The Chrysalids : Significant Passages

1. David 1 David 2 Petra Sealand 1 Sealand 2 Sealand 3 Inspector 1 Inspector 2 Joseph Strorm Uncle Axel 1 Uncle Axel 2 Uncle Axel 3 Aunt Harriet 1 Aunt Harriet 2 Anne Michael The Fringe People The Fringe People The Fringe People The Chrysalids: Significant Passages

2. The Inspector “Well, any part of the definition is as important as any other; and if a child doesn’t come within it, then it isn’t human, and that it means it doesn’t have a soul. It is not in the image of God, it is an imitation, and in the imitation there is always some mistake. Only God produces perfection, So although deviations may look like us in many ways, they cannot be really human. They are something quite different”(pg.55). BACK

3. The Inspector “… the Devil sends Deviations among us to weaken us and tempt us away from purity. Sometimes he is clever enough to make a nearly-perfect imitation, So we have always to be on the look-out for the mistake he has made, however small, and when we see one it must be reported at once”(pg.55). BACK

4. Uncle Axel “When people are used to believing a thing is such-and-such a way, and the preachers want them to believe that that’s the way it is; it’s trouble you get, not thanks, for upsetting their ideas. Sailors soon found that out in Rigo, So mostly they only talk about it now to other sailors. If the rest of the people want to think it’s nearly all Badlands outside, they let them; it doesn’t alter the way it really is, but it does make for peace and quiet”(pg.57). BACK

5. Uncle Axel “You start asking yourself: well, what real evidence have we got about the true image? You find that the Bible doesn’t say anything to contradict the people of that time being like us, but on the other hand, it doesn’t give any definition of Man, either. No, the definition comes from Nicholson’s Repentances – and he admits that he was writing some generations after Tribulation came, so you find yourself wondering whether he knew he was in the true image, or whether he only thought he was …”(pg.63). BACK

6. Aunt Harriet “I am not ashamed – I am only beaten”(pg.72). BACK

7. Aunt Harriet “I shall pray,” she said. “Yes, I shall pray.” She paused, then she went on, her voice steady and harder: “I shall pray God to send charity into this hideous world, and sympathy for the weak, and love for the unhappy and unfortunate. I shall ask Him if it is indeed His will that a child should suffer and its should be damned for a little blemish of the body … And I shall pray Him, too, that the hearts of the self-righteous may be broken(pg.73).” BACK

8. Joseph Strorm(In response to Harriet’s request) “The enemies of God besiege us. They seek to strike at Him through us. Unendingly they work to distort the true image; through our weaker vessels the attempt to defile the race. You have sinned, woman, search your heart, and you will know that you have sinned. Your sin has weakened our defences, and the enemy has struck through you. You wear the cross on your dress to protect you, but you have not always worn it in your heart. You have not kept constant vigilance for impurity … you have produced a defilement”(pg.72). BACK

9. Uncle Axel “What do you think it is that makes a man a man?” I started on the Definition. He cut me off after five words. “It’s not!” He said. “A wax figure could have all that, and he’d still be a wax figure, wouldn’t he?” “I suppose he would.” Well, then, what makes a man a man is something inside him.” “A soul?” I suggested. “No,” he said, “souls are just counters for churches to collect, all the same value, like nails. No, what makes a man man is mind; it's not a thing, it’s a quality, and minds aren’t all the same value; they’re better or worse, and the better they are, the more they mean”(pg.80). BACK

10. David “Still, our whole consideration if we were to survive must be to keep our true selves hidden: to walk, talk, and live indistinguishably from other people. 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 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”(pg.86). BACK

11. Anne “Why should I wait? It might be for years, or for always. I’ve got Alan and you want me to waste years waiting for someone who may never come – or whom I may hate if he does. You want me to give up Alan, and risk being cheated of everything. Well, I don’t intend to. I didn’t ask to be the way we are; but I’ve as much right to get what I can out of life as anyone else. It isn't going to be easy: but do you think I’d find it easier going on like this year after year? It can’t be easy for any of us, but it isn’t going to make it any better of two of us have to give up all hope of love and affection. Three of us can marry three of you. What is going to happen to the other two then – they two who’ll be on the outside? They won’t e in any group. Do you mean they ought to be cheated out of everything?”(pg.92). BACK

12. Michael “They’re afraid of us. They want to capture you and learn more about us – that’s why there’s the large reward. It isn’t just a question of the true image – though that’s the way they’re making it appear. What they’ve seen is that we could be a real danger to the,. Imagine if there were a lot more of us than there are, able to think together and plan and co-ordinate without all their machinery of words and messages: we could outwit them all the time. They find that a very unpleasant thought; So we are to be stamped out before there can be any more of us. They see it as a matter of survival …”(pg.132). BACK

13. Petra “Why?” she asked. “Well,” I tried, “you see we’re different from them because they can’t make thought-shapes and when people are different, ordinary people are afraid of them – “ “Why should they be afraid of us? We aren’t hurting them,” she broke in. “I’m not sure that I know why,” I told her. “But they are. It’s a feel-thing not a think-thing. And the more stupid they are, the more like everyone else they think everyone ought to be. And once they get afraid they become cruel and want to hurt people who are different”(pg.144). BACK

14. The Fringe People “It’s your parts where the old Devil’s hanging on and looking after his own. Arrogant, they are. The true image, and all that … Want to be like the Old People. Tribulation hasn’t taught them a thing … The Old People thought they were the tops, too. Had ideals, they did; knew just how the world ought to be run. All they had to do was get it fixed up comfortable, and keep it that way … they weren’t God’s last word like they thought: God doesn’t have any last word. If He did He’d be dead. But He isn’t dead; and He changes and grows, like everything else that’s alive. So when they were doing their best to get everything fixed and tidy on some kind of eternal lines they’d thought up for themselves, He sent along Tribulation to bust it up and remind’em that life is change”(pg.153). BACK

15. The Fringe People “They’re pig-headedly determined to keep the Old People’s standards – but do they? Can they? How do they know that their crops and their fruit and their vegetables are just the same? Aren’t there disputes? And doesn’t it nearly always turn out that the breed with the higher yield is accepted in the end? … Sure, they can wipe out the obvious deviations, but are you sure that the Old People would recognise any of the present breeds at all? … You can’t stop it, you see. You can be obstructive and destructive, and you can slow it all up and distort it for your own ends, but somehow it keeps on happening. Just look at these horses”(pg.154). BACK

16. The Fringe People “They stamp on any change: they close the way and keep the 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 the life out of Life”(pg.154). BACK

17. Sealand “… we do know that we can make a better world than the Old People did. They were only ingenious half-humans, little better than savages; all living shut off from one another, with only clumsy words to link them. Often they were shut off still more by different languages, and different beliefs. Some of them could think individually, but they had to remain individuals. Emotions they could sometimes share, but they could not think collectively. When their emotions were primitive they could get along all right, as the animals can; but the more complex they made their world, the less capable they were of dealing with it. They had no means of consensus. They learnt to co-operate constructively in small units; but only destructively in large units. They aspired greedily, and then refused to face the responsibilities they had created. They created vast problems,and then buried their heads in the sands of idle faith. There was, you see, no real communication, no understanding between the,. They could, at their best, be near-sublime animals, not more”(pg.156). BACK

18. Sealand “Your work is to survive. Neither his kind, nor his kind of thinking will survive long. They are the crown of creation, they are ambition fulfilled – they have nowhere more to go. But life is change, that is how it differs from the rocks, change is its very nature … The living form defies evolution at its peril; if it does not adapt, it will be broken. The idea of completed man is the supreme vanity: the finished image is a sacrilegious myth”(pg.182). BACK

19. Sealand “The essential quality of life is living; the essential quality of living is change; change is evolution: and we are part of it”(pg.196). BACK

20. David “… mankind – that was us, in civilized parts – was in the process of climbing back into grace; we were following a faint and difficult trail which led up to the peaks from which we had fallen. From the true trail branched many false trails that sometimes looked easier and more attractive; all these really led to the edges of precipices, beneath which lay the abyss of eternity. There was only one true trail, and by following it we should, with God’s help and in His own good time, regain all that has been lost. But so faint was the trail, so set with traps and deceits, that every step must be taken with caution, and it was too dangerous for a man to rely on his own judgment. Only the authorities, ecclesiastical and lay, were in a position to judge whether the next step was a rediscovery, and so, safe to take; or whether it deviated from the true re-ascent, and so was sinful”(p.40). BACK