Analysis of the thing in the forest

‘The Thing in the Forest’
Short Story Essay Analysis
     A.S. Byatt’s ‘The Thing in the Forest’ features two very similar yet divergent characters; the two meet under similar circumstances and grow old similarly, with a few differences that separate the two radically. Penny and Primrose at first glance seem like two ordinary people, but in ‘The Thing in the Forest’, it’s seen that they have significant departures from one another.          On very tiny pivots do human lives turn, as such though we all start off similarly by the end we’re very alike in polarized coincidence, as we remove parts of ourselves to do so; and yet the parts of ourselves we deny never really go away.
      In the beginning of the story, fittingly, the children are gathered and we’re introduced to our main characters. “The two little girls were evacuees, who had been sent away from the city by train with a large amount of other children. They all had their names attached to their coats with safety pins, and they carried little bags or satchels, and the regulation gas mask.” What’s first and foremost here is the notion of sameness. These children are all quite similar, as evidenced further in the text: “They all had bare legs and scuffed shoes and wrinkled socks.” Even our two leads, “Their names were Penny and Primrose.” have names that are similar. Now, an interesting parallel is drawn here; “Penny was thin and dark and taller, possibly older, than Primrose, who was plump and blond and curly.” It’s seen that they are visually opposite of another; this is further reinforced by a line about the children’s mothers: “So the mothers (who did not resemble each other at all) behaved alike, and explained nothing—” It is seen that the mothers, who can be used as an example for a common adult, that they do not look alike, oh no, but all act similarly. Adults, children, looking different yet acting the same, expected to act the same.
      Penny decides that they go into the forest, with Primrose a tad more hesitant. Before Penny and Primrose can get into the forest, however, they’re impeded by a young girl named Alys, who wants to go with them; “She had made several attempts to attach herself to Penny and Primrose. They did not want her. They were excited about meeting and liking each other.” Penny and Primrose eventually tire of Alys and after some refusal of letting Alys go with them Primrose says “Run.”   Alys is never seen again after this scene, and later on in the story Penny and Primrose would speculate on her fate; “Nobody ever asked where she was or looked for her” “I wondered if we made her up…But I didn’t, we didn’t.” “Her name was Alys.” “With a ‘y.’”   Alys clearly represents the suppressed, the forgotten, the forcibly removed and erased parts of our character; we don’t want it to be a part of ourselves as it’s unwanted or unfavorable in the eyes of others, and as we’re too ‘excited about meeting and liking each other’ we remove facets of our character to please others, to ‘Run’ from them,. even if doing so removes our originality and innate character. In doing so, we become like the mothers; “So the mothers (who did not resemble each other at all) behaved alike…”
In the same vein, the ‘Thing’ is an amalgam of Alyses; a collection of all the discarded pieces of our character. The girls stumble upon it right after getting rid of Alys; they watch the Thing crash through the wood and away. It’s described as repulsive, in a plethora of significant ways: “It was a liquid smell of putrefaction, the smell of maggoty things at the bottom of untended dustbins, unblocked drains, mixed with the smell of bad eggs…”, “…it’s expression was neither wrath nor greed but pure misery.” And “The rest of its very large body appeared to be glued together…made of rank meat and decaying vegetation…trailed veils and protheses of man-made materials…” It’s clear that the Thing is a painful waste heap of our discarded remnants, the repressed things in the backs of our mind, writhing and moaning for an escape. Our suppression of our character leaves the shut out pieces to agonizingly decompose; and yet they never go away. The ‘Loathly Worm’, as the Thing is described in the book where our characters meet much later in life at the estate they stayed in so briefly is said to have “…Infested the countryside and been killed more than once by scions of the house—Sir Lionel, Sir Boris…”. This showcases our discarded remnants in an even stronger undying light; we can attempt to wipe out, to erase our unwanted pieces, but it’ll keep coming back each time, more painfully mangled than the last, to roam and haunt.

In The Thing in the Forest, the author, A.S. Byatt, uses repeating parallels in multiple areas: In the children, the mothers, the Loathly Worm, Alys, the two girls, then two women; all to drive a few key pieces of our character, our identity. The template we’re fed when we’re small is all quite similar; hence the introduction’s heavy emphasis on the children’s similarities. As we age, we attempt to differ ourselves from others by cutting away ‘unwanted’ portions of our character. But it is this denial of ourselves that eventually culminates in a similarity all over again in adulthood, in old age; human nature, discarded remnants or kept ones, remains the same. Similar.