Examples Of Dystopia In The Chrysalids

Yash Malik
Mrs. Kent
ENG1DE
23 April 2015
Dystopia in Waknuk
Waknuk is a dystopian society that is much different from a regular one. In John Wyndham’s novel The Chrysalids, Waknuk is a society where religious beliefs and old texts govern the people.These differences create an abnormal and dystopian setting for the novel.

Religious fundamentalism is what guides this dystopian society in their weird life. Two main books are followed by the people in Waknuk, the Bible and Nicholson’s Repentances. Examples from these texts are found in many places, like in David’s home, and they all read quotes such as, “Only the image of god is man”(Wyndham 18),”Watch thou for the mutant”(18), and “The devil is the father of deviation”(18). All of these things are very common in Waknuk, and they reference things that are uncommon. They even have their own terms for God and places, for instance, “the mysterious Fringes where nothing was

Eugenics is used as a factor to differentiate people, opposed to eugenics being used to improve people as it usually is. These mutations, or deviations in this case, are what cause people to differ from “the true image” and be banished to the Fringes. However, deviations are not restricted to just humans, but are also common in plants but with a few differences. As David says, “They were things which did not look right — that is to say, did not look like their parents, or parent-plants”(19), are the main differences that everybody learns about. Eugenics is not common today, but nowhere near the mutations that were caused by a nuclear war. Waknuk has some examples of these mutations, and they include deviated crops, mutated animals, and even mental mutations like telepathy within David and Rosalind. Eugenics is a topic that is used in the opposite way in this book, and the extremes to which these mutations have gone definitely helps to show the dystopian setting in this