The Chrysalids Fear Analysis

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The Chrysalids: Fear Waknuk is a society of the future with a setting from the past. It is one of the few places, which have survived Tribulation but it is a primitive society, where people reject change and difference in belief that that is how the ‘Old People’ lived. Waknuk is dominated by a religion, which is obsessed by perfection. “And any creature that shall seem to be human…it is a Blasphemy against the true image of God, and hateful in the sight of God.” They believe that they are the “True image of God”, and anyone or anything different is a ‘Mutant’. That is what they fear, ‘mutants’. Joseph Strorm is a strong believer in what is right and what is wrong. This fear has motivated him to capture, kill or banish the Blasphemies to ‘The…show more content…
The children know they are different, and they fear their elders and their parents. These children possess powers of telepathy, which would be known as, a deviation in Waknuk. Their fear is that their powers will somehow be revealed and they will therefore be captured, killed or cast away to The Fringes. The children’s fear of their telepathy being exposed has motivated them to run away. “Katherine has admitted it, confessed.” Katherine’s fear of losing her life motivated her to confess that her and a few others were telepathic. First she had a fear about her abilities being found out but then she had to fear her life if she did not tell the norms what was so different about her and why she was running away. “I’ve killed him Michael. He’s quite dead.” Rosalind’s fears lead her to kill a man, yet she felt so guilty about it, although they tortured many of her kind. She may have felt guilty as she thought the norms would find out that she killed the man and then they would kill her. David and Petra are the ringleaders in the escape. “If we were to survive, we must keep our true self hidden…” When Petra was drowning, David and Rosalind heard her cries through their minds, which then made them fear more, as people were being suspicious as no-one else heard her. Then they had to fear Petra, as they realized her powers were much too strong for her and she was too young to fully understand it.…show more content…
Fear of the unknown, fear of difference, which has lead to a life of seclusion from other societies. The word Chrysalids is derived from chrysalis, meaning the stage, which the larvae of butterflies and moths pass through before they become adults. It could refer to the fact that life is full of changes and it will change no matter what. When the children reach Sealand it represents freedom, they are free from their fears like when a butterfly is able to fly, it is free. In the end, the characters no longer have their same fears. They have beneficial fears for the future, as they do not know what future holds for them. If the children did not have fears they would not have been motivated to run away and find a home where they truly belong. If the Fringes people did not have their fears, they would not have found each other. If the Waknuk community did not have fears, they would not realize that the world lives on reformation and contrast. “But life is change, that is how it differs from the rocks, change is its very nature… The idea of completed man is the supreme vanity: the finished image is a sacrilegious
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