The Chrysalids

The Chrysalids is set in Waknuk in a time deep into the distant future. There has been some kind of apocalyptic event, known as the Tribulation, and it has left the people of Waknuk in a 19th...

In John Wyndham's The Chrysalids, Uncle Axel is one of the few people in his life that David can trust. Uncle Axel is seemingly more of a father-figure for David than his own father, Joseph. Where...

In a nutshell, the hardships of her existence as somebody bearing a physical abnormality have transformed Sophie from an innocent child to a woman who has been toughened by life's hardships. After...

The Tribulation was a catastrophic nuclear holocaust which destroyed the Old People and dramatically altered the environment of the world and its inhabitants. The citizens of Labrador are strictly...

In the world of Wyndham's novel The Chrysalids, the "chrysalids" themselves are the children strewn all over the world who have a particular ability, regarded as a "blasphemy" in their...

The primary conflict in the novel Chrysalids is brought about by the government's choice to control and oppress people with genetic mutations, including telepathy. This central conflict manifests...

The main theme of The Chrysalids is that we should embrace change instead of fearing it. There are many themes in the book, but the idea that change is not dangerous is an important one. When the...

In The Chrysalids, there are two books owned by David's grandfather, Elias, to form the basis of this dystopian society. The first is the Bible, and the second is called Repentances, authored by...

An example of David’s thoughts on deviation is when he prays to be normal. David worries about Sophie’s deviation, but he has a problem of his own. David has a secret deviation, because he is a...

The first crisis is a raid on Waknuk society from the people of the Fringes. The raid ultimately fails because the Waknuk people successfully defended themselves, and several of the attackers were...

The conflict between Rosalind and Sophie concerns jealousy over David. Sophie and Rosalind both have a connection to David, and both are jealous. He can communicate telepathically with Rosalind,...

Joseph Strorm is cruel in the book The Chrysalids in that he lacks compassion as a human being. He is too rigid in his thinking, not being able to see the value in others who appear different than...

The chapter begins by showcasing David in a childlike manner. Readers are shown David and Sophie getting out of work in order to play together. They spend time together fishing and hunting for...

Joseph is the biological father of David. Joseph Strorm is a strict disciplinarian, and David knows this. Despite knowing that his dad is adamant about adhering to religious rules of Waknuk...

Sophie is important in The Chrysalids as she demonstrates that physical appearance isn't everything; that there's so much more to being a human than how you look. David has grown up in an...

David has several dreams that are critical to the story line. However, I think that the question is asking about the dream that David describes in the opening paragraphs of the book. He dreams of a...

When Uncle Axel describes Tribulation as nothing more than a "word... A rusted mirror, reflecting nothing," he is explaining how the way in which the powers that be in this dystopian world treat...

As the previous post said, the best example of foreshadowing is the very first paragraph of the novel. David is the narrator of the story, and he tells readers about a dream that he used to have...

John Wyndham's science fiction novel belongs to a post-nuclear world. Nuclear radiations have resulted in mutations and abnormalities. A cult Christian community in Waknuk becomes intolerant to...

Let us remember that the bank is first introduced in the first chapter of the novel and is used as a kind of play area for David and it is where he first meets Sophie. David mentions that he uses...

David's power is telepathy. He is able to communicate with fellow telepaths simply by thinking his thoughts, and he can hear the thoughts that they are sending to him. The book never really clearly...

It is in Chapter 2 that David describes to us the house in which he lives and the signs that you refer to. The signs are placed in the biggest room - the main living room of the family, and David...

For Joseph Strorm, his way is the only way. His father established the rules of Waknuk, declaring anyone unfit who does not fit their narrow view of the world. Joseph Strorm is the heir to Waknuk...

The main difference between the societies of Waknuk and the Fringes is the society’s organizational structure. Waknuk is an agrarian theocracy, and there is generally anarchy in the Fringes....

The Chrysalids starts off with a ten-year-old David, playing all by himself at the high bank. He meets and makes friends with Sophie, who has six toes, a trait that makes her a mutant by Labrador’s...

Michael's primary reason for staying back to retrieve Rachel is that they love each other. While it is a secondary plot line, the romantic relationships between David/Rosalind and Michael/Rachel...

Girls and women wear the cross on their clothing to protect them. One of the first things that we learn about David’s community is a hint of the importance of religious devotion. When David meets...

David does not quite know how it happened that he and Rosalind fell in love. The events of the story span years, and David and Rosalind have grown up together because they are cousins. Their...

This story is filled with important events, and different readers are going to place emphasis on certain events more than others. For me, the first significant event is David discovering that...

The first good place to look for quotes about Joseph Strorm is chapter 2. At the beginning of the chapter, David gives readers a bit of background information about his grandfather and father. At...

The final few paragraphs of this novel end where the first chapter started. If you remember, the novel begins with David's dream of a strange city with odd flying machines. This example of...

David is severely beaten by his father when he wishes that he had another hand. In David’s society, everyone is devoutly religious and they consider everyone to be made in the image of God. Anyone...

John Wyndham uses David's throwaway remark to poke fun at how a fanatical attachment to dogma can undermine not only our sense of humor, but also our capacity for rational judgment. David's father...

David flees from Waknuk in The Chrysalids to go to the Fringes. One of the Telepaths (the people who can communicate through telepathy), named Anne, is married to a "normal" man. Anne tells her...

As a so-called deviant, Aunt Harriet's baby is effectively a non-person in this society. The child might as well not exist. So when Aunt Harriet drowns herself with her baby, the child is never...

Chapter 15 doesn't explicitly explain why Sophie helps David, but I think two factors contribute to Sophie's help. The first is that Sophie knows that David kept her mutation a secret all those...

We are given this information about Elias Strorm, David's grandfather, in Chapter 2 of this great dystopian novel. David gives us some background information describing how his family came to be in...

I think one of the biggest similarities you can draw is the way in which religion is portrayed in this future world. I am in no way saying that every religion in our world can be compared to the...

David's nightmare reveals his increasing apprehensions about his father's capability of eliminating whatever he deems is not "PURE," whether it be animal or human. Early on, he has become aware of...

That is not so easy to do. Even David Strorm admits to readers that he has difficulty describing his family's house and farm. Our house is not easy to describe. One certainty about the house...

In The Chrysalids we see that some kind of tragedy has happened, and that the remaining people live under the strict commandments of the Old Testament. They are led by Joseph Strorm, a fanatical...

Waknuk was founded by David's grandfather, who was driven by "the ungodly ways of the East" to make a better society. He developed the first district in Waknuk, and relied heavily on the Bible and...

It is in Chapter Two that we are given some indications as to the family heritage that David is born into, which in turn helps to explain the unyielding rigidity of his father and why he is such a...

The Wender's cottage is much smaller than David's home, but there is a coziness and warmth in it that stands in sharp contrast to David's house. Despite its size, David likes the cottage because it...

The woman from Sealand justifies the killing of the Waknuk citizens by stating that the Waknuks are no longer a superior form of the species. Her explanation is very Darwinian. Adaptations lead...

At the beginning of Chapter 6, David is informed that Sophie and her parents have been captured. After learning this news and having been beaten, David decides to run away from home. This news of...

Uncle Axel is David's friend. Among the adults, Uncle Axel is David's best friend. The friendship is deeper that simply an uncle and nephew that like to spend time together. Uncle Axel is a...

One issue that this innocent incident deals with--innocent because David used a simple idiomatic expression to convey his difficulty in self-doctoring his wound--is what Joseph Strorm represents in...

David cannot tell anyone that Sophie has six toes because she and her family would be expelled or killed for not conforming to the True Image. Waknuk is a deeply religious society where laws...

Almost everyone in Sealand is telepathic, and they feel sorry for people who aren’t but do not discriminate against them. David and his friends are telepathic. This means that they communicate...