Blog of Innocence

For my English 12 independent novel study, I choose to read The Chrysalids by John Wyndham.  In this novel, the main character, David, and some of his friends and his little sister can communicate through their thoughts, but only over a short distance.  They are novice and quite innocent and inexperienced at the "think-together" ways, when compared with the "Sealand people", who all can communicate with their thoughts, whereas David and his friends are shunned for having this "deviation".  The "Sealand people" are more skilled and educated in the ways of thinking-together, and so while reading this novel and a Songs of Innocence poem, The Lamb, by William Blake, I made a connection.  In The Lamb, it describes, in simple language as it is from a child's perspective, the naive hopes and fears that riddle children's lives and trace their transformation as the child grows into an adult.  In The Chrysalids, David and his friend's innocence and naivete is followed throughout the beginning of the story, but then, as they grow older, they realize the adults' hatred of "deviation" and finally understand why they must flee for their lives when their ability to think-together is learned of.  The Lamb starts off with a question from the children to the lamb, asking "Little Lamb who made thee?" but then later the child answers his own question, making it a rhetorical one, but he manages to make it profound at the same time as naive.  The answer is simple about where the lamb came from, but it also taps into the timeless question that most humans have about the nature of creation, their own origins, and the possibility of a God.  David and his friends are said to not be in the "true image" of God by their own small town of people, but, further away in the world, it is said that those who cannot think-together are not part of the "true image".  And so the question is raised, kind of like in The Lamb, about one's origins, and how does one define who is the "true image" and who is not?