Chrysalids
Imagine living in a place where there seemed to be a sense of hate in the eyes of everyone, except David Strorm. This place was called Waknuk. Waknuk was a place where anything out of the "norm" was wrong and sinful and could even end in a consequence as serious as death. Life was good for those who believed and practised the Waknuk religion following the definition of man which was heard every Sunday of their lives: "'And God created man in His own image. And God decreed that man should have one body, one head, two arms and two legs: that each arm should be jointed in two places and end in one hand: that each hand should have four fingers and one thumb: that each finger should bear a flat finger-nail...' And so on until: 'Then God created woman, also, and in the same image, but with these differences, according to her nature: her voice should be of higher pitch than man's: she should grow no beard: she should have two breasts' And so on again." (page 10-11) Those who did not believe in the Waknuk religion found life to be hard and unfair. Throughout David's life in Waknuk, he was faced with many tools of hate such as prejudice, pride and deception. David painfully learned that prejudice causes individuals to be isolated from each
other, pride causes individuals to mistreat each other and finally that deception causes much hurt and distress among individuals. Due to these facts, the theme of love is eclipsed or overshadowed by the theme of hate in The Chrysalids. David was faced for the first time in his life a tool of evil - - prejudice. It all started the day he met Sophie Wender. She was peering through the bushes when David was playing happily in a sand pile. They soon became best friends and enjoyed playing together for endless hours. One day as they were playing, Sophie's foot became caught between two stones. When David helped her free her foot, he saw that she had six toes on each foot. Her towns really did not bother David, in fact it made their friendship grow deeper in trust. They enjoyed going down to the stream to go catch little creatures. Sophie now felt quite comfortable around David and often took off her shoes to reveal her six toes. However, their world came shattering down when Alan Ervin saw Sophie's footprint in the dirt that clearly showed her six toes. Sophie was now discovered. She and her family had to flee to the Fringes because the community of Waknuk was extremely prejudice and they would probably end up killing Sophie and her family. It saddened David greatly to see his best friend leave, and at the time he didn't really seem to understand the reason why. The pain did not end there. Alan told Joseph Strorm, a strong believer in the Waknuk religion, as well as David's father all about Sophie's footprint and David's concealment of this Blasphemy. The following day, David was interrogated by the inspector and was forced to confess that he was concealing information about someone who was not a 'norm'. Prejudice equals hate, and hate is the total opposite of love. Everyone of Waknuk has such 'warped' and strong beliefs against minor or major deviations that hate overshadows love. Pride for the Waknuk religion was in e
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Approximate Word count = 1300
Approximate Pages = 5 (250 words per page double spaced)
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