Unceasable search for our own Zealand

After reading The Chrysalids I decided to surf the web for some interpretations regarding the title's mischievous meaning... Here are some of the opinions I found out were the most structured and reliable. Btw, I am ZealanianResident03 so do not freak out about my comment you bloggers :) cheers!

Telepath94: Recently, I finished reading “The Chrysalids by John Wyndham, and the title caught my attention. I wanted to know why the autor put this name to his novel. I read a quote from W.J. Holt from the 1965 House of Grant edition and he stated that the word chrysalid is a term that refers to the state, which the larva passes before turning into a perfect insect. When I read this, it clicked in my head the relationship between the title and the book. I think that The Chrysalids refers to the people with mutations specially the telepaths that in Waknuk, they are in a sheath and later become “perfect” when they get to Zealand where they live in a perfect society and reach a world not with fear and persecution, but with freedom and harmony.

SophieFanGirl: I agree with your interpretation of the name of the book but I feel it goes beyond the literal meaning of a chrysalid in which a larva becomes a perfect and beautiful butterfly. I mean, at the end of the book, the civilized country doesn’t seem perfect, actually it is a little disturbing since it uses people (women) mostly as objects for breeding purposes and prefers killing other civilizations because they don’t have the same values. I feel it is called The Chrysalids because the Waknuk society can be seen as the society we are currently living with that doesn’t allow people to grow, to change and to evolve.

ZealanianResident03: I feel that both of your interpretations are quite precise, but definitely @SophieFanGirl's can be a lot more controversial because of its depth. We see in Waknuk, a society without hope for change, full of fundamentalist leaders and inhabitants that do not seem to be in a metamorphic state, but somewhat in a stagnated state; one could call a permanent larvae. Now, we can also consider that a chrysalid, like any biological form, may secrete certain substances, sometimes considered waste. This happens to be the axis by which this fantastic novel revolves: Waknuk telepaths are these “substances” that do not fit in in their stagnated society; they are people destined to transcend, and this is why they eventually escape from Waknuk to the quest of David’s dreamland. The dreamland can thus be considered to be the opposite biological form of a chrysalid, a fully developed biological organism.

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