What’s That Book? The Day of the Triffids by John Wyndham

I’d like to welcome Kathleen Le Dain as a contributor to What’s That Book.

Hi Everyone! Today I’d like to welcome Robbie Cheadle, today’s contributor to What’s That Book. Thank you, Robbie!

Title: The Day of the Triffids                                      

Author: John Wyndham

Genre: Science Fiction

⭐⭐⭐⭐⭐

Rating: 5 out of 5.

What’s it about? I read The Day of the Triffids by John Wyndham as a young teenager and I was completely intrigued by this story. I re-read a few years ago when I went through a John Wyndham phase and read all his books, some for the first time and some for the second.

The Day of the Triffids still fascinates me. It is the story of a man who, by sheer good luck, ends up one of the few sighted people left in the world. The story begins with Bill Mason in hospital recovering from eye surgery. The day has begun most extraordinarily with the nurses not doing their early morning round timeously. Bill also notices that there is no ordinary morning noise outside in the busy street. The atmosphere is illustrated by this quote: “When a day that you happen to know is Wednesday starts off by sounding like Sunday, there is something seriously wrong somewhere.”

He is already annoyed because a meteor shower the previous evening had delighted the whole world. People had turned out in droves to watch the natural spectacular, but Bill had not been able to watch. He gradually comes to realise that everyone who watched the “show” the previous night has gone blind overnight and that his inability to join in has saved his sight.

Bill’s back story reveals that several years earlier humanity had discovered an unusual meat-eating plant with a vicious sting that could injure, or even kill, human beings. These plants, called triffids, could also move about slowly on a tripod stalk. Despite their threatening nature, the triffids are cultivated so their very desirable oil can be extracted for use by humanity.

In a world of humans who have suddenly become blind and have not had time to adapt to their new circumstances, it soon becomes apparent that the triffids, which have excellent survival instincts, are no longer the inferior species. This is an interesting quote that illustrates the plight of the recently and unexpectedly blinded: “It’s humiliating to be dependent, anyway, but it’s still a poorer pass to have no one to depend on.”

At this point in time, they have an advantage over most sightless humans. The triffids also reproduce very prolifically, build up their numbers very fast, and demonstrate some intelligence and planning abilities. An appropriate quote: “You don’t seriously suggest that they’re talking when they make that rattling noise.”

The triffids soon start killing the humans for food and finding ways of hunting them down and overcoming their attempts at defense.

To me, the most interesting aspect of this book is how quickly human society starts to break down under duress. Many of the remaining sighted humans take advantage of the recently blinded masses in their new positions as the hunted by the triffids. The sighted abusing the unsighted and force them into slavery.

It was also interesting that the author chose to briefly introduce into the story a man was unsighted at the time of the meteor shower in order to demonstrate how much better prepared he is to survive than the recently sighted masses who have had no opportunity to adapt to their new situation.

How did you hear about it?  I heard about this book from my Grade 7 teacher, Sister Agatha.

Closing comments: The Day of the Triffids is a great work of dystopian fiction which probes the meaning of life, the price of living in certain circumstances, the prospects for survival of humanity subsequent to a global catastrophe, and the social and psychological consequences of a widespread human disaster.

This book is an appropriate read at the current time of a worldwide pandemic as it highlights the initial superior attitudes of humans over nature and demonstrates how quickly and easily this perceived superiority can be reversed.

A final quote that illustrates my last points is as follows:

“It must be, I thought, one of the race’s most persistent and comforting hallucinations to trust that “it can’t happen here”—that one’s own little time and place is beyond cataclysms. And now it was happening here.”

Contributor:  Roberta Eaton Cheadle is a South African writer and poet specialising in historical, paranormal, horror novels and short stories. She has nine children’s books published under the name Robbie Cheadle. You can find Robbie on her blog, Roberta Writes.

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