The Chrysalids by John Wyndam

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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 were born with a deformation. At last, Waknuk was getting farther from perfection because they were trying to be more like the people from the past, the Old People, but at the same time there were many others like the Sealanders that saw perfection as something new; something any other society had had before, which was being able to communicate with telepathy. This and many other reasons are clues that show that Waknuk was getting father from perfection. In The Chrysalids by John Wyndam, diverse characters like Joseph Strorm, The Fringes People, and the Sealanders view perfection in three diverse ways.

To begin with, one important character in this book, Joseph Strorm, believes that everyone in Waknuk should look according to “The Definition of Man,” but this “perfection” definition means the loss of strong values humans need in their everyday life. The Definition of Man is how people in Waknuk believe every human should look like. Firstly, Joseph Strorm was a man that followed religion above ever...

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...ction. At last, other societies like Sealand were also trying to reach perfection, but with new ideas that could succeed, while Waknuk was just going back to the principles and old, unsuccessful community had had. Joseph Strorm uses the Bible as a reference to his life, but people do not know he just used it partially. The Bible says that God gace His only son for His love for us. God loves everyone in the world no matter hiw they are. Therefore, Waknuk was contradicting The Bible and God’s ideas. Adam and Eve sinned, and that is why now in day there are many imperfections, but God loves the world like that. In Matthew 24:21, the Bible states that God would send Tribulation to the world and that false testimonies would be made against Him. Waknuk was creating a wrong image of what God wanted, therefore how are we so sure Waknuk is not part of Tribulation itself?

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