‘The Wasp Factory’
What you need to know…
Today’s aim
• To examine the key aspects of the novel chronologically, picking out
key quotations and their uses.
Why?
• This will alert you to the key quotations of the novel and their uses.
• You need to have enough quotations at your fingertips to answer a
wide variety of questions.
• You need to be adept in answering questions on a variety of areas.
• Character
• Theme
• Setting
• Know quotes for the above three and you stand yourself in good stead.
• As you know the Higher style questions are never overly simplistic
• The skill lies in twisting what you to the question.
1
• At the north end of the island, near the tumbled remains of the slip
where the handle of the rusty winch still creaks in an easterly wind, I
had two Poles on the far face of the last dune. P 1.
• Onomatopoeia
• Decay
• Isolated setting
2
• There was a layer of grey-blue smoke in the room at about shoulder
level, and a big wave in it…the wave rose slowly between us while my
father stared at me. P3-4
• Hidden truths
• Barrier between characters
• Foreshadowing
• Suggestion of aggression from father
3
• My father is tall and slim, though slightly stooped. He has a delicate
face, like a woman’s and his eyes are dark. P 5
• Gender
• Duality
• Differences between m +w can be blurred
• Frank is naïve as both men and women share traits.
• Contrast in eyes and ‘delicate’ face
• Darkness suggests hidden secrets.
4
• My father’s leg locked solid, has given me my sanctuary up in the
warm space of the big loft, right at the top of the house where the
junk and the rubbish are, where the dust moves and the sunlight
slants and the Factory sits – silent, living and still. P 6
• Duality
• Warped goodness
• Secrecy – Frank is hidden away
• Use of personification – external influences in Frank’s (our) lives.
5
• Now all we have is the island, and that’s pretty small, and hardly even
an island at low tide. p.12
• I don’t like leaving the island for that long, Eric. I’m sorry, but I get this
horrible feeling in my stomach. P. 17
• Setting reflecting Frank’s isolation – disconnected from people.
• Fears others. Fears things he cannot control.
• Product of his upbringing.
6.
• I could see mist over the forests below the mountains, and fog out
over the North Sea. P. 21
• Setting – reflecting secrecy and confusion.
• Use of pathetic fallacy – reflects Frank’s views about his own identity.
• The self is clouded in Frank’s case.
7.
• But I have a far more sophisticated , even metaphysical, approach to
dam-building now. I realise that you can never really win against the
water; it will always triumph in the end, seeping and soaking and
building up and undermining and overflowing.
• All you can really do is construct something that will divert it or block
its way for a while. P.21
• Symbolic
• Metaphysical suggest the actions transcend the physical – act takes
on a deeper meaning.
• We are never really in control.
• Elemental imagery (water) suggests certain inevitabilities that can
never be avoided (link to Factory).
8
• It was coming at me like a bullet, head shaking, lips curled back, teeth
long and yellow and by far the biggest I’d ever seen on a rabbit.
• The petrol burst into flame as it flew over the tiny steel cup, roared
through the air and fell brightly on and around the two rabbits. They
took flame and blazed, running and stumbling and falling
• 39
• Struggle in nature
• Brutal act – Frank asserting his masculinity in attempt to gain identity.
• Fire represents aggression and violence.
• Confusion created could perhaps reflect F’s state of mind.
• Key aspects of language (onomatopoeic) create sense of anger and
confusion.
9.
• I went closer, still clutching the rusty can in my shadow. The gable end
of the house looked down on us from about 50 metres away,
windowless. White sheets flapped feebly in the back garden. My hard
beat wildly and I licked my lips. P. 46
• Link to Eden myth (snake)
• ‘Shadow’ suggest F is in darkness (sin)
• ‘Windowless’ is his desire to be kept hidden – we all have dark secrets
to hide (duality).
• Loss of innocence (alliterative ‘White sheets flapped feebly'). F has no
distinct moral compass (Freud).
10.
• His dark eyes flickered at me like a long sooty flame.
• The ‘better men than you’ line was worked out long ago.
• Cruelty of Angus
• Abuse of power
• ‘Sooty’ suggests dirt, a dark menacing stare. Aggression.
• Cruel humour.
11.
• I decided I must be lots of different people inside my brain.
• There has always been a part of me which has felt guilty about killing
Blyth… But I liken it to an opposition party in a parliament…acting as a
conscience, but not in power and unlikely to assume it. P.77
• Multifaceted personalities
• Duality
• Extended metaphor – frank has no true morality due to failures of
father and his isolation from the outside world.
12
• I felt like a bead on a thread being pulled through the air on a line.
P.81
• Fate – we all follow a path leading to the same end.
• This quote foreshadows the end of the novel, suggesting that the
uncovering of the truth is inevitable.
• The end of the ‘line’ will be the same for all of us.
• Good link to be made with Factory quote at end of text.
13.
• The bone jug pulled from the ground like a very rotten tooth indeed
one suitably dark and stormy night, by torchlight and Stoutstroke the
trowel while my father was sleeping and I should have been, and the
heavens shook with thunder rain and gale. P.142
• Sinister imagery used.
• Links with Frank’s mind
• Links with the actions of the Father
14.
• Like life it is complicated, so all the components are there. The reason
it can answer questions is because every question is a start looking for
an end, and the Factory is about the End – death, no less. P.154
• Use of the dash emphasises concept of death; this is the destination
we all will arrive at.
• Idea that every question (or every choice we make) will lead to same
eventual outcome.
• Suggests many dimensions of life but simplicity of the journey we are
on in terms of we all end up the same way.
15.
• I remembered him as the clever, kind excitable boy he had been, and I
thought of what he was now: a force of fire and disruption
approaching the sands of the island like a mad angel, head swarming
with echoing screams of madness and delusion. p165
• The conflagration was just too strong for anybody sane to cope with.
p168
• Elemental imagery
• Word choice – ‘swarming’.
• Use of similes and religious imagery to suggest a contrast in Eric.
• Duality comes through here
• ‘Conflagration’ caused by misuse of science. He has been consumed
by his experience.
16
• I restrict my horizons for my own good reasons; fear – oh, yes, I admit
it – and a need for reassurance in a world which just so happened to
treat me very cruelly at an age before I had any real chance of
affecting it. p180
• Isolation
• Pity created for Frank. Key idea in the novel is that we begin by
despising Frank but become sympathetic as he is increasingly seen as
a victim.
17
• I would choke back tears and punch him lightly as I tried to change
the story myself and he refused, slipping away from me and dying;
too often dying. P181.
• He reminded me of a hologram, shattered; with the whole image
contained within one spear-like shard, at once splinter and entirety.
p184
• Reminder of F’s loss – no father figure. Eric was Frank’s real hope and
he abandoned him.
• Eric is completely broken by his experience.
• Metaphor illustrates that he is essentially the same person, but
irreparable as a person.
18
• It was wrong to keep some of the children alive; apparently, they
were little else than exhibits to be shown to students by the doctors.
p185
• Misuse of science
• Banks is critical of this ‘ghoulish’ activity.
• Link with Frankenstein
• Lack of morality and ethical practice.
19.
• What Eric saw when he lifted the plate up, what he saw with all the
weight of human suffering above, with all that mighty spread of
closed-in, heat-struck darkened city all around, what he saw with his
own skull splitting, was a slowly writhing nest of fat maggots,
swimming in their combined digestive juices as they consumed the
brain of the child. P188.
• Key Gothic genre marker
• Grotesque and macabre scene
• Use of repetition exemplifies the enormity of damage this does to
Eric.
• Also shows savagery of nature.
• Suggest the cruel capabilities of man.
20.
• Clouds were coming in off the sea, closing the sky like a door and
trapping the day’s heat over the island. Thunder rumbled on the
other side of the hills, without light. I slept fitfully, lying sweating and
tossing and turning on my bed, until a bloodshot dawn rose over the
sands of the island. P208.
• Pathetic fallacy – character is reflected
• Use of t. epithet
• Weather as a symbol in the novel
• Use of heat to build tension.
• Breaking of the storm = revelation of truth.
22.
• I put the light on. The Study.
• There was a bookcase, two large tables standing together covered
with various bottles and pieces of chemical apparatus.
• In the alcohol was a tiny, torn set of male genitalia…I felt something in
my throat, something from deep in me. I stood and I cried…I forgot all
about Eric, about my father, about everything except me, and my loss
• Symbolic of secrecy between father and son. (sentence structure
exemplifies the study’s importance)
• Hallmarks of science – abuse
• Emotional section of the novel – create pity for Frank as he is still
deluded at this point. Lies of father have run deep.
23.
• It was an experiment, sall. Just an experiment. P 231.
• He picked up the specimen jar, but it slipped from his fingers, fell to
the floor and smashed. P237.
• Cruelty of father and abuse of power.
• Claim of being just an experiment makes us despise Angus for his
actions.
• Misuse of science.
24
• It was a perfect, calm, luminous day. There was no line between the
sea and the sky, and any smoke rose straight. The sea was flat. P237.
• Contrast with previous settings
• ‘Flat’ suggests calmness, tranquillity.,
• Reflects the revelation of truth.
25
• The weather had cleared. No storm, no thunder and lightning…I
found Eric asleep on the dune…curled up like a little child…he shifted,
put his curly head on my lap, closed his eyes and went to sleep.
• Frank takes on a maternal role and appears to be at peace.
• Direct contrast with savagery of previous chapters.
• Duality is suggested as a result.
• Beautifully touching moment that is juxtaposed against fire-ridden
scenes of previous chapter.
26.
• Where we sit and lie and sleep and look, on this warm summer’s day,
the snow will fall in a half-year’s time… the world’s grey waters and
the air’s dun skies will lay their cold, determined hands on this place,
make it theirs for a while.
• Confusion and uncertainty is still suggested, however.
• Suggests difficulty for Frank.
• Confusion reflected in unusual syntax and mention of grey uncertain
skies.
• Personification suggests threat, too.
27.
• I – the unmanned – would out-man those around me, and so I
became the killer.
• I was proud; eunuch but unique; a fierce and noble presence in my
lands, a crippled warrior, fallen prince…
• Now I find I was the fool all along
• The same (small)achievements, the same (appalling) crimes to my
name.
• I took life in a sense too seriously, and the lives of others, for the
same reason, too lightly.
• Clear reasons for actions – blame on father.
• Use of play on words is not only humorous but very true. He is unique
as we all are.
• Mention of ‘prince’ suggests tragedy – F is a victim of powers beyond
his control (his father playing God).
• Use of antithesis suggesting balance and a two-sided nature. Duality.
28.
• Each of us, in our own personal Factory, may believe we have
stumbled down one corridor, and that our fate is sealed and certain
(dream or nightmare, humdrum or bizarre, good or bad, but a word, a
glance, a slip – anything can change that, alter it entirely, and our
marble hall becomes a gutter, or our rat-maze a golden path.
• Our destination is the same in the end, but our journey, part chosen,
part determined – is different for us all.
• Key message of the novel.
• Juxtaposition of imagery suggests duality, a final reference to this
prominent Gothic motif.
• Message that we never know what life will bring us. Only certainty is
the End.
• Factory is a metaphor for life.
Essay
• Choose a novel which explores the cruelty of human nature. Show
how the writer explores this theme and discuss how its exploration
enhances your appreciation of the novel as a whole.
• Hint: look at both Angus and Frank. In some cases humanity is cruel
because of external influences.