The Chrysalids and The Day of the Triffids
_____John Wyndham's science fiction novels, The Chrysalids and The Day of the Triffids, do not focus on incredible and unbelievable developments in technology, as do novels of many of the stereotypical science fiction writers, yet instead focus on how the people; particularly the protagonist, deal with the many uncomfortable situations they are faced in the frightening world of the future.
_____The Day of the Triffids is perhaps Wyndham's best known novel, and tells of explosions in space blinding a large proportion of the population, at the same time as an agricultural experiment goes horribly wrong, and millions of triffids, carnivorous plants, populate every corner of the globe, threatening mankind's very existence. In The Day of the Triffids, Wyndham speculates on many things. He contemplates how the people would deal with wide-spread blindness, and how they would accept the danger of carnivorous plants on the loose - not a contemporary invention, simply basic biology working against us. In his writings he considers how the remaining people of the world would deal with such a situation, that changing situations do require new ways, and what new ways would gain acceptance.
_____Speculation about how people would react widespread blindness is an integral part of The Day of the Triffids. Wyndham considered what the consequences would be; that most of the population would die of starvation because of their inability to carry out normal daily tasks such as buying the groceries and preparing meals without the assistance of a person with twenty-twenty vision, not to mention the overhanging danger of the triffids.
'My dear,' I said. 'I don't like this anymore than you do. I've put the alternative badly before you. Do we help those who have survived the catastrophe to rebuild some kind of life?' (p 103)
Wyndham uses quotes such as that above to allow the reader to consider what the consequences would be, and also to work on the conscience of the receiving character. Wyndham considers how the people of the world would cope in such a disastrous situation with an overwhelming majority of the population being blind, where the small proportion still sighted are relied on by numbers of one thousand to one for the survival of the human race. He focuses on the devotion and responsibility it would take, to in effect, save civilization as we now know it.
Emily St. John Mandel is the author of Station Eleven, a novel about a plague that destroys over ninety-nine percent of the human race and how their lives have changed afterwards. This morbid topic is approached in an interesting way as Mandel focuses on how culture and art can survive in such horror. Author Roy Scranton writes about how humans have succeeded in destroying our own lives by ignoring the warnings of global warming in his work, “Learning How to Die in the Anthropocene.”
Drea Knufken’s thesis statement is that “As a society, we’ve acquired an immunity to crisis” (510-512). This means that humans in general, or citizens of the world, have become completely desensitized to disasters, we think of them as just another headline, without any understanding of their impact upon fellow
Background: John Wyndham, born in 1903, tried more than four careers before starting to write short stories in 1925. The Chrysalids was written in 1955.
“The Chrysalids” by John Wyndham is an entertaining yet plausible story. It compels the reader to think about human nature and our attitude to the world around us that we often take for granted.
An important motif that the author returns to at the end of the book is blindness. Beginning with the blindfolds in the battle royal, then to the blindness of the pastor, Ellison highlights how their physical blindness is also figurative. The black men who fought in the royal were blind and failed to see the white men were taking advantage of them. By the end of the book, the narrator recognizes that “the true darkness lies in [his] mind”(579) but fails to see that had he made other choices, he would never have wound up where he is at the end of the novel. He spends the last moments of the book underground,
The opening scene of the novel introduces the theme of blindness. As the narrator says, “When they approach me they see only my surroundings, themselves, or figments of their imagination-indeed, everything and anything except me,” (Ellison 3). This quote shows how people do not see the narrator. The narrator says that people “refuse” to see him. An example of this is when he bumps into a white man at night. The narrator says, "…when it occurred to me that the man had not seen me, actually, that he, as far as he knew, was in the middle of a walking nightmare!” (Ellison 4). This quote is an example of how people are blind and do not see the narrator. The narrator realizes that the man had insulted him because he did not see him. Blindness is a recurring theme in the novel, and shows how people refuse to see the truth in their community. Another example of blindness in the beginning of the novel is the battle royal that the narrator is forced to take part in. All of the fighters are blindfolded, and therefore are blind to see how the white people are taking advantage of them. Blindness is shown as a negative theme in the novel.
How would you respond to an apocalyptic situation where the structure and order of society has ceased to exist? In the novel The Day of the Triffids, Bill Masen, a patient at St Merryn’s Hospital in London, lacking the necessity of vision from a facial ‘Triffid’ sting, awakens to a world absent of normality. The majority of humanity has been permanently blinded by celestial comet debris and the Triffids have been liberated from their tethers, ambushing the vulnerable blind. A Triffid is a genetically modified plant with carnivorous eating habits and the ability to move. This novel was written by John Wyndham, which depicts a theme of conflict between necessity and morality which is important to the story in numerous ways. Necessity versus morality is the conflict that motivates the action, with events in the plot and the steadily increasing sense of narrative tension throughout the book all being defined by the tension between the striving to maintain a degree of human morality and the necessity to cast aside that morality in order to survive.
“There were a large number of people with nothing to do. Nobody was at fault. Work could not be found for them. But they must be relieved. Their children must be saved; and they cannot save themselves.”
One thing I saw a lot of in this novel is people willfully looking past instead of confronting the truth. The narrator repeatedly states people’s inability to see what they don’t want to see, their inability to see what their prejudice doesn’t allow them to see, has pushed him into a life of effective invisibility. But prejudice against others is not the only kind of blindness in the book. Many characters also don’t acknowledge truths about themselves or their communities, and this refusal is shown in the imagery of vision and invisibility. For example, the boys who fight in the “battle royal” wear blindfolds, symbolizing their powerlessness to recognize their corruption at the hands of the white men. The Founder’s statue at the college has empty eyes, signifying his failure to see the racist realities. Blindness also afflicts Rev Homer A. Barbee, who romanticizes the Founder, and Brother Jack, who is missing an eye which he conceals by wearing a glass eye. The narrator himself experiences blindness, such as in chapter sixteen when he addresses the ...
In literature, blindness serves a general significant meaning of the absence of knowledge and insight. In life, physical blindness usually represents an inability or handicap, and those people afflicted with it are pitied. The act of being blind can set limitations on the human mind, thus causing their perception of reality to dramatically change in ways that can cause fear, personal insecurities, and eternal isolation. However, “Cathedral” utilizes blindness as an opportunity to expand outside those limits and exceed boundaries that can produce a compelling, internal change within an individual’s life. Those who have the ability of sight are able to examine and interpret their surroundings differently than those who are physically unable to see. Carver suggests an idea that sight and blindness offer two different perceptions of reality that can challenge and ultimately teach an individual to appreciate the powerful significance of truly seeing without seeing. Therefore, Raymond Carver passionately emphasizes a message that introduces blindness as not a setback, but a valuable gift that can offer a lesson of appreciation and acceptance toward viewing the world in a more open-minded perspective.
Euthanasia is a painless peaceful death. Euthanasia is defined as the deliberate putting to death of a person suffering from a painful, incurable disease(New Standard Encyclopedia Dictionary). People use other terms to describe euthanasia: mercy killing, assisted suicide, and physician assisted suicide. Euthanasia can be unresponsive, (inactive) or active. Unresponsive euthanasia occurs when an incurably ill person refuses life sustaining medical support. Active euthanasia happens when another person deliberately causes the death of a terminally ill person, such as when someone gives a terminally ill person a lethal injection. Euthanasia can also be voluntary or involuntary. Voluntary euthanasia occurs with the consent of the dying person, while involuntary euthanasia happens when the dying person doesn’t give their consent.
The theme in the story of being able to see without sight is revealed through the characters in the story "Cathedral." The husband is very judgmental, self-centered and shows a lack of knowledge about blind people. This is obvious when he states, "My idea of blindness came from the movies. In the movies, the blind move slowly and never laugh (1152). The husband is so quick to judge and thinks he already knows everything about blind people and how they are, so he makes it clear he was not looking forward to the blind man being in his house ...
No discussion of evil in Shakespeare’s play Macbeth would be satisfactory without considering its’ most famous symbols of evil: the coven of witches whose interactions with Macbeth play such a vital role in his thinking about his own life. Banquo and Macbeth recognize them as something supernatural, part of the landscape but not fully human inhabitants of it. They have malicious intentions and prophetic powers. And yet they are not active agents in the sense that they do nothing other than talk and offer visions and potions. The witches have no power to compel. If we are to explore the significance of these witches we must do so by treating them as vital poetic symbols in the play, essential manifestations of the moral atmosphere of Macbeth's world.
As patients come closer to the end of their lives, certain organs stop performing as well as they use to. People are unable to do simple tasks like putting on clothes, going to the restroom without assistance, eat on our own, and sometimes even breathe without the help of a machine. Needing to depend on someone for everything suddenly brings feelings of helplessness much like an infant feels. It is easy to see why some patients with terminal illnesses would seek any type of relief from this hardship, even if that relief is suicide. Euthanasia or assisted suicide is where a physician would give a patient an aid in dying. “Assisted suicide is a controversial medical and ethical issue based on the question of whether, in certain situations, Medical practioners should be allowed to help patients actively determine the time and circumstances of their death” (Lee). “Arguments for and against assisted suicide (sometimes called the “right to die” debate) are complicated by the fact that they come from very many different points of view: medical issues, ethical issues, legal issues, religious issues, and social issues all play a part in shaping people’s opinions on the subject” (Lee). Euthanasia should not be legalized because it is considered murder, it goes against physicians’ Hippocratic Oath, violates the Controlled
Sometimes in life people can be “blind” to the truth. The answer to their question or solution to their worry or problem may have been obvious yet, they could not “see” the answer. Therefore, they were blind to the truth. This blindness is not one in a physical sense but another kind of sight or vision. In Sophocles’ writing, Tiresias is a blind prophet that presents the truth to King Oedipus. Tiresias reveals that Oedipus has been blind to the truth his whole life and when he finally does find the truth, he loses his physical vision by saying, “so, you mock my blindness? Let me tell you this. You with your precious eyes, you’re blind to the corruption of your life.”(Sophocles) In this case, those who are blind ultimately do have a higher vision- the truth. The theme of sight versus blindness in Sophocles’ work