The Thing in the Forest

“So the mothers (who did not resemble each other at all) behaved alike, and explained nothing—it was easier. Their daughters, they knew, were little girls, who would not be able to understand or imagine.”

Despite the many differences between Primrose and Penny’s mothers, this is one key point of similarity. The women are united by their fear for their children’s physical and psychological safety. However, they fail to consider the stories their children might tell themselves about the conflict. They discount the power of the childhood imagination to substitute the real horrors with even stranger imaginary ones.

“Penny and Primrose managed to get a seat together, although it was over the wheel, and both of them began to feel sick as the bus bumped along snaking country lanes, under whipping branches, with torn strips of thin cloud streaming across a full moon.”

One of the less prominent literary devices Byatt employs is personification. This device works in tandem with similes and symbols to evoke the real-life war that inspired this story. The whole world now seems full of violence to the children—even the branches striking the train as if they were humans wielding whips. The snaking movement of the bus also hints at the hidden magic that lies in everyday things—the magic that lies beyond the real.

“She was quite extraordinarily pretty, pink and white, with large pale blue eyes, and sparse little golden curls all over her head and neck, through which pink skin could be seen. Nobody seemed to be in charge of her, no elder brother or sister. She had not quite managed to wash the tearstains from her dimpled cheeks.” 

This description of Alys underscores her raw purity: The large eyes, wispy curls, and freshly pinked skin create a babyish effect that makes her seem even younger than she is and establishes her as a symbol of childhood innocence. Significantly, Alys has no one to care for her—a detail that highlights the impossibility of preserving such innocence in the midst of war.

“They remembered too solid flesh, too precise a stink, a rattle and a soughing that thrilled the nerves and cartilage of their growing ears. In the memory, as in such a dream, they felt, I cannot get out, this is a real thing in a real place.” 

This description illustrates how overwhelming traumatic memories can be. The repetition of the word “too” emphasizes the scale of the trauma but also mirrors the repetitiveness of flashbacks and nightmares.

“‘You couldn’t get cream or real jam in the war’ said Primrose as they found a corner table. She said wartime rationing had made her permanently greedy, and thin Penny agreed it had—clotted cream was still a treat.”

Aside from the large-scale traumas of war, there are other, little ways that surviving conflict changes behavioral habits. Primrose compensates for previous periods of hunger by overindulging in food, making her gain a considerable amount of weight. Penny, however, seems to be thin because her restricted personality extends to her diet; she considers clotted cream “a treat,” which implies she rarely indulges in it. These small but important details characterize the two protagonists as grown women.

‘“Does it change—do you remember all of it?’

‘It was a horrible thing, and yes, I remember all of it, there isn’t a bit of it I can manage to forget. Though I forget all sorts of things’ said Penny in a thin voice, a vanishing voice.” 

This conversation is important because it provides a rare moment of direct dialogue. It reveals precisely how much Penny’s trauma has effaced her. Her voice is weak—almost lifeless—and it recalls the descriptions of her mother, who turned away from life because of her grief. It is another link to the trauma theme, demonstrating that while Penny’s memory may be patchy at times, the one ever-present event is that moment in the forest.

“Primrose nodded energetically. She looked as though sharing was solace and Penny, to whom it was not solace, grimaced with pain.

‘Sometimes I think that thing finished me off,’ Penny said to Primrose, a child’s voice rising in a woman’s gullet, arousing a little girl’s scared smile, which wasn’t a smile on Primrose’s face.”

This short story can be viewed as a coming-of-age tale, albeit one corrupted by the trauma of war and the Loathly Worm. Time passes, ushering the girls into adulthood. However, what they have endured has in some ways arrested their development. Primrose was deprived most, losing access to both education and freedom, but in this quote, it is Penny who seems stunted and childlike. It is as though a part of her never left that forest and died there like Alys.

“The wood, the real and imagined wood—both before and after she had entered it with Penny—had always been simultaneously a source of attraction and of discomfort shading into terror.” 

This quote captures the dichotomy of the forest, which allows Primrose to imaginatively shift her perspective on it to great effect. When Primrose and Penny revisit the forest, their perspectives contrast markedly: One sees a world that is greener and full of life, while the other sees the old signs of decay and destruction. That is the duality of this enchanted forest, which holds the potential to fascinate even as it horrifies.

“Where she lived was above a Chinese takeaway. She had a dangerous cupboard-corner she cooked in, a bed, a clothes-rail, an armchair deformed by generations of bottoms. She thought of this place in faded browns and beiges […].”

This description of Primrose’s living situation provides context for why she struggles with accepting the “real” world over her imaginary ones. For a character who wears Primrose’s colorful clothing, a drab apartment would be like a prison. Her life is cramped and disappointing, while the worlds of her stories are expansive and can be anything she imagines them to be.

“She began to think she discerned dark tunnels in the undergrowth, where something might have rolled and slid.” 

The phrase “began to think” is a reminder of the subjectivity of the stories we tell ourselves. With it, the narrator captures the thought process Penny undergoes to convince herself that she has found the evidence she is searching for. Even so, her uncertainty about what she “might” be seeing is evident. Clinging to these weak threads only underscores her emotional strain and desperation.

“Something that had resembled unreality had lumbered into reality and she had seen it.”

Penny, with her exceptional intuitiveness, recognizes that the worm has transgressed the boundaries of worlds. It ruined not only imaginary worlds for her—she is unable to enjoy reading as she once did—but her “real” world as well. It was only a brief glimpse, but the “corner of the blanket” moved just enough to devastate her (19).

“They saw each other through the black imagined veil that grief or pain or despair hangs over the visible world.” 

The image of the veil covering the women’s faces works as a counterpoint to the image of the blanket lifting to expose the other world of the worm. Becoming aware of things unseen causes a trauma that shrouds them, follows them through their lives, and filters their perception of every experience. However, this filter is in some sense “imagined”—a subjective interpretation that Primrose at least will learn to change.

“The face of the thing hung in her brain, jealously soliciting her attention, distracting from her failings. She had gone back to its place and had not seen it. She needed to see it.”

The worm comes to reside within Penny, or at least in her memories. This quote captures how intensely it diverts her attention and the keenness of her desire to see it again.