the Day of Triffides (original title: The Day off the Triffids ) is a novel of Science-fiction of the British writer John Wyndham published in 1951. This novel was published in French under various titles like the Revolt of Triffides or Triffides , before finding its title final in 2004.

Argument

With her alarm clock in a bed of hospital, William Masen notes with fear that the inhabitants of the Earth became blind and that plants mortals, Triffides, invaded the cities and the campaigns.

Presentation of work

the Day of Triffides is the first novel of the British author John Wyndham. The account, which is composed of seventeen chapters and a short epilog, was published in Great Britain in 1951. Fifty years later, the writer Simon Clark off wrote one following the novel of John Wyndham entitled The Night the Triffids (2001).

Kind

the Day of Triffides of John Wyndham is an Post-apocalyptic novel of Science-fiction which has the effect of placing a humanity become suddenly blind vis-a-vis a threat of vegetable origin: triffides. According to Lorris Murail, with the Day of Triffides , John Wyndham is essential like the Master of a particular kind: the “British cataclysmic novel”.

From the point of view of the literary and cultural references, the catastrophe of the novel is assimilated by the protagonists to the biblical Déluge , prototype Judeo-Christian of the cataclysm which marks the end of a civilization. The entire account is then placed under the sign of the Sic transit gloria mundi and of the vanity of any thing. As for the need for a new departure civilisationnel, it is the literary prototype of Robinson Crusoe of Daniel Defoe that evokes John Wyndham during the novel.

Situation in the kind

If John Wyndham registers by name his work in the wake of the novels of Herbert George Wells, it is inspired as many the War by the worlds that news entitled The Country off the Blind ( Country of the blind men , 1911) in which Wells imagines people which adapt to blindness.

The idea of a threat (terrestrial or extraterrestrial) of vegetable origin marks out the history of the Anglo-Saxon science fiction, with titles like the War of ivy ( The Ivy War ), a news of David H. Keller published in 1930, Encore a little greenery ( Greener than you think ), a novel of Ward Moore appeared in 1947 or the Invasion of the profaners ( The Invasion off the Body Snatchers ) of Jack Finney (1955).

Style

The novel of John Wyndham is written with the first nobody and answers the literary codes of the autobiographical account . William Masen, the hero of the novel, tells her own history of survivor while being presented in the form of a witness of one cataclysm to the planetary scales. The account is carried out of an end to the other on the ton of the confidence. In spite of the narrative tension induced by the account-catastrophe, John Wyndham can also handle the features of humor which the comments of its made hero allow a posteriori , with a whole set of interpellations to the reader.

John Wyndham integrates into his account of the quotations drawn from old popular songs and drinking songs traditional English, or of the poems of classic authors like William Congreve, Andrew Marvell, Percy Bysshe Shelley ( Ozymandias ) and Lord Byron.

Complete summary of work

Triffides

The triffides are plants which were modified genetically by the human being. The name of Triffide was given to these plants by the British popular press. The wild first triffides appeared in Indo-China, then in Indonesia before touching the coasts of the South America and invading the Europe. Ninety-five percent of seeds of triffides are unfertile, which limits its expansion somewhat.

The base of the triffide is made of a wood barrel from which are born three small naked branches and a long right stem roughcast from rootlets. Its higher end is made of a conical cut in which a whorl is rolled up. An adult triffide can measure to eight feet top (ten feet under the Tropiques). Become ripe, a triffide leaves its roots and can move at the speed of an human being.

The triffides are a carnivorous plant specie which nourishes flies, insects and of animal or human flesh broken up. The triffides are hypersensitive with the noises and the movements. They attack their preys by deploying a whorl of ten feet length finished by a poisoned pivot able to kill a man and aim the eyes in general. The prey is digested by the viscous substance secreted in the conical cut. The triffides are able to communicate between them by emission of sound rattlings. The triffides do not have any natural enemy, if not the man.

Main characters

The main characters of the novel are classified in the alphabetical order their patronyms:

• Michael Beadley , member of the community of the University;

• Stephen Brennem , former stockbroker;
• Refusals Brent , blind man, member of the community of Shirning Farm ;
• Mary Brent , blind man, member of the community of Shirning Farm ;
• Elspeth Cary , official archivist of the community of the University;
• Wilfred Coker , idealist who takes the defense of the blind men and tackles the communities of indicators;
• the Colonel , chief of the community of survivors of the University;
• Miss Durrant , preserving and pious young woman who wishes to build a new business on religious principles;
• Walter Lucknor , specialist in the triffides, employed Arctic and European Company of Oils, colleague and friend of William Masen;
• William Masen , biologist, specialist in Triffides, employee of the Arctic and European Company of Oils (C.A.E.H.);
• Umberto Christoforo Palanguez , pilot, trafficker of seeds of triffides;
• Pearson , gardener and driver of the father of Josella Playton;
• Josella Playton , young auteure of a novel with scandal entitled the Sex is my adventure , survivor of cataclysm, future woman of William Masen;
• Suzan , surviving little girl collected by William Masen and Josella Playton;
• Joyce Taylor , member of the community of Shirning Farm ;
• Sandra Telmont , secretary of the community of the University;
• Mr. Torrent , managing director of the Safety advice of the South-eastern Area;
• Dr. E.H. Vorless , graduate sociologist of the University of Kingston, member of the community of the University.

Chronology of the events

Tuesday, May 7, the orbit of the Ground crosses a comet remains cloud which draws as many shooting stars of a green shining in the sky. The radios and television comment on this extraordinary phenomenon abundantly and the population leaves in mass to attend the spectacle.

Wednesday, May 8, whereas it awakes in its room at the hospital St Merryn of London, William Masen is astonished by ambient silence. The eyes still bandaged following its operation, it decides to remove its bandages and to explore the places. William Masen then notes with fear that the population became blind and that a terrible chaos reigns in the capital. It surveys the streets of London in an atmosphere of extreme tension. The abandoned vehicles encumber the streets, of the groups of blind men gather around children constrained indicators to be used to them as guide and the search for food becomes the major concern of the majority of people. It crosses soon the way of a pretty young woman, maltreated and retained at the end of a cord by a blind man, and goes to its help. William Masen and Josella Playton then decide to remain together and to be organized to survive. They recover weapons, collect vivres and settle in an empty apartment of the districts knack of London.

One night, whereas they projected to leave the capital to settle in the property of the Playton family, Josella and William notice the light of a powerful projector which seems to come from the building of the University. William and Josella go to the University and join a group of survivors indicators organized in community. They then become acquainted with the Colonel and Michael Beadley , which directs the community, then take part in collective forwardings in the commercial districts deserted to bring back various vivres, weapons and material. Soon, the professor Vorless exposes to all the basic principle of the new business to come: priority with the births for the survival of the species and the need for resorting to the Free love and the Polygamy with conspicuous and blind women. Certain members of the group, whose very rigid Miss Durrant , shocked in their religious and moral principles, rises against the abolition of the crowned laws of the marriage.

Some time later, the community of the University is attacked by groups of blind men carried out by Wilfred Coker , humanistic which fights for more justice for the blind men. Coker dreams to create a new business in which groups of blind men would be guided by an indicator, in order to more equitably distribute the chances of survival in the population. William Masen is made prisoner and must carry out operations of collection of food, connected with a group of blind men. When the group falls on a rival faction and is made attack by triffides, Masen succeeds in escaping and leaves to research from Josella Playton. Downtown, Masen finds Coker, him also only survivor of its group after the attack of the triffides. The two men affrêtent an abandoned truck and get under way for the manor of Tynsham in the Berkshire. Unfortunately, the community which resides at it is directed by Miss Durrant and Pasteur Anglican. Masen and Coker, not sharing the sights of Durrant Miss on the ideal company, set out again with research of the Playton property to find Josella, but without success. In way, they meet a trio of isolated survivors who unite with them. By spite, not having found neither Josella, nor the other members of the old community of the University, they turn over to the manor of Tynsham. All then decide to settle there, except William Masen who prefers to continue her research in the Sussex of the West.

In way, after having saved a little girl called Suzan of an attack of triffides, William discovers finally Shirning Farm where Josella had taken refuge. The area is infested with triffides and, all together, they finally decide to join the group of Tynsham in order to fight more effectively against the plants mortals. But a contagious epidemic which developed with the manor of Tynsham prevents them from carrying out their project. They then found their own community with three blind men and two children, constrained to work the ground hard and to defend themselves daily against the triffides which encircle them. Once per annum, William goes to London to recover material and weapons there. At the village, the triffides mass more and more behind the property closures and succeed in soon cutting down them, but William pushes back them with the flame thrower. The life runs out hard, making alternate the periods of resignation or renewal of hope. Josella gives rise to soon David, the son of William.

One beautiful day the property is flown over by a helicopter and William sends signals to smoke to announce the presence of the community. Ivan Simpson teaches them whereas vast communities were created on the islands, easier to protect from the attacks from the triffides, and invites them to join its community on the Île of Wight. However, William and Josella hesitate and initially decide to remain in their property. Some time later, whereas the political life starts to reorganize on the world plan, some Mr. Torrent , chief of the “Safety advice of the South-eastern Area”, learn in William and Josella that their community does not meet the new officially defined standards. It thus forces to them to lodge seventeen additional adult blind men, the standard being fixed at an indicator for ten blind men to train a clan. Persuaded that they will not be able to survive twenty, William, Josella, Joyce, Mary, Dennis and the children flee of night on their half-track vehicle after having sabotaged the vehicle of Torrent and its men.

Comments

End of civilization and rebuilding

The novel of John Wyndham answers an event-driven diagram that the critic Lorris Murail regards as typical of the author, with a narrative sequence of type: “catastrophe - scattering of the community - organization of a focus of resistance - attempt at rebuilding. ” The author endeavors to describe the slow degradation of manners which makes following the cataclysm and the search for the new shape of company. The rules of community life are to be redefined and it is in the search for these common new rules that are done day the most dramatic conflicts. Several visions of the company of the future are opposed brutally throughout the novel:

• Dr. Vorhess ( pragmatism ): priority with the reproduction of the species with revolution of manners (polygamy, free love);

• Miss Durrant ( conservatism ): priority with the maintenance of the religious bases of the company and with the respective roles of the man and the woman;
• Coker ( idealism ): priority with equity and justice, respect of the rights of the blind men and control of the indicators;
• William Masen ( individualism ): individual priorities, creation of a restricted community of family type founded on the love;
• Torrent ( authoritarianism ): priority given to the rationalized and normalized organization clans directed by indicators.

If John Wyndham paints the decline of the organized Western company, its hero, William Masen, however plan this new departure of humanity like an amazing chance to be able to assume a different life fully and to finally give up the anonymous role of wheel in a gigantic economic and political machinery.

Geopolitics of post-war period

Psychological environment and the context Géopolitique of the novel of John Wyndham are marked at the same time by the painful memory of the Second world war and by the tense atmosphere of the Cold war:

• the first bar in which the hero at the beginning of the novel takes refuge calls “the Arms of Alamein” and raises a sign to the effigy of the Vicomte of Montgomery. ;

• Josella Playton remembers his/her father who, during the German air raids, surveyed the streets of London to contemplate last once his buildings and to tell them good-bye. ;

• the protagonists of the novel impatiently await the helps come from the the United States, reproducing waiting born of the Second world war with the Americans lived like savers of Europe: It had the conviction inébranlable that nothing serious could arrive at America and that it was enough to hold out while waiting for that the Americans arrive and give of the order. ;

• the Russia is regarded as a country which always hides “behind a curtain of suspicions and secrecies”. ;

• the population of the novel lives in the terror of a total nuclear war since the August 6th 1945, date of the atomic bombardment of Hiroshima. Since August 6th, 1945, our margin of survival decreased in a terrifying way. ;

• the cataclysm of the novel is considered by the protagonists of the novel as the result of a military climbing which could lead only to the reciprocal destruction of the great nations.

Genealogy of a catastrophe

The Cataclysme describes in the novel results from the convergence of military, scientific and economic factors.

Genealogy of a catastrophe such as it is reconstituted by the hero of the novel, William Masen:

1. genetic modification of plants by the Russians, birth of the triffides;

2. arms race of the great Nations, put into orbit of the military satellites;
3. sale of seeds of triffides flights to a Western agro-alimentary Multinational;
4. crash landing at sea of the plane which transports the seeds flights, dissemination of the triffides in the whole world;
5. intensive culture of the triffides by the Arctic and European Company of Oils;
6. improvement of the quality of the vegetable extract of the triffides in their leaving their poisoned dart;
7. progress of research on the triffides: the triffides can communicate between them and show collective intelligence;
8. release of a war by interposed satellites, emitted radiations cause lesions of the human optical nerve;
9. délitement of the human society, organization of communities of survivors, indicators and blind men;
10. invasion of the triffides.

British company and sexuality

On several occasions, John Wyndham paints a humorous painting of the report/ratio of the English company of post-war period to sexuality. Its heroin, Josella Playton, are the auteure of a novel whose title alone, the Sex is my adventure , made at the same time scandal and ensured him a resounding success. The novel was sold with 100.000 specimens, but was in the same time prohibited in two large London libraries. John Wyndham makes fun of the careful Conservatisme of his contemporaries by imagining the prohibition of a novel to the contents pain-killer on the faith of sound alone titrates provocative.

Adaptations

Cinema and television

• the novel of John Wyndham inspired a British film , the Revolt of Triffides ( The Day off the Triffids ), realized in 1962 by Steve Sekely. If the scene of opening in the hospital is directly drawn from the novel, the remainder of film is very far away from the original narrative screen. In film, William Masen is a British sailor. After having attended the urban chaos which had with the blindness of the population, it leaves London to join Gibraltar while passing by the France and the Spain, accompanied by a Frenchwoman and a little girl, Suzan. The weak point of the triffides is discovered by a couple of researchers who work in a headlight: the triffides do not resist sea water. The film ends in a speech with religious tonality which shows in panoramic plan a crowd of survivors which goes to the church to thank God for having saved them.

• BBC also diffused in 1982 British televised series carried out by Ken Hannam inspired by the novel.

• James Roberts, studied in Multi-media, also carried out a Animation video inspired by the novel of John Wyndham who is presented in the form of a humorous Bande-annonce of film of cinema. See it video on the youtube.com site.

Radiophonic part

The novel of John Wyndham was adapted in radiophonic part by BBC in 1957.

Cartoon

The novel of John Wyndham was adapted as a cartoon:

• Revolt of Triffides according to John Wyndham, Artima, Sidereal coll “/Pocket Comics”, n°62, 1977, pp. 4-96;

• Revolt of Triffides according to John Wyndham, Artima, Sidereal coll “/Pocket Comics”, n°63, 1977, pp. 4-112.

This “alive adaptation of the novel of John Wyndham”, who mentions neither the name of the draftsman, nor that of the scenario writer, is based on the edition “black River” of 1956 and remains very close to the original. Certain counterparts are direct quotations of the novel. To read an outline of the history of the Artima editions, to consult the Météor site.

Traditional of the science fiction

This novel is regarded as a great classic of the Science-fiction in the following reference books:

• Annick Beguin, 100 principal titles of the science fiction , Cosmos 2000,1981;

• Lorris Murail, the Masters of the science fiction , Bordered, coll “Compact”, 1993;
• Stan Barets, science-fictionnaire , Denoël, coll “Presence of the future”, 1994.

Criticisms

• Jacques Sadoul, History of the modern science fiction. 1911-1984 , Robert Laffont, coll “Elsewhere and tomorrow/Tests”, 1984, p. 210: John Wyndham made a success of a terrifying novel there, thanks to the meticulous character of descriptions which ensure the total credibility of the history.

• Claude Ecken, Galaxies (re-examined), n°36, 2005.

Posterity of work

Cinema

• the film the Revolt of Triffides is evoked in the number of opening of the Musical film British heading The Rocky Horror Picture Show (1975): I really got hot when I saw Janette Scott fight has triffid that spits poison and kills. Janette Scott played the part of Karen Goodwin in the film adaptation of the novel realized in 1962.

• the film 28 Days later (2002) made several direct allusions to the novel, in particular when the protagonist awakes in a deserted hospital, finds the other survivors while being directed towards the projectors of a tower and meets in a country house a paramilitary group which plans to acquire women to repopulate planet.

• the American film Looney Tunes pass to the action puts in scene Triffide among all the extraterrestrial present in section 52.

Music

• the group Ash recorded a song entitled " Day off the Triffids" on its album Trailer card (1994).

• The Triffids is the name of an rock group Australia N of the years 1980.

Video game

• the video game Darwinia presents a static enemy unit called Triffide . This unit resembles a plant and projects dangerous seeds.

French editions

The novel of John Wyndham, translated from English by Marcel Battin, was published in France under various titles:

• the Revolt of Triffides , Black River, coll “Anticipation”, n°68, 1956;

• Triffides , CHOSE, coll “Anti-worlds”, n°15, 1974;
• the Day of Triffides , Ground of Fog, coll “star Dust”, 2004;
• the Day of Triffides , translation revised by Sebastien Guillot, Gallimard, coll “Folio SF”, n° 267, 2007.

Quotations

The numbers of page of the quotations which follow refer to the edition Folio Sf (2007) referred to.

• The way in which I out of wines to escape the end from the world - this end of the world which I had known near for thirty years - was purely accidental. , chap. 1, p. 9;

• I reappeared like my own Master, and either like the tooth of gears. Perhaps I was going to have to face a world filled with horrors and dangers, but I would face them with my manner, and I would be never again thorough that and there by forces and interests which I did not include/understand and of which I had to only make. , chap. 3, p. 77;

• As regards survival, a triffide is in position foutrement better than a blind man. , chap. 4, p. 97;

• more shocking in all that, it is the facilitated with which we lost a world which seemed so sure, so some. , chap. 6, p. 144;

• The spectacular one must well quickly become banal, if it is wanted that remains bearable. , chap. 9, p. 210.

External bonds

• original Drawing of a triffide by John Wyndham, on Creative Bristol-board

• downloadable Original text of the news of Herbert George Wells, The Country off the Blind

Random links:

Saint-Cricq-Villeneuve | Karibib | Faust (Goethe) | 2020 | Le Monde of thealive ones