“There were once two little girls who saw, or believed they saw, a thing in a forest” (Byatt 324). So opens A.S. Byatt's short story, “The Thing in the Forest”; a dark little tale about two young girls named Penny and Primrose, and their experience during the Blitz in World War II (Byatt 325). They, along with many other children, get shipped off to the English countryside to be spared from the threat of bombs from Germany. After a long train ride and a sickening bus ride, they arrive at their destination. It is a very large house, large enough to be considered a mansion, with a stone terrace and lawn behind it. Beyond the lawn is a classic dark English wood, which the two girls decide to go into and explore. They are not used to seeing the natural flora and fauna of the forest as they both have only lived in urban environments. Then they both begin to hear horrific noises, and at the same time begin to smell a smell best described as the “liquid smell of putrefaction” (Byatt 328). The noises and smells continued to get stronger and more intense until the source of both made its appearance to the girls. It is the Thing mentioned in the title; a horrid, miserable creature appearing to be made of all sorts of foulness glued together in a way which makes it appear to be “like still-wet Papier-mâché, or the carapace of stones and straws and twigs worn by caddis-flies underwater” (Byatt 329). The creature makes slow progress past them as they lay behind an old log, cowering in fear. Once the creature has past they stand up and walk out of the forest, hand in hand. After returning to the house they never speak to each other again and are sent to different families. They never see each other again until they are both middle-...
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...o some of the most disgusting substances on the face of the earth. Byatt actually forces the Thing into a very awkward position in the story by making it representative of both life and death at the same time. It is very easy to see that Byatt is truly an expert at using symbols and elaborate imagery to bring her tales to life.
Works Cited
Margaronis, Maria. "Where the Wild Things Are."Nation. 14 Jun 2004: 24-8. Print.
Messud, Claire. "The Beast in the Jungle." New York Times 9 May 2004: 233 pp.. Print.
Sorensen, Sue. "Death in the Fiction of A. S. Byatt" Critique: Studies in Contemporary Fiction 43.2 (2002). 27 Mar. 2011.
Villanueva, Maria Casado. "Terrible Absences, Horrible Presences: Phantasmagorias of Childhood in the British Modernist and Postmodernist Short Story." Fear Withing Melting Boundaries. (2011): 21-28. Print.
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