What the Thing Represents
Miclat 1
Joseph Miclat
English 1A
Prof. Vargas
22 January 2014
In "The Thing in the Forest," by A.S. Byatt, many children are evacuated from London as a result of war bombings and brought to the countryside to be sheltered. Penny and Primrose, two girls from different classes are amongst the evacuees. The two venture off into the forest where they encounter, "The Thing," which in the story, Byatt tells the readers that "The Thing" has many traits in common with the war. The Thing represents events happening during the war because when the girls first encountered it, many adjectives addressing many senses, came into their minds. Many of these adjectives can be made negative, destructive. "A crunching, a crackling, a crushing, a heavy thumping, combining with threshing and thrashing."(356) When stepped on, leaves often make a crunching sound, this sound signifies the leaf's last breath, it is completely dead. And nothing stands in the way of a marching regime's path but leaves. Threshing means to beat a stem or husk, to remove grains from the straws. The exposure to war beats the life out of someone, it makes blurry their initial outlook on life. Along with the Thing being an embodiment of sounds, The Thing also embodies an abundance of smells. "The smell was worse, and more aggressive. It was a liquid smell of putrefaction, the smell of maggoty things at the bottom of untended dustbins, blocked drains, mixed with the smell of bad eggs, and of rotten carpets and ancient polluted bedding."(356) Putrefaction comes from the latin word, "putris" which means "rotten." Putrefaction is one of the stages when a body begins to decompose. By the end of World War II in 1945, the world suffered 60 million casualties. Again, bombings over London began in 1940. So at this time, all of the bodies of the people who had died would begin their decompositioning. Perhaps the souls of many who had died made their way into this forest to accumulate onto
Joseph Miclat
English 1A
Prof. Vargas
22 January 2014
In "The Thing in the Forest," by A.S. Byatt, many children are evacuated from London as a result of war bombings and brought to the countryside to be sheltered. Penny and Primrose, two girls from different classes are amongst the evacuees. The two venture off into the forest where they encounter, "The Thing," which in the story, Byatt tells the readers that "The Thing" has many traits in common with the war. The Thing represents events happening during the war because when the girls first encountered it, many adjectives addressing many senses, came into their minds. Many of these adjectives can be made negative, destructive. "A crunching, a crackling, a crushing, a heavy thumping, combining with threshing and thrashing."(356) When stepped on, leaves often make a crunching sound, this sound signifies the leaf's last breath, it is completely dead. And nothing stands in the way of a marching regime's path but leaves. Threshing means to beat a stem or husk, to remove grains from the straws. The exposure to war beats the life out of someone, it makes blurry their initial outlook on life. Along with the Thing being an embodiment of sounds, The Thing also embodies an abundance of smells. "The smell was worse, and more aggressive. It was a liquid smell of putrefaction, the smell of maggoty things at the bottom of untended dustbins, blocked drains, mixed with the smell of bad eggs, and of rotten carpets and ancient polluted bedding."(356) Putrefaction comes from the latin word, "putris" which means "rotten." Putrefaction is one of the stages when a body begins to decompose. By the end of World War II in 1945, the world suffered 60 million casualties. Again, bombings over London began in 1940. So at this time, all of the bodies of the people who had died would begin their decompositioning. Perhaps the souls of many who had died made their way into this forest to accumulate onto