The Chrysalids Essay

Everyday, an individual changes in their perspective and personality in one way or another, and it impacts their character. John Wyndham, the author of The Chrysalids, demonstrates that every individual experiences something that changes them in such a way that it prevents them from being able to go back to the person they once were. A prominent character that displays such a change would be David, who is the protagonist of the novel and goes through significant adversities that carve out his character. David changes in the story because of his mutation and his own thoughts, which develop because of the challenges they bring upon him. Not only do these factors bring change upon him but his identity also transfigures throughout the

Since David’s mother’ death, he now lived with his loving grandmother, Margret Limpert. David seemed to ignore her and show disrespect to her. In the beginning of the book, his grandmother took him to an Easter egg hunt. He was not happy about going. When David was looking for easter eggs, he saw a girl that he thought was beautiful. He asked if she was dead, and she did not respond. He then starting talking about himself to the girl, and then he ran off. The girl that he mistook as being dead, was a thirteen year-old girl who likes to break all rules, and her name was Primrose Dufee.

As Harriet Braiker once said: “Striving for excellence motivates you; striving for perfection is demoralizing.” There are many people that always seek for being perfect, but what does that leads to? In Waknuk society, “perfection” just led to destruction. Joseph Strorm, the father of the main character David Strorm and the leader of this society, started forgetting about the values he should have had and also he was forgetting about the love he needed to give to his family. In addition, God sent Tribulation because He wanted society to become better than what they were being. The citizens in Waknuk were seeking to look more like God, according to the people from the Fringes, which were people who were sent to another place because they

Adversities are hard to avoid in one’s life; everyone has to face them at one point in their life. The effect it has on a person’s life can change their perspective towards the world. When problems arise individuals traditionally become stunned to such difficult situations that they face. The adversity becomes a brick wall that is challenging to break down. An individual's true character in addition to their nature is revealed when they face a conflict in their life or a challenge. The people who conquer the challenges that life throws at them, they are the only one’s worthy enough of being called a warrior. In the novel, The Chrysalids by John Wyndham has his protagonist David go through some conflicts which he overcomes throughout the story.

Change, the essential of life, it can be tranquility or turbulence, change has no set goal, it occurs all around us without us knowing. In the novel, The Chrysalids, by John Wyndham, change is the major problem in the society even though it is hidden in different aspects of life. To the society, change is their enemy, but it is themselves who are their enemies without knowing it. A society that fails to realize the inevitability of change will indubitably agonize.

“‘She was competent, decisive, self-reliant; perhaps she intimidated them, for before long they drifted their attentions elsewhere’” (93).

At the age of 5 years old, not only did he began to take showers with his father, but when they went to the beach club, his mother bathed him in the shower in the presence of other naked women. By the age of 6 years old, David noticed the power men had over women, “when a male entered the women’s side of the bathhouse, all the women shrieked”. (Gale Biography). At the age of 7 and 8 years old, he experienced a series of head accidents. First, he was hit by a car and suffered head injuries. A few months later he ran into a wall and again suffered head injuries. Then he was hit in the head with a pipe and received a four inch gash in the forehead. Believing his natural mother died while giving birth to him was the source of intense guilt, and anger inside David. His size and appearance did not help matters. He was larger than most kids his age and not particularly attractive, which he was teased by his classmates. His parents were not social people, and David followed in that path, developing a reputation for being a loner. At the age of 14 years old David became very depressed after his adoptive mother Pearl, died from breast cancer. He viewed his mother’s death as a monster plot designed to destroy him. (Gale Biography). He began to fail in school and began an infatuation with petty larceny and pyromania. He sets fires,

Sophie allows for doubt to pierce its way into David’s life for the first time. At the start of the novel, when David first meets Sophie, he gets an insight into a deviant’s life. She has proven to be the first blow to efficiently impact David’s thoughts and make him question the authenticity of his society’s belief system. “It is hind-sight that enables me to fix that as the day when my first small doubts started to germinate.”

The views of change in Waknuk and Zealand are conflicting. While one embraces change and thinks that it is essential in life the other frowns upon change and believes that it is the devil working. In the sci-fi novel The Chrysalids by John Wyndham, David and other children have telepathic abilities, but living in Waknuk, a rural Christian town, deviations are outlawed, causing the group to keep their abilities to themselves. Petra, the strongest member of the group, begins to communicate with a far away source in a city called Zealand where telepathic communication is put on a pedestal. The group begins learning new ideas regarding change in Zealand and realizes that Zealand might be their only place to escape to. In John Wyndham’s novel The Chrysalids fear of change affects Waknuk and Zealand because the Waknuk society is built around change being unacceptable due to firm religious views while the Zealand society has embodied change as it is a necessity to them.

Certain decisions and events in life make people choose different paths that often do not connect with the way things work around them. They follow these paths because they believe that it is justified. In the novel, The Chrysalids by John Wyndham explains a variety of paths that could be considered as rebellious. Uncle Axel rebels against the expectations that is put on him in his society, Anne abandons her inborn ability and the group of telepaths, while Gordon revolts against the established power of Waknuk. All three of the characters are in opposition to the higher power in a society.

The Chrysalids, by John Wyndham is a great novel in my opinion. It occurs in the future but it focuses on

When one allows allows themselves to blindly accept traditions and predecided ways of living, not only does it put oneself in risk or danger but it also puts others at risk over danger too. The story “The Chrysalids” by John Wyndham shows that by conforming to others beliefs or lifestyles are damaging to not just one person, but to a whole community.The story also shows that relationships and bonds within the community can be ruined. Most importantly the story shows that blind acceptance can cause so much destruction to a person's well being.

In a man’s world, women who want must suffer. They are turned away from personal achievement and forced down a path that encourages a devotional, misguided love. The desperation derived from this obsessive love inevitably causes destruction to its bearer in Toni Morrison’s Song of Solomon. In her novel, the protagonist Milkman searches for his personal and communal identity against a backdrop of disenfranchised, lovelorn women, and the reader watches as their inescapable desires for affection bring women to ruin. Morrison’s female characters are constantly wanting, propelled by their quest for intimacy. In this novel, female love is all-consuming and obsessive to reflect age-old oppressive patriarchal values; women are primarily defined by the men in their lives and achieving a home and a husband should be paramount for even nonconforming women. This wreaks havoc on the psyches of Hagar and Corinthians and begets endless anxiety over marriage and commitment. Through the consistent disintegration of her female characters, Toni Morrison examines the repressive, traumatic ‘ideal’ path for women and its prevalence in our and her novel’s society.

(Hord Zinn). David is a telepathic boy living in a post apocalyptic nuclear wasteland, called the “Tribulation” in the book The Chrysalids. David manages to change the world and the vision of mutation and deviants. David would have never able to do that without the people around that changed him. This Essay will explore how Sophie, Uncle Axel and Gordon though minor characters have a major impact on David's development.

David Strorm is the protagonist in the book, "The Chrysalids." He is a telepath in a dystopian era where genetic mutations are believed to be works of the devil. His father, Joseph Strorm, is a strict religious leader in their community, strongly against mutants like David. He doesn't know about David's mutation, but if he did, he would surely banish him like they do all deviants, even though David is his son. These two characters, despite them having different beliefs, can be similar. David and Joseph Strorm are the same because they both think they are doing the right thing and are both seen as leaders. However, they are different because, while David accepts deviants, Joseph is strongly against them.