When Trees Go Off Their Vegetarian Diet
by June Pulliam
Wyndham, John. The Day of the Triffids. New York: Modern Library, 2003. c. 1951. 256 p.
John Wenham's classic post-apocalyptic novel has recently been reissued in honor of its 50th anniversary and to coincide with the publication of Simon Clark's Night of the Triffids, a sequel to the original. I admit to being rather skeptical when I first picked up Wyndham's original, especially after reading Clark's lackluster sequel, and after having absorbed decades worth of this sort of novel (and film), all of which I figured would blunt my enjoyment of the original. But I was pleasantly surprised nevertheless. The Day of the Triffids is a thoughtful novel, and Wenham's reserved British style won me over immediately.
The plot is basically simple: during World War II, a new species of tree--the triffid--is discovered. This species is distinguished by its ability to walk about clumsily on three root-like appendages. At first, humans find them novel and keep them as pets. Soon the corporate world discovers that the triffid is useful, for rather like hemp, they can be used to make cattle fodder and oil. But then the human race realizes it had no knowledge of the adult triffid, which is carnivorous and has the ability to fell its prey at 20 feet. Soon it is apparent that the triffids are destined to become yet another of those great pests of history, rather like kudzu, nutria, or those flying carp that are threatening to wipe out all species of fish in Lake Michigan. They take over entire forests and make it difficult for humans to live near their habitats.
This information is all related to the reader after the fact, as the novel begins with the protagonist, William Masen, waking up in the hospital after eye surgery (to flush out some triffid poison), regretting that he seems to be the one person on earth who missed the spectacular green meteor shower the night before. But because William missed the meteors, he has his eyesight, while most everyone on the planet is now blind. As a result, civilization has ground a halt. There's no one in the hospital to serve David his breakfast or take the bandages off of his eyes, and outside, all is chaos. The newly blind try to feed themselves or capture the occasional sighted person to keep as a sort of enslaved seeing-eye dog. The rest of the novel focuses on William, and others, attempting to survive in this new world where humans are no longer in control of all animals and plants on Earth.
Wenham's novel has stood the test of time, possibly because it deals more with the new civilizations that emerge as a result of triffid devastation than it does with details of the triffids themselves. Wyndham had clearly put some thought into how humans would be most likely to reorganize the world when faced with the destruction of everything they've known. In Wenham's post-apocalyptic universe, people are more likely to either re-create old, familiar models, using the exigency of the present situation as an excuse for curtailing intellectual freedoms or to resort to their own worst instincts. The sorts of societies that emerge from the wreckage are recognizable to anyone familiar with world events today, specifically with the sorts of governments that emerge when industrialized nations are destabilized. William travels from one community to the next, attempting to find a safe and comfortable home. He leaves one community when it becomes obvious that it is an emerging theocracy, and later has his own, democratically run community threatened by a larger military presence attempting to appropriate his resources for its own benefit.
Another great pleasure of reading older texts is realizing how they have left their mark on later ones. The Day of the Triffids has been extremely influential. Most notably, it invites comparisons to Night of the Living Dead (both Romero's original version and Savini's admirable remake) and Danny Boyle's recent film 28 Days Later. In Night of the Living Dead, the protagonists are as menaced by each other as they are from the monsters outside. 28 Days Later actually borrows some scenes from The Day of the Triffids, such as the opening scene where Jim wakes up from a coma in the hospital, only to discover the world has ended during his sleep. A later scene in the movie has one of the minor characters expressing a belief that the current disturbances are local and haven't affected the Americans, and all will be well when their Yankee cousins come to rescue them. In The Day of the Triffids, William's wife similarly believes that the Americans are capable of rescuing them from this situation.
But perhaps the final reason that Wenham's novel has stood the test of time can be found in the type of monster that destroys civilization. In post-apocalyptic narratives, the world as we know it is ended for one of two reasons: either aliens with superior technology (or as is the case with the Terminator and Matrix films, the technology itself) have taken over the world, or humanity is humbled by a lowly germ or a creature beneath it on the evolutionary scale. Narratives that fall into the former category often suffer from a complete lack of plausibility or become hopelessly dated as newer technology emerges or we discover just how limited our own technology is. For example, it's ultimately too difficult to be frightened by the machines that supposedly rise in T3, since in my house at least, the machines cant even work properly in the first place (currently the TV. isn't speaking to the DVD player, the dryer is broken--again, and the computer running Windows ME crashes more frequently than Amtrack).
But narratives that fall into the later category have a certain plausibility to them that can't be as easily dismissed. The Day of the Triffids is unsettling for this reason. Wyndham seems to be saying that if humanity is to endure another Dark Age, it is far more likely to be felled by those small things that our technological expertise cannot control, such as AIDS, Ebola, or flesh eating bacteria that doesn't respond to antibiotics. We need no longer to fear being overtaken by little green men in silver suits; the natural, green world here on Earth contains more than enough dangers.