55 pages • 1 hour read
John WyndhamThe Chrysalids
Fiction | Novel | Adult | Published in 1955A modern alternative to SparkNotes and CliffsNotes, SuperSummary offers high-quality Study Guides with detailed chapter summaries and analysis of major themes, characters, and more.
Background
Genre Context: Science Fiction
The Chrysalids is a science fiction novel written by John Wyndham. While Wyndham wrote many science fiction novels and short stories, this work deviates from his oeuvre in many ways, as well as from most science fiction. Primarily, while the story is set in the future (as is typical of many science fiction works), it is a future in which people live an old-fashioned life. Three hundred years after a nuclear apocalypse, people are attempting to rebuild from what is left. While some civilizations that were far away from the attacks managed to build quickly and even thrive, others, particularly those in North America, were all but destroyed. What is left is largely a wasteland and a plague of radiation poisoning that never seems to go away.
Unlike most science fiction novels set in the future, the setting resembles the past. The people ride horses, use bows and arrows, and lack technology such as airplanes and cars. Similarly, while many science fiction plots rely on some scientific breakthrough, futuristic technology, or advancement, The Chrysalids examines what happens when a society turns its back on progress, both scientifically and socially. Within Waknuk, scientific advancement is absent, and the society is structured around a strict, oppressive religious doctrine. This way of thinking and living is harshly condemned by the Sealand woman, who considers the people of Waknuk to be “primitive,” deprived, and worthy of destruction.
The novel is similar to other science fiction novels in that it deals with predictions of the future, particularly following an apocalyptic event, but the future it envisions is different. Many science fiction novels caution against the unbridled advancement of science and technology, and hints of this traditional warning appear in The Chrysalids as it features a manmade nuclear apocalypse. However, Waknuk embodies the pitfalls of turning completely in the other direction, combining religious dogma with torture, exile, and eugenics against people with birth “defects” and special abilities, like telepathy. With this, Wyndham asserts that technology might not have all the answers, but its absence doesn’t either.
Historical Context: Post-World War II and the Beginnings of the Cold War
The Chrysalids was first published in 1955. During this time, the United States and Britain were experiencing great prosperity, change, and growth following the devastation of World War II. Alongside this prosperity was the looming threat of the Cold War as the US had a different vision for the future than their World War II allies, the USSR. The US and Western Europe, deemed the “first world” by French demographer Alfred Sauvy, envisioned a world order in which capital was privately held. The USSR and its “second world” allies saw communism as the path toward an egalitarian society in which capital was controlled by workers. In contrast to previous wars, the principal belligerents did not directly fight each other, conducting proxy wars in the “third world” instead. The tenor of the time was characterized by a nuclear arms race, in which the US and USSR both stockpiled nuclear weapons, and people worldwide feared the consequences of all-out nuclear war.
Having been born in 1903, Wyndham lived through both World Wars and the Cold War and was deeply influenced by them in his writing. The Chrysalids is a post-war novel that demonstrates Wyndham’s views of World War II, Nazi Germany, and the dangerous ripple effects of discrimination, as well as the new, looming threats of the Cold War. Much like the victims of the Holocaust, people in the novel who are born with mutations are immediately othered, banished, or killed. Many others flee to escape the same fate. In Waknuk, there is a rooted obsession with purity, and it ultimately leads to the town’s destruction. Wyndham’s novel also hints at the consequences of nuclear annihilation, either due to the theoretical continuation of World War II or the Cold War’s escalation. His descriptions of a black desert, perpetually mutated people, animals, and crops, and a dangerous level of control and ignorance reflects the potential real-world consequences of nuclear war.
The Chrysalids can be read as a cautionary tale against discrimination in all forms, no matter how small; the book emphasizes that violence stems from “[j]ust a small difference […] the ‘little thing’, was the first step” (76). Waknuk’s defeat seems to imply that violent discriminatory beliefs are inherently catastrophic, but this is complicated by the novel's end, in which the Sealand woman asserts that genocide is necessary for progress. This wrinkle in the ending could assert a point of view that neither side of a war is correct since war inherently involves destroying the enemy.
