John Wyndham — The Chrysalids
A story about a kid, telepathy and a town full of terrified people who just want things to stay the way they are.
What I find absolutely fascinating about this book is use of telepathy as the deviation of choice. I may be reading into, as I seem to have had a tendency to do, but it appears to me to be more than the mere use of a common sci-fi trope. I find it telling that a society that is hell bent of eliminating all forms of deviation is stuck in a past. Furthermore, the power of telepathy to which the Sealanders have aspired have fueled their prodigious growth. This is not so different from what we have achieved with the internet. In John Wyndham’s world, those that who communicate freely and recognize the value, given the danger, inherent things that are new have progressed to a world that is beyond the reckoning of those stuck in Waknuk.
“Any sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguishable from magic” — Arthur C. Clarke.
In Sri Lanka, we are currently in the wake of a our version of a Tribulation. Well, actually, we’ve been stuck in tribulation for what seems like decades — most of my life. In fear of an unidentifiable threat, for years we took the course of being afraid of anything at all that is different — music, souls and minds. I found this book incredibly timely in my life.
Excerpts & Quotes
“It’s this way, Davie. I reckon church people are more or less right about most deviations — only not for the reasons they say. They’re right because most deviations aren’t any good. Say they did allow a deviation to live like us, what’d be the good of it? Would a dozen arms and legs, or a couple of heads, or eyes like telescopes give him any more of the quality that makes him a man? They would not. Man got his physical shape — the true image, they call it- before he even knew he was man at all. It’s what happened inside, after that, that made him human. He discovered he had what nothing else had, mind. That put him on a different level. Like a lot of the animals he was physically pretty nearly as good as he needed to be; but he had this new quality, mind, which was only in its early stages, and he developed that. That was the only thing he could usefully develop; it’s the only way open to him — to develop new qualities of mind.’ … Now, as I see it, some way or another you and Rosalind and the others have got a new quality of mind. To pray God to take it away is wrong; it’s like asking him to strike you blind, or make you deaf. I know what you’re up against, Davie, but funking it isn’t the way out. There isn’t an easy way out. You have to come to terms with it. You’ll have to face it and decide that, since that’s the way things are with you, what is the best use you can make of it and still keep yourselves safe?”
“There he [Micheal] began to learn a lot of things our old ladies had never thought of…, after a few week’s practice , it became much sharper and better, and he was able to hand on to the rest of us pretty nearly everything he was being taught — even some of the things he did not understand properly himself became clearer when we all thought about them, so that we were able to help him a little, too. And it pleased us to know that he was almost always at the top of the class”.
A pretty great description of what the internet has enabled us to do. It is like telepathy in a lot of ways.
“It was a great satisfaction to learn and know more, it helped to ease over a lot of puzzling matters, and I began to understand many of the things Uncle Axle talked about much better, nevertheless, it brought, too , the first taste of complications from which we could never again be free. Quite quickly it became difficult always to remember how much one was supposed to know. It called for a lot of restraint to remain silent in the face of simple errors, to listen patiently to silly arguments based on misconceptions, to do a job in the customary way when one knew there was a better way…”
It’s a constant source of frustration to me when I have to listen to people in my family and on the news argue, bicker and sling blame based on superstitions and lies. I have to remind myself to constantly hold my tongue for fear of being ridiculed and looked at like a mad man.
“We had a gift, a sense which , Michael complained bitterly, should have been a blessing, but was little better than a curse. The stupidest norm (norm meaning a normal person without the ability of telepathy) was happier; he could feel that he belonged. We did not, and because we did not, we had no positive — we were condemned to negatives, to not revealing ourselves, to not speaking when we would, to not using what we knew, to not being found out — to a life of perpetual deception, concealment, and lying.”
This the price of living in a culture that has condemned difference of any kind to the trash heaps of life. It turns good people who might otherwise have something to offer into deceivers and liars. It has an eroding effect on the spirit until eventually there is nothing left. Unable to endure anymore, the spirit turns to defend itself. It turns against those from whom it sought approval the most in anger, resentment and hatred.
“We could all realize that a marriage to a norm would become intolerable in a very short while. Our position in our present homes was bad enough; to have to go on living intimately with someone who had no though-shapes would be impossible… It could not be anything but a sham marriage when the two were separated by something wider than a different language, which had always been hidden by one from the other. It would be misery, perpetual lack of confidence, and insecurity”
I wonder how many individual spirits have been crushed under the pressure of this particular cultural force in Sri Lanka: arranged marriages. Doomed to live with someone who could not share your ‘thought-shapes’ for the sake of normalcy and belonging.
“They stamp on any change: they close the way and keep type fixed because they’ve got the arrogance to think themselves perfect. As they reckon it, they, and only they, are in the true image; very well, then it follows that if the image is true, they themselves must be God: and, being God, they reckon themselves entitled to decree, “ thus far, and no farther.” That is their great sin: they try to strangle life out of life.”
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An amazing book. If you feel like you’re stuck in a world that doesn’t understand you and doesn’t care to try, you will relate to the plight of the main character and his friends.
That being said, this is not to say that you should take a holier-than-thou attitude towards society. It’s simply to say that if you recognize the patterns of rules, laws and behavior of Waknunk manifest in the world around you, you are not alone. There is certainly value, life saving value, to be gained from the distilled wisdom in society. However, a society that rows against the current of change, in direct opposition, disregarding the possibility of cautious exploration of that which is different, should be embraced with utmost scepticism.
