Tuesday, March 12, 2013

In Chapter 14, what is the Sealand philosophy in The Chrysalids?

It is in Chapter 14 that Rosalind and David are close
enough to the woman from Sealand to be able to communicate with her themselves, rather
than relying on Petra to communicate for them. Chapter 14 thus contains a description of
how the Sealanders view themselves and humans without their telepathic gift. In response
to Rosalind's question about who they are, the woman
responds:



"We
are the New People - your kind of people. The people who can think-together.
We're the people who are going to build a new kind of world - different from the Old
People's world, and from the
savages."



It is clear that
the woman regards the survivors of the Tribulation as "savages" and considers her "kind"
to be better than the Old People who existed before the Tribulation that ended
civilisation as we know it. According to her, the Old People (us) were an "inadequate
species" for many reasons, but primarily because of their inability to think together in
the same way that the "New People" are able to now. Thus the philosophy of the
Sealanders is that they are a superior, evolved form of human being, the butterfly that
has emerged from the chrysalis that the rest of humanity is in at the moment, and thus
they are destined to be the new rulers of the world who can make a better world than the
Old People.

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