THE CHRYSALIDS full notes

houseofballoons THE CHRYSALIDS key: themes general Insights characterisation devices CHAPTER 1: PLOT POINTS: ● Starts with David having a dream of an Old People city with “shiny fish-shaped things in the sky” → David asks his sister, Mary about this but she says that no such place exists. She tells him that he should keep this dream to himself, foreshadowing the secrets he has to keep later on in the novel ● David meets Sophie, and she begrudgingly reveals her toes to him after getting injured. David gradually realises she has six toes → he doesn’t notice because he regards her as a friend and isn’t focused on outward appearances (childlike innocence) ● Incident with Sophie’s toe should’ve gotten a response out of David since it was preached that human beings shouldn’t have extra toes, but the fact that seeing her toes doesn’t trigger the thoughts of the rules shows how easy it is to memorise something without understanding it CHAPTER 2: PLOT POINTS: ● David goes home. Around his home are proverbs from a book called the Repentances e.g. “Watch thou for the Mutant!” → Waknukians feel this need to protect themselves from what they don’t understand (‘ignorance is bliss mindset’)

houseofballoons CHAPTER 4 THEMES: ● Prejudice: sterilisation of Blasphemies so that they wouldn’t be able to reproduce → emphasis that they want to have an untainted and pure society ● Reliability of sources: the only information that the Waknukians rely on are from the Bible & Nicholson’s Repentances → who’s to confirm the reliability and truth of these sources? ● Progress & gradual acceptance of mutants through the greathorses (SYMBOLISM) KEY PLOT POINTS: ● David sees people from the Fringes and expects them to look monster-like (based on the descriptions he has been told), instead one of them even resembles his own father ● Joseph gets into a fight with the inspector about the horses as they’re abnormally large → horses were bred and “man -made” → government has no qualms about this but Joseph does as he views them as mutations and not in the image of god → horses represent gradual acceptance of deviants and freedom ● The government is simply using horses for more profits & gains → ideas of justice and fairness depends on how much they gain. ● Uncle Axel is different from a lot of other characters as he questions the norm and is a lot more accepting (non-conforming) → not prejudiced like most Waknukians TIMELINE: ● Since Canada is cold in the present world and Labrador WAS cold → we are the Old People → Waknuk is a city of the future (expected to be more progressive) and everyone got wiped out by nuclear war → led to deviations because of the effects of radiation ● (pg 33) “Out of that blankness stretched a few strands of legend, badly frayed in their passage through successive minds.” → successive minds is a metaphor for people. A few strands of legend refers to many different interpretati