to tell though? Well for one it sells books and ensures people, especially bored teenagers will read it or at least most of it. Hey morality play, boring, science fiction cool.
More importantly though it allows the author to reduce everything to a manageable scale. When dealing with a topic as important and vast as the true nature of humanity, it is important to use a workable model. A small society, say the remnants of a plant's population is much more manageable than the whole flipping four billion of us and our centuries of culture, religion and all that excess baggage.
A small village style community with a limited culture as the settler/survivors of Labrador makes a very suitable model. Lets face it we humans as a whole aren't the brightest things to ever come down the chute. We often find it easier to grasp smaller models of concepts rather than larger ones.
Hey we like our news packaged neatly in tiny multi second sound bites and our entertainment in thirty minute minus commercials) chunks. The most common example of this inability to grasp it is the oft quoted "one death is a tragedy, six million just a statistic."
So with his model society created via the marvel of literary technique, and a spare A-bomb or two, Wyndham is now free to romp through the collective psyches of his readers. He asks some very pointed questions about us a group here and of course leaves then for the most part unanswered. This is the kind of tale that cries out for some good post reading discussion, and not just limited to the classroom.
Just who are the normal humans here, those created in the pure image of God? Who also are the mutants, the deviants? At what point are we as a basically good and true society allowed to act to preserve same, or rebel if the need arises. Do the ends justify the means here, especially if those means include intolerance, persecution, and a whole lot more?
Who truly is evil here, and who is good? Who is human? Gee and you thought this was a simple tale about a boy and his six toed friend.
So now with English Lit. 1001 out of the way on to the fun part of the review. Oh come on now you really didn't think that I chose this book just for the above drivel did you? Look at who this W/O is in honour of. Besides check out the list of available books we could choose from. There's plenty of stuff there on small arms, nekkid people, and bumping uglies.. Now those are things that I do have more than a passing interest in.
Like Wyndham's merry band of post apocalyptic farmers and religious zealots we too at Epinions could be considered a community of sorts and a microcosm of society as a whole. I think there was even a write off of sorts about that whole cyber village thing some time back here.
There are of course differences between Wyndham's model of society and ours. His was created after a couple of rounds of hide the ICBM. Ours consists of people with a certain body part glued to the chair of their computer desk.
There are similarities though, frightening similarities. For those who just clicked into where this is going wait for the pin to drop and the others to catch up will ya.
Our little happy cyber village is a rather diverse community of which the whole is more than the sum of those many parts, yeah right. Like the good burghers of Waknuk we all pull together for the greater good and the betterment of our society as a whole. Again yeah right. Excuse me while I try and sell you some prime beach front real estate now, about 10 miles from Kabul.
Our happy cyber village is just like that in the novel. For one we too are blind, isolated from reality in all sense of the world. Unlike them though we can go back. You can't turn back the clock on Armageddon. You can though turn off your PC and go outside.
Like the good burghers we too have our own rules and regulations strictly enforced. There are things that one can and one cannot do here. Of course we all know these are just, fair and equitable right.
We too have our selfless protectors of the norm as well. Those who spend countless hours surfing and reading to seek out the little cyber deviants, the review mutants, who lurk amongst us. Knowing their faithless self sacrificing devotion to their cause makes me feel warm and secure at night, yes it does.
Our deviants are of course not those with an extra appendage or mental ability. No they are far more worse. They are out there now subverting the good folks at Epinionsville with their sarcasm, their creativity, their witty comments, their good grammar skills. We must be ever vigilant against this, especially the last one.
Take for example the very person this write off was crafted in honour of. Now I'm not saying Ken has an extra toe or two. Then again maybe he does. No one has ever really seen his feet have they. But he and his wastrel potato salad worshipping ways and his befezzed followers are definitely deviants. We've been told so, time and time again. Therefore it must be true.
Ken and his ilk like the six toed children must be hounded from the site to ensure it's purity, its very bland survival. The weapons of the protectors in Waknuk were fire and destruction. Here they are no less powerful, or effective in the long run.
Banning, block lists, ridicule on private secure hat people only forums are but some of the weapons at their disposal. The mighty wave of blue hatted NHs on a review is a particularly effective tool. Sometime drastic measures are required to save us from the worst of the deviants who dare to walk among us. This can include the secretive calling in of Government agencies in the dead of the night.
Quickly now everyone after me "Ban the Deviant, Watch for The Mutant, Destroy the Potato Salad." OK well two out of three ain't bad. I just got carried away with a little religious zeal there.
It is a religious zeal too. In The Chrysalids it is the will of God that drives those who would seek out the different. It was god's wrath that almost destroyed the planet. Therefore it stands to reason it is his work that is being done to preserve it.
Here at Epinions too those that seek out and purge to protect us from ourselves often wrap themselves in the cloak of religion, sadly so. I'm not the best example of a religious person by far, but I still believe. Mind the God I believe in probably loves six toed children as much as any others. He probably loves potato salad too.
Eventually David and his merry band of telepaths escape the clutches of their kin folk and are rescued. Like there was any doubt in this one, musket toting mob versus highly intelligent mutants, is a foregone conclusion. They are all taken to a new and better society at the book's conclusion.
It appears New Zealand also survived and another very different society has flourished there. Not only are they a tolerant people who've embraced the difference amongst them but they're a little more technically advanced. They've mastered, or remastered intercontinental flight and have electrical power running. They probably even have flush toilets there too.
I don't see a group of telepathic Kiwis descending from a jet anytime soon near the grounds of 2000 Marina Blvd. to spirit Ken and his merry band away to some unknown utopia. Then again one never knows. Mind if and when they do come can I hitch a ride.
OK that's all for this week class. Next week George Orwell's Animal Farm and how it relates to the treatment of certain Simians here at Uncle Nirvy's Fun house.
This review has been a part of the Very Sordid Write Off. For reviews of other Very Sordid books (or at least ones that sound that way), please check out the reviews from these brave souls:
Erinrounds, gracef, , Jankp, Jenb123, Jgibson2, Jnbmoore, LatteChick, Lisa_J, Lyagushka, Miselainis, quasar, Redlass, Sleeper54, Tiffy0380, Xiphoid (and many others who refused to give their names)
Special thanks to our intrepid leader, Petra (aka Agent Malibu Borgie) for arranging this suspicious salute to one of Epinions' most interesting personalities!
Recommended:
Yes
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Epinions.com ID:
JAMES23
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Member: James Smith
Location: Toronto Ontario CANADA
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