A very interesting book this, and in my opinion, the best of Wyndham's novels. The first sci-fi novel I ever read was Day of the Triffids, which is probably the most famous Wyndham, and the most popular. It sold very well in the 1950's and found its way into the national consciousness and even onto the school curriculum, which is where I encountered it over a decade later.
For some reason, people seemed able to relate to the idea of a bunch of intelligent, ambulatory giant plants taking over the world - surely he wasn't alluding to the Russians?
As much as I enjoyed Triffids, it was The Chrysalids I read next of my own accord, and this was the book which was to become one of the 'milestone' novels in my life - one of those you know that you'll read many times and always have a copy of on your bookshelf. It thoroughly caught my imagination and had me right in there with the protagonists when the action begins to heat up.
Now the plot. Although it's never explicitly referred to, it's clear that the events take place in a post nuclear holocaust world which has taken some time to recover. The legacy of the blast still remains in the form of 'no-go' areas of land, referred to as 'the badlands', and malformations in the progeny of everything from plants to humans. The other major factor is that the bible, in the form of the old testament, has survived Armageddon to strongly dominate the lives of a largely evangelical community which is their response to their own need to survive and control their world once again.
Unfortunately, anything which comes into life with any kind of physical defect is either burned (plants), slaughtered (animals) or banished to the badlands (humans) as abhorrences in the eyes of God. The unfortunate humans in this position tend to get a bit rebellious as they know that there is a tendency for people who set foot in the badlands to die sooner rather than later. Wyndham's clever ploy is to introduce a group of humans who are physically normal, but have been bestowed with the power of telepathy and who gradually form a group who have the same disruptive potential in the eyes of their society as a group of anti-capitalist demonstrators seems to have on ours.
By now you should have the idea that it's quite a complex book and one
This book was a good read for me, but I also read book reviews to help me keep track on what I am reading. These book reviews just made a better understanding of what I was reading.
This book is a very interesting read, if you have some self discipline. I mean that you need some self discipline because this book didn’t really captivate me in the sense that I couldn’t put it down. But after reading it for a while, I started to appreciate the author’s way of describing the characters and actions in this book.
For my Independent novel study project, I chose to do a book cover on The Chrysalids. The cover of a book cannot target a specific audience; however, I constructed mine to target people in the age group 12-18. I chose that specific group because the main character, David, is in that group when the story is being told; thus, the audience can relate to the characters at personal level.
I would recommend this novel to anyone who enjoys historical fiction books where the characters learn life-altering lessons. I also feel that people of all ages would enjoy this book because it’s messages and theme was very positive. While I did enjoy this book, I think I will not be reading another historical fiction novel for my upcoming book response.
I would definitely recommend this book for a friend to read! I really liked this books cause it has lots of action in it and when there isn’t any action happening, it’s just building up to some more action. I also liked this book because you really get to know the characters and everything is very detailed, especially the war scenes. The most important reason I like this book has to be because of all the action.
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.
This book was very confusing and disorganized. It was very hard to follow and the author
There comes a moment in every person’s life, when toys are no longer playthings but are merely nuisances, when you worry more about finding a job than you do about that new phone, and when your dreams of Santa and the Tooth Fairy begin to fade. In the stage in which every young adult experiences this metamorphosis, somewhere between the ages of ten and eighteen, the choices you make shape your future. In the case of David Strorm, protagonist in John Wyndham’s novel The Chrysalids, the choices he is forced to make are a bit more extreme than normal, but the same principles still apply. David must realize his true identity and how it varies from the society he grew up in, must find differences between his father’s views and his own, and, in the end, must accept that the world he knows isn’t as safe as he thought. Throughout the novel, as David Strorm matures and has to face many difficult choices, he becomes a more harsh and bitter character.
In John Wyndham's The Chrysalids, the repercussions of the static community of Waknuk and the community that the Zealanders built, that is willing to change, are derived from the influence of the Old People. After the tribulations, the people of Waknuk did not accept change they felt as though the Old People's ways were best. Their goal was to reach the same standard of civilization, but that was only achievable if they lived exactly how the Old People did. However the Zealanders believed that change was necessary in order to live life. This choice that both communities made affected their growth as a society. The Waknuk community remained static whereas the Zealanders advanced their society in respect to technology.
I like to begin with the last. On this novel's last chapter, we confront the mystifying passage:
I loved this book, its different religious views and different perspectives, the little love story and the search for oneself. It was a book that I couldn’t let go of. A book that can make you cry and is very emotional.
There were many parts of the book that had me hooked; I couldn’t stop reading no matter what was going on.
...derstand the history behind the story, and how it can interpreted in many different ways because of it's enigmatic plot, and characters.
This is my personal reflection about this book. First and foremost, I would like to say that this book is very thick and long to read. There are about nineteen chapters and 278 pages altogether. As a slow reader, it is a quite hard for me to finish reading it within time. It took me weeks to finish reading it as a whole. Furthermore, it is written in English version. My English is just in average so sometimes I need to refer to dictionary for certain words. Sometimes I use google translate and ask my friends to explain the meaning of certain terms.
I enjoy Theogony because it tells a story about how earth came to be in its present form.