Talk:The Chrysalids

message: Could any of the knowledgeable writers who have created a fine article here turn their attention to the article on John Wyndham's "Chocky"? That article is truly pathetic and in great need of the scholarship that is displayed in the "Chrysalids" article.Simon Peter Hughes (talk) 05:53, 25 August 2009 (UTC)
thread_title: Chocky

message: This theme is visited prominently in the end section of the book. I will draw up some stuff to put in, eventually, but anyone else's ideas would be great (keep non-1st person though!) Jdcooper 17:40, 13 April 2006 (UTC)
thread_title:  Section expansion: change 

message: If we are going to have a section on "criticism", we need to link to critical sources that contain those criticisms, otherwise that section is original research/POV. Jdcooper 11:06, 5 May 2006 (UTC)
thread_title:  Criticism 

message: I just reverted a couple of things; but this whole paragraph is problematic. I took out "actually" which someone added; it's almost never helpful to add "actually" as it doesn't (actually) mean anything. I believe I took it out once before. "Actually" often signals that somebody's opinion is coming up, trying to pretend it's objective. The whole paragraph is unsourced and unencyclopedic. Who is it who says the title is misleading? That needs a reference. The title isn't unclear to me, for instance, and even if it were, having a title with several possible meanings is hardly an undesirable thing, particularly in a work of fiction. There is no reason that the title can't refer to a stage of development of a butterfly, unusual or alien creatures, or the metamorphosis of David and his friends. If there are scholars or critics who have stated that the title is misleading, we could source that.
I don't really think describing the cover of one edition of the book is appropriate in the literary criticism section, either. But perhaps I'll leave that alone for now and wait to see if anyone disagrees. Not infrequently cover illustrations are commissioned and created by people who haven't even read the book, so I don't think you can read a lot into the author's intended meaning of "chrysalids" from that (especially considering he was dead before the 1970s). It's equally likely somebody at the publisher had no idea what a "chrysalid" was and told an illustrator, this is science fiction so draw some space aliens or something. The edition I have has some children's faces on the cover, eyes closed, floating disembodied against the background of a futuristic-appearing cityscape; I think it's meant to evoke the children's telepathic communications with the faraway advanced civilization in "Sealand."DianaW 14:40, 21 November 2006 (UTC)
thread_title: New edits

message: "This title may evoke unusual creatures such as aliens (as inexplicitly depicted on the cover of one paperback release of the book in the 1970s)."
By any chance would this be the cover that is actually depicting a wildcat attacking a horse (a scene which appears in the novel)? Battle Ape 13:42, 25 November 2006 (UTC)
replies: text: Only following this rather loosely, but in general I agree with Pat G's edits. It's important to put the story in the post-nuclear holocaust context but to lead into the plot summary with this gives a different impression of the novel. It is not *primarily* a post-nuclear holocaust story.DianaW 13:23, 4 December 2006 (UTC)

text: Did a few very minor edits, I think it's greatly improved by others' recent edits. I think this sentence is unclear: "David, Rosalind and Petra elude their would-be captors and are rescued by the Sealand mission to discover the source of Petra's telepathic transmissions." Anyone? And I still object to the notion that the title is "misleading." It is not a bad thing or a criticism for a title to have several referents or a complex symbolism. If no one raises an objection I'm going to rewrite that part soon.DianaW 13:56, 4 December 2006 (UTC)

text: If nothing else it's got to be referenced who said it's "misleading," and it's unnecessary to explain that "chrysalids" is plural of "chrysalid." If there's no source for this other than just people like us free-associating as to what "chrysalids" might mean, we ought to just take this stuff out.DianaW 14:00, 4 December 2006 (UTC)
replies: text: I agree with DianaW with respect to the entirely unnecessary explanation of "Chrysalids" and the unsourced concern that the title is somehow misleading. I have removed the offending paragraph. -- Rydra Wong 23:32, 22 January 2007 (UTC)
thread_title:  "Alien" cover 

message: The novel suggests that "A thousand years? - two thousand years? Even more perhaps?" is generally thought to be the time between Tribulation and the beginning of recorded history. Only Nicholson's Repentances was said to have "come out of the wilderness of barbarism, and that only because it had lain for, perhaps, several centuries sealed in a stone coffer before it was discovered. And only the Bible had survived from the time of the Old People them­selves." and "Except for what these two books told, the past, further back than three recorded centuries, was a long oblivion." These passages strongly suggest several thousand years passed before the three centuries of recorded history with which the Labradoreans are familiar. Hope this clarifies the edit. -- Rydra Wong 23:11, 22 January 2007 (UTC)
replies: text: I think the passages quoted, by themselves, suggest several hundred to a couple of thousand years.  I disagree with stating "several thousand"; that is possible but not well justified.  I'm inclined to think several hundred can't be long enough for the development of the society and landscape depicted; a great many many hundreds would be necessary.  On the other hand, the existence of an oral tradition suggests very few thousands.  And don't forget that the books were still readable; that constrains the time lapse very severely, since an illiterate society is most unlikely to preserve its language so well for a thousand years.  Can we find a more indefinite formulation, suggesting one to several thousand years, that is consequently better justified by the limited evidence?  Zaslav (talk) 03:29, 24 November 2012 (UTC)

text: The book is not specific, and from a purely scientific standpoint "thousands of years" is a ridiculous amount of time for fallout effects to stick around and for a tiny culture to maintain a recognizable language.  Regardless, we're not going to have a "citation needed" right next to a "do not change" marker.  So unless someone's going to actually cite something, I'm changing it to some variety of "non-specific". LordQwert (talk) 02:20, 12 May 2016 (UTC)
thread_title:  Time period: Several hundred vs several thousand years 

message: I have re-added the link to the WikiSummaries summary of The Chrysalids (here).  This link provides a useful resource to people interested a more in-depth summary.  WikiSummaries is compatible with Wikipedia in that its works are under the GNU FDL. Geneffects 15:15, 25 January 2007 (UTC)
thread_title:  External Link to Summary 

message: Did Wyndham model Waknuk after Wabush?
A careful reading of the text suggests that this is likely.
  
1. The names Waknuk and Wabush are strikingly similar: the same initial letter, same vowels, same number of syllables and the potential for similar vowel pronunciation.
"Except for what these two books told, the past, further back than three recorded centuries, was a long oblivion. Out of that blankness stretched a few strands of legend, badly frayed in their passage through successive minds. It was this long line of tongues that had given us the name Labrador," 
This passage suggests the evolution of place names over time.
Note also from the wiki article: Rigo for Rigolet, Lark for Lark Harbour and Newf for 
Newfoundland.
2. "Our district, and, consequently, our house as the first there, was called Waknuk because of a tradition that there had been a place of that name there, or thereabouts, long, long ago, in the time of the Old People. The tradition was, as usual, vague, but certainly there had been some buildings of some kind, for the remnants and foundations had remained until they were taken for new buildings. There was also the long bank, running away until it reached the hills and the huge scar that must have been made by the Old People when, in their superhuman fashion, they had cut away half a mountain in order to find something or other that interested them."
Note that the ruins of a similarly named place from the time of the Old People and reuse of preexisting building materials are mentioned and open pit mining is implied. 
3. Early in the novel the narrator David describes a high bank near his house: 
"I had made my way down the cart-track to the south, along the borders of several fields until I came to the high bank, and then along the top of the bank for quite a way. The bank was no puzzle to me then: it was far too big for me to think of as a thing that men could have built, nor had it ever occurred to me to connect it with the wondrous doings of the Old People whom I sometimes heard about. It was simply the bank, coming round in a wide curve, and then running straight as an arrow towards the distant hills"
This passage is highly descriptive of a raised rail bed. David would have had knowledge of roads of the type made by horse drawn vehicles - note his mention of a cart-track.
The bank's arrow straightness, height above terrain and the lack of similarly built roadways in Labrador strongly suggest 
a rail right of way rather than a vehicular road. Note that Wabush has the Quebec North Shore and Labrador Railway and the short connector Wabush Lake Railway in its immediate vicinity. Also note that no rail of any sort exists in eastern or northern Labrador.
4. "Their existence had become a danger­ous nuisance and their depredations the cause of many repre­sentations to the Government in Rigo."
The Labradorean government is established as being in Rigo; a community on the East coast of Labrador. 
 
5. "What the Government did do, from its comfortable situation far, far to the east, was to express sympathy in encouraging phrases, and suggest the formation of a local militia "
Waknuk is therefor situated far to the West of Rigo. Note that Wabush
and nearby Labrador City are about 350 miles West of Rigolet. 
Both Wabush and Labrador City are mining towns; see Iron Ore Company of Canada.
 
 
6. " - of which Waknuk was only a small district - was called Labrador. This was thought to be the Old People's name for it, though that was not very certain. Round most of Labrador there was a great deal of water called the sea, which was im­portant on account of fish. Nobody that I knew, except Uncle Axel, had actually seen this sea because it was a long way off, but if you were to go three hundred miles or so east, north, or north-west you would come to it sooner or later. But south-west or south, you wouldn't; you'd get to the Fringes and then the Badlands, which would kill you."
This passage further establishes Waknuk in the same general location as Wabush; in extreme western Labrador, approximately 300 miles west of the 
the coast and Rigo and of similar distance to the Labrador's northern and north western coasts.    
 
 
7. "It was said, too, though nobody was sure, that in the time of the Old People Labrador had been a cold land, so cold that no one could live there for long, so they had used it then only for growing trees and doing their mysterious mining in."
The preceding passage explicitly mentions mining in the Waknuk area during the time of the Old People.
 
 
 
8. "Like all the houses of the district, it was constructed on a frame of solid, roughly-dressed timbers, but, since it was the oldest house there, most of the spaces in the outer walls had been filled in with bricks and stones from the ruins of some of the Old People's buildings,"
Waknuk was built on or near the ruins of an "Old People" Labradorean community.
 
9. During a tirade Old Jacob states:
"Government regulations made by a lot of snivelling, weak-hearted, weak-witted babblers in the East. That's what the trouble is. A lot of namby-pamby politicians, and churchmen who ought to know better, too; men who've never lived in unstable country," 
"How do they think the south-west was made safe and civil­ized for God's people? How do they think the mutants were kept under, and the Purity standards set up? It wasn't by fiddling little fines that a man could pay once a week and not notice. It was by honouring the law, and punishing anybody who transgressed it so that they knew they were punished."
This passage further places Waknuk as not only in western but southwestern Labrador.
This is again very similar to the placement of Wabush in Labrador.
Based on the preceding I am reinstating the link to Wabush. 
-- Rydra Wong 00:40, 29 March 2007 (UTC)
thread_title:  Was Waknuk modeled after Wabush? 

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thread_title: Fair use rationale for Image:The-chrysalids.jpg

message: Most longer or better articles on novels probably do have a section on major characters.  There could be some duplication with the plot summary, but this is grounds for further editing not deletion. PatGallacher (talk) 15:19, 16 May 2008 (UTC)
thread_title: Major characters

message: Thank you, PatGallacher, for catching my mal-edit —inserting a link in the 'See also' box when the same (link) is already in the body of the article. (I should have remembered the WP layout guide —which says no, mostly, to such 'See also's.) Actually, I was 'gone astray' from my orginal task: adding category tags to articles, at the footer. Here, ie, "Chrysalids", your revert also took away the catagory tag, which I have restored; >>and, 'I shall return', to each of the articles I edited and remove any other redundant 'See also's.--Jbeans (talk) 11:03, 16 February 2009 (UTC)
thread_title: Care for another... redundancy?

message: The implication is clear, in a Chekhov's gun style.  Out of the seven (eight?) main telepaths four of them are known to be related, including the "unknown" Walter Brent killed at the beginning of the book.   a_man_alone (talk) 14:46, 16 October 2009 (UTC)
replies: text: Exactly. They are known to be related, but that in itself does not imply that heredity is the cause. They could just as easily be random mutations among a small population subject to the same external factors. All of this, however, is speculation and original research and does not belong in the article. -- Rydra Wong (talk) 15:01, 16 October 2009 (UTC)
thread_title: Telepathic ability as hereditary

message: Making allowance for the knowledge of genetics and radiation when the book was written: given the rate of random mutations (with presumably a rate of unmentioned non-viable mutations significantly higher) - would the human race be actually viable? 89.197.114.132 (talk) 15:00, 21 September 2017 (UTC)
replies: text: Yes!  Additionally, although it's been a while since I read the books, ISTR there is a mention that the badlands are retreating (albeit slowly), and it could be assumed that Blasphemies are also on the wane as the radiation gets lower and lower.  Chaheel Riens (talk) 15:04, 21 September 2017 (UTC)
thread_title:  Genetics question