“The Chrysalids” By John Wyndhhm and “Something Wicked This Way Comes” by Ray Bradbury both portray novels that are focused on evil darkness and good. The decisions made by all the characters in both novels leave consequences that support either evil darkness or good. Every decision or action has a consequence that needs to be considered and examined before actually making the decision. The authors of the novels have very similar focuses and this allows these novels to be compared and analyzed together. Every decision made throughout each book causes extreme consequences that either helps the evil darkness succeed or allows the goodness of people to overrule the bad.
David Strorm and Jim Nightshade are major characters in the novels “Something Wicked This way Comes” and “ The Crysalids”. I realized throughout the novels that the boys had to make decisions that lead to consequences that changed their homes and relationships. In “The Chrysalids”, David entered a country called the Fringes which was where people where sent if they had physical differences about their bodies. I really reacted strongly when the author described the countryside of the Fringes because it was exactly how I would have imagines the Fringes country to be. It was open country, and as you walked there would be reddish cliffs and deviational trees but otherwise was a normal countries underdeveloped. I felt this scene in the Chrysalids compared to the scene in “Something Wicked This Way Comes” when Cooger and Dark’s Carnival moved into Green Town, Illinois. The carnival was physically a regular carnival with a merry-go-round with horses, goats, antelopes, and zebras to ride. I found that the Fringes country and Cooger and Dark’s carnival where ordinary places.
I reacted very strongly to both novels because they both focused on evil darkness versus good. The physical normality of the Fringes and the carnival were not the main focuses of the novels. The Fringes and the carnival very much symbolized evil. In the carnival in “Something Wicked” and the Fringes in “The Chrysalids” they physically looked normal and ordinary but symbolically those physical places represented evil darkness. Though both novels focused on evil darkness versus good they both had different interpretations of evil. In “The Chrysalids” David Strorm was grew up learning about the true image of God. David grew up hearing statements like “The norm is the will of God, and reproduction is the only holy production and the Devil is the Father of deviation’. Any human being that did not act or look like the physical image of God was considered a deviation sent by the devil and was not human. These creatures were sent to the Fringes and were evil. “Something Wicked This way Comes” I found had a more traditional definition of evil. Evil was focused on human being who lived forever and killed citizens in a community in order to keep secrets. In this novel the evil human where angry, and unhappy whereas in “The Chrysalids” evil was just deformalities of the body and the human where not angry but sad. The decisions that the characters in each book made did lead to consequences that either helped the evil human beings or the good human beings.
In both “ The Chrysalids” and “Something Wicked” there was a huge focus on pressures of acting and looking a certain way. In “The Chrysaids” you had to be the true image of God or you were not human and in “Something Wicked” as someone good you had to laugh and always make the rights choices. In life today teenaged girls experience similar pressures. Through magazines, television shows, and movies girls are pressured to be popular, beautiful, and slender. There are so many pressures put on teenaged girls that the decisions made can lead to consequences that can lead to pain, and diseases. These life pressures and the decisions made can lead to anorexia, bulimia, drugs, alcohol, and sex. I am a teenaged girl and I personally experience these pressures daily. The decisions I make every day will affect my future through positive or negative consequences. Oprah Winfrey does many studies on pressure and decisions of teenage girls trying to help them gain self-esteem and make the right choices. The decisions that are made throughout each novel both involve pressure from family and friends as well as teaching.
Every decision made by the characters in “The Chrysalids” and “Something Wicked” leads to consequences that either supported evil or good. The comparisons among the novels were astounding and the focuses and pressures of all characters were similar. Throughout our lives everything we do there is a decision to be made. Not all decisions are equal and some consequences are small but many decisions made in our lives can affect how futures forever. In “The Chrysalids” and “Something Wicked This Way Comes” the decisions made have consequences that can change the lives of the characters forever. Decision could have ended lives, but also allowed relationships to be stronger.
