John Wyndham's The Day of the Triffids

Dystopia, opposite to utopia, is a non-existing place where people are unhappy and in despair because of a certain reasons such as apocalyptic event. Often in a dystopian world, people often lose the ability to speak and are in despair. John Wyndhams’ The Day of the Triffids, is a post-apocalyptic novel, which deals with blindness and new class system due to most people getting blind caused by a comet debris. The protagonist, Bill Masen, who missed the comet debris, resulting most of the people on earth blind, adapts to the new law and policy that was made by the non-blinds. Cormac McCarthys’ The Road is a post-apocalyptic novel about a father and his son traveling to find a safe shelter and food for them. Wherever they go, they cannot come to rest because there are so many ‘bad guys’ that wonders around killing or raping people. Later on in the story, the father dies and the son meets a family who is appears to be the only ’good guys’ in the story. Russell Hobans’ Riddley Walker is a story happening a long time after the catastrophe. Riddley, the protagonist, is trying to find how to make the nuclear weapon that was used before the catastrophe happened. In all three books, language is used to depict the state of the society’s well-being which is shown by amount of time passed after the catastrophe, the use of loss of names and knowledge, and belief.

John Wyndhams’ The Day of the Triffids, is set in a time period where the world just experienced catastrophe, thus language is largely intact. Unlike other two novels, Cormac McCarthys’ The Road and Russell Hobans’ Riddley Walker, The Day of the Triffis’ state of the society is relatively better since less time has passed from the catastrophe The language used in The Day of the Triff...

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...nced our language is, the better the state of society is and it effects how we think of certain issues.

Language is one of the most important thing in our culture since it allows us to pass on knowledge and can be used as power. Language can act as power when someone change the information that we know which make the person the only one with proper knowledge. If there was no language, our history would have changed dramatically, also even though we had language, the history of our culture might no be true. Names are also another important thing in our culture since it gives us information on what an object is meant to do. Therefore, in a society, the society’s condition is represented by language which can be affected or shown by how much time is passed after the catastrophe, whether an object or person has a name or not, and the belief system that the world has.