Chrysalids Comparison Essay

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Society has come a long way since the beginning of time, and in the modern ages today, we should be wary of our power to send the world back to the Stone ages. That is what happened in The Chrysalids, a book set several hundred years after a nuclear holocaust. A major theme within this novel is the idea that for a society to evolve and progress, change and acceptance of it is necessary; but we must be aware of the consequences of that advancement. In The Chrysalids, Joseph Strorm, the father of the protagonist David, is a staunch supporter of the ‘True Image’. Therefore, the people of Waknuk, the village the story is set in, religiously follow the biblical passage in which a description of humans is written. In their post-apocalyptic world, there are many mutations caused by nuclear fallout, although the citizens do not know or understand that concept. Therefore, they assume that any deviations from that ‘true image’ are evil concoctions of the Devil and are to be banished or destroyed. This includes any livestock and more importantly, any crops. Joseph Strorm happens to be in charge of destroying all deviations. His counterpart, Uncle Axel, is a former sailor grievously injured on one of his journeys. Axel has sailed the entire Eastern Seaboard, and has seen other settlements. He has seen that each and every individual settlement claim themselves as the status quo, and in seeing all this, Axel deduces that there is no norm physically as the church people say and that everybody should be open and accepting of others. Rather, Axel says that it is the state of mind that a person is in should be the deciding factor in whether they are normal or not. The creation of these two characters is clearly for the clashing of their personalities and ideologies. While one is open to change, the other vehemently argues against it. Both play an important role within the life

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