Dystopia
Thinking conceptually
Activity 3: John Wyndham, The Chrysalids, 1955.
[extract from The Chrysalids, Penguin books ISBN 0140013083, pages 58-60]
After The Day of the Triffids (1951), Wyndham returned to the theme of a technological cataclysm
destroying civilisation. In The Chrysalids, as in Doctor Who, this is the terrifying annihilation of
nuclear war.
The Cold War between the West and the USSR had, by the early 1950s, led to an arms race which
culminated in the development of the hydrogen bomb in 1951. This weapon used a nuclear fission
reaction to ignite a secondary nuclear fusion reaction. The result was a bomb many times more
powerful than the atomic bombs dropped on two Japanese cities at the end of the Second World
War, which only employed a fission reaction and could only, with shocking inefficiency, destroy one
city at a time. Many reacted with horror to such weapons: that such things might actually be used,
rather than kept as a deterrent, was not to be thought of. As an American diplomat said in the
United Nations at the time, in any nuclear war, “the fruits of victory would turn to ashes in our
mouths”. Yet President Eisenhower’s advisors urged him to launch a pre-emptive nuclear strike
against communist China in the 1950s.
Wyndham brought his writer’s imagination to bear on thinking the unthinkable: the aftermath of a
nuclear war which has almost wiped out life on Earth. The Chrysalids is set in the far future, a
thousand or so years after a nuclear holocaust. Wyndham, like Nation, draws on contemporary
research into the radiation poisoning which would inevitably follow a nuclear war. He reasons in the
novel that such poisoning would create grotesque mutations in successive generations of all plant
and animal life. By the time described in the novel, the mutations in some species have begun to
settle down. Human beings have a fifty per cent chance of breeding the “true image” of a human
being, that is, a human being that looks like one as we know it.
The novel’s hero, David, lives in a farming community governed as a theocracy by a post Christian
cult which teaches:
“And each leg shall be jointed twice and have one foot, and each foot five toes, and each toe shall
end with a flat nail…And any creature that shall seem to be human, but is not formed thus is not
human. It is neither man nor woman. It is a blasphemy against the true Image of God and hateful in
the sight of God.”
(The Chrysalids, chapter one, p.13)
“Offences” are plants that deviate from their true image, as defined by the theocracy.
“Blasphemies” are human beings that deviate and the common term for both is “deviations”.
Offences are burnt; blasphemies were once slaughtered but are now banished to the Fringes,
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lands bordering “civilised” areas where the Blasphemies eke out a miserable existence among
offences. The fate of deviations is controlled by the Purity Laws, enforced by the inspectors. The
Badlands are even worse than the Fringes: dead lands where nothing can live.
Wyndham ambitiously and imaginatively explores multiple themes in The Chrysalids: the treatment
of those who are different from ourselves or disabled; fundamentalist cults and their dangers;
mutation and the aftermath of nuclear war. A crysalid is the less common form of crysalis: the
deviation from the preferred form here carries the theme of unusual mutation at a linguistic level.
The crysalids of the title are David and his friends, telepaths emerging (like the Thals in Doctor
Who) as the next, improved stage of mutation.
In this extract, David as a child asks his Uncle Axel to describe the world outside the farm. Axel,
now crippled, was a sailor for many years and has seen much.
Read and annotate the extract carefully, then answer the questions which follow. Quote
from the passage to support your ideas.
[extract from p. 57, “It looked as if it would be advisable…” To p.60 “…it made people lose interest
in exploring.”]
Activity 3: Questions
1.
Religious fundamentalism and its dangers are a theme of the novel. How is this theme
revealed in the passage?
2.
The sailors’ experiences on their voyages undermine some of the religious ideas they have
been taught. Where is this demonstrated in the passage? What point is Wyndham making
here about the relative power of the theocracy and the sailors? Who do you think will be
believed by the novel’s society, and why?
3.
Analyse the style of Axel’s description beginning, “And a shocking sight it must have been at
first…if it weren't for the Purity Laws and the inspectors.” What stylistic techniques does
Wyndham use to create the picture for the reader?
4.
It is proverbially said of sailors that they are tellers of tall stories. Is there any evidence that
Uncle Axel is exaggerating in the passage in question 3, or does Wyndham suggest he is
telling the truth?
5.
Analyse the style of the description of the Badlands, from “It’s bad – but it isn't the worst” to
“…no other ship has risked keeping close in.” (This is very similar to the desolate land visited
by the Time Traveller at the end of the world in The Time Machine.) How does Wyndham
create the horrifying image here? How is his use of “understated horror” similar here to his
style in the extract from The Day of the Triffids in Activity 1?
6.
Some readers think dystopian novels are preposterous. Are there any features of the extract
which could be considered preposterous here, do you think? Give reasons for your answer.
7.
Explain how Wyndham’s description of the future world elucidates the theme of nuclear war’s
aftermath.
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8.
What links, stylistic and thematic, can you make between this extract and the extract from
Doctor Who in Activity 2, above?
9.
Explain how the extract is structured to present the reader with variety and to retain her or his
interest.
10.
Compare and contrast the four narrators or major characters from the extracts in Activity 1, 2,
3 and 4: Bill, the Doctor, Uncle Axel, the Time Traveller. What are the common features of
these narrators? How do these features reflect the time in which these novels were written?
What do they suggest about who should naturally hold wisdom and authority? Given that all
the narrators are male, does this suggest that Dystopia is a genre of primary interest to male,
rather than female, readers?
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