Comparing the plot, characters, and styles of The Chrysalids and “The Great Game at the End of
the World”
The world is destroyed and the protagonist is living through it, this is the focus of “The
Great Game at the End of the World” (“T.G.G.E.W.”). Similarly, in The Chrysalids the
protagonist is living in a society bouncing back from the end of the world.Both are dystopian
stories that centre around a young man and the journey he goes through. The Chrysalids is a
novel about a post-apocalyptic society in which all physical and mental abnormalities are
frowned upon and purged. It is about the life of David Strorm and the challenges that he faces
with having a cognitive deviation. “T.G.G.E.W.” is a short story about a brother and sister’s
experiences before and after the apocalypse, the story centers around a game of baseball played
with aliens and monsters. Although at the surface it seems as though The Chrysalids and
“T.G.G.E.W.” are two incredibly different stories, their plots and their characters contain many
similar aspects. Most of their differences lie in the style of the writing as the time frame and
tenses of the stories are varied. However, even the styles contain some similar components such
as the mood of dread.
While the plots of the two stories are vastly different, there are specific ideas in them that
are extremely similar. The idea of a higher power regretting or growing to dislike his creation
and attempting to destroy it or punishing it is a commonality between the stories. In The
Chrysalids it is referred to as Tribulation, whereas in “T.G.G.E.W.” it is called the end of the
world. While talking about past punishments sent from God, David reveals that “Tribulation had
been another such punishment, but the greatest of all: it must, when it struck, have been like a
combination of all these disasters.” (Wyndham 15). This shows that in The Chrysalids, God was
, upset with what his creation, mankind, had done. God believed that their society had done
something that was worse than every one of man’s past sins, so he punished them with a
Tribulation equal to all past sins combined. This is very similar to the end of the world in
“T.G.G.E.W.”. When Russel is asking one of the creepies what he is, the creepy says “‘He didn’t
like it anymore, so he destroyed it. Like he did to mine. Like he did to all of ours.’ ‘He?’ ‘You
know.’ With a bony finger, he pointed up. ‘Him.’” (Kressel 14). This demonstrates that in this
world ‘He’ was no longer happy with the society he created so he decided to destroy it. ‘He’ is
implied to be an all-powerful, God-like figure that has destroyed many worlds in the past
because he no longer liked how they were running. The ideas of divine intervention are present
in both of these stories and the ways in which they manifest themselves are very similar, giving
both stories a mystical feeling.
Punishment from God, or a similar deity, is present in The Chrysalids and “T.G.G.E.W.”
and the ways in which it manifests itself is extremely similar. In both stories, God had sent down
many punishments to his creations in the past. This is important because it implies in both worlds
God made extremely flawed creatures. In The Chrysalids, God created humanity and punished
them repeatedly because he had let his creations go down paths that strayed too far from what he
intended. In “T.G.G.E.W.” ‘He’ is said to have created many worlds where his creations always
had one thing in common, they all eventually made mistakes that caused their creator to dislike
and destroy them. Another way in which the punishments from God are similar in the two tales is
that the punishments, intended or not, bring unfamiliar and strange creatures into the society of
the main characters. In “T.G.G.E.W.” the end of the world brings the creepies and the Kens and
Barbies into Russel’s town. The creepies are strange as they are from another planet and the
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