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.
Chapters 9-11Chapter Summaries & Analyses
Chapter 9 Summary
When Petra is six years old, she amazes David and the other telepaths when she sends out a forceful message that compels David and Rosalind to come to her aid. She is about to drown, and David dives in just in time to save her. He carries her ashore, and he and Rosalind are astounded to find that Petra can not only communicate as they can, but she can also command people to do things. A few men who noticed Rosalind running inquire how they knew to save Petra, but Rosalind manages to trick them with a lie. That night, David dreams of Petra being slaughtered by their father. When he consults the other children, they agree that Petra likely did not know what happened, and they should not burden her with the truth yet.
David recalls a particularly terrible season for crops and animal births, during which 30 fields were burned, and many more people were concealing birth “defects” and being charged. David runs into an old farmer named Jacob, who complains that all his crops are bad. He goes on to say that it is God’s punishment for softening harsher laws designed to keep Deviations out of the world. In the past, they handled Deviations, including humans, by burning them alive. Jacob claims that sterilizing them and sending them to the Fringes is not enough to stave off the Devil. He believes the world is headed for another Tribulation.
When David asks Uncle Axel about what he heard from Jacob, Uncle Axel explains that winds bring up something from the Badlands that causes the Deviation rate to go up (most likely radiation). Uncle Axel expresses fears that if bad seasons continue, more and more people will want to revert to the old methods. He warns David that he could be a scapegoat if he or the others are found out. When the eldest telepath, Anne, announces she is planning to marry, things change once again.
Chapter 10 Summary
Anne is marrying Alan, who is not a telepath. This alarms the other telepaths, who know she will have to keep herself a secret from her spouse. They try to reason with her, warning her that it will be misery, that she may be found out, and that Alan will never understand her the way people who communicate through their minds can. Anne is defiant, arguing that she wants to have a “normal” life and have children like anyone else. She then stops participating in conversations with the others.
David seeks Uncle Axel’s advice and expresses his worries about being exposed. He believes that in her loneliness and blind love, Anne will eventually reveal her secret to Alan. Uncle Axel suggests murdering Anne to remove the threat, and David explains that they cannot do that because it would be “like violating a part of [themselves] forever” (96). Anne remains cut off and marries, and everyone waits for something terrible to occur. David thinks of Rosalind, who has grown into a strong and attractive woman and ignores the attention of men—a stark contrast to Anne. David and Rosalind are in love and have intended to marry for a long time, but their families feud with each other, making it impossible for them to do so. They keep their love secret.
Eight months into Anne’s marriage, Alan is found dead with an arrow through his neck. Nobody is sure how it happened, and each of the telepaths denies being involved. Anne refuses to see anyone or communicate, and they worry that she will accuse them of the murder. When Rachel, her sister, goes to speak with her the next morning, she finds Anne hanging from the ceiling. Accompanying her is a note, which is addressed to the inspector and accuses the other telepaths of conspiring to murder Alan. Rachel destroys the note. Weeks pass, and nobody discovers who murdered Alan, though rumors circulate. David and the others are forever aware that their lives are in danger.
Chapter 11 Summary
After two horrible seasons, good growth finally occurs, and everything seems to be improving. One afternoon, Petra screams out psychically again, calling everyone who can pick up the signal to come to her. David arrives first and sees a large, catlike creature mauling Petra’s pony in the woods. He aims to shoot it, but Rosalind appears and shoots it first. Soon, Michael appears, and they find Petra up a tree, clinging to it in fear. They coax her down, and shortly after, both Rachel and Mark arrive. David realizes they have congregated, which can bring nothing but disaster, and he urges the others to disperse. When Sally and Katherine arrive a moment later, David gives them the same message, but not before a man appears and inquires as to what is going on. He wonders how they all knew where to find Petra, and David’s explanations don’t seem to satisfy him. He decides to leave them alone but remains suspicious as he rides away.
David and Rosalind take Petra home, and that night, the telepaths discuss what to do about Petra. Michael notes that some of the regular people are aware of telepathy but doubtful of its existence. He points out that if God can read minds, then humans in his true image should be able to as well. As a group, they decide that David and Rosalind will be the only ones to answer Petra’s calls from now on, and David decides to start teaching her how to hone her abilities. He begins by instructing her to close her eyes and imagine looking into a deep, dark well. David puts a thought-shape of a rabbit in the well, and Petra sees it and giggles. When she tries the same thing, a violent shock strikes everyone who is tuned in. David presses forward with Petra, showing her how to reduce the intensity of her projections by doing them slowly and gracefully. During one lesson, Petra asks about the others who live far away in the southwest. David cannot hear them, but Petra’s training has allowed her to pick up messages from great distances.
Uncle Axel asks David if he has been careless. He is hearing people asking about David’s and Rosalind’s behavior lately, and he also reveals that he knows about Petra. He admits he shot Alan because he was certain that Alan would try to extort David and the others with the information that Anne had shared with him. When David consults the other telepaths, they agree that David and Rosalind must make a plan to leave with Petra at a moment’s notice if needed, and Sally and Katherine should do the same. David must do whatever it takes to keep Petra from being questioned, as she is too young to be trusted not to break. Michael suggests that if Petra cannot be saved, David should kill her rather than allow her (and the rest of them) to be thrust into the Fringes. David agrees.
Chapters 9-11 Analysis
Six years have passed, and most of the telepaths are nearing adulthood; simultaneously, Petra unwittingly makes it known that she possesses abilities far greater than anything David or the others have seen before. One day, when she goes out exploring alone, she falls into a pond and starts to drown. Petra calls for help using her mind, sending out a ferocious distress call that pounds into the minds of David and the others. Like Sophie, the discovery of Petra creates a series of conflicts. This parallel foreshadows that Petra, along with David and Rosalind, will be exiled. The plot’s tension heightens when Anne marries Alan, who is soon found dead, and Anne ends her own life in response. It is a tragic loss for the other telepaths, who considered her to be family. When Rosalind and David are seen rescuing Petra, the man who sees them wonders how they could have known where to find her. This happens again a few months later when Petra’s pony is attacked. David and Rosalind are spotted along with Sally and Katherine, and suspicions are immediately raised about them. Although David manages to train Petra to communicate with and understand others, she finds it difficult to control the strength of her powers. This causes anxiety for the other telepaths, as they are certain that it will at some point lead to their reveal. This prediction comes true in later chapters when Sally and Katherine are taken for questioning. Their apprehension demonstrates the Purity, Prejudice, and the Rippling Effects of Fear in their oppressive society, and their rising anxieties parallel the rising action of the story itself.
During the two years of bad harvests and animal birth “defects,” the people of Waknuk become more and more suspicious of others and anything strange. David speaks to a man named Old Jacob, who believes that the failing crops are a punishment for humanity’s failures to ascend. Uncle Axel worries that the poor crops will lead to a witch hunt and that David may become a scapegoat. He turns out to once again be correct, as David and Petra soon have to leave home while being pursued by their own father and community. The way that David’s family and community turn against him in an instant showcases the difference between True Versus False Unity, and David finds that his true family is with the other telepaths. Their unity is demonstrated in these chapters as they build contingency plans together, vowing to keep each other safe.
Descriptions of setting play a key role in illuminating the novel’s underlying themes and the reasons for the problems the people of Waknuk endure. Wyndham never explicitly states that the world went through a nuclear apocalypse because neither David nor any other human alive knows that. All that is provided are explanations from Uncle Axel and later descriptions of the scenery as David and Rosalind try to escape Waknuk. Uncle Axel’s hints are vague, but pieced together, they make a clear picture: “Get a bad winter with gales from the south-west, and up goes the deviation-rate” (90); “Just as Wild Country becomes tractable, and Badlands country slowly gives way to habitable Fringes country, so, it would seem are the Blacklands contracting within the Badlands” (61). Setting is, therefore, vital to understanding the story and goes beyond a mere description of place, time, or mood. The fact that the people in the novel are Living Among the Wreckage of a Fallen World shapes their ideas of purity and faith, what it means to be human, where they came from, and where they should go. It influences the characters’ actions, thoughts, and views of themselves and each other, and it is also the reason they limit themselves to 18th-century technologies. A delicate dichotomy is struck, as the novel takes place in the future but simultaneously presents a strong image and feeling of the past. It is only through David’s dream, and eventually through communication with the woman from Sealand, that it becomes clear that David’s people live near the source of the explosion and were most affected by it, sending them back hundreds of years and destroying almost all traces of their history.
