The similarities/differences between the ideas of a community

Discuss the similarities/differences between the ideas of a community (inc. devised work) in The Yarn with The Chrysalids, The Children and The Crucible. Our stimulus extract from The Yarn (our most recent text) provided us with various themes that we had grown to be familiar with. After brainstorming The Yarn it came to our attention that it's ambiguous and almost chilling storyline was similar to those of The Chrysalids, The Children and The Crucible.

The theme of prejudice was evident throughout all of the texts and seemed to follow the exact same definition - "discrimination towards those different to you".

In The Yarn the "Dowser" family put themselves on the outside of their community, this could have been them being prejudice against the community and not wanting to be involved or fear of being disliked. By volunteering out of the community they did not allow the community to isolate them.

The "Fringe" people in The Chrysalids were also cut off from the community again this was due to their differences and the society being scared of difference.

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In The Children although Joe was made to feel inferior by the new "snobs" that had moved into the estate he himself was prejudice against them because of his jealousy towards them. In The Crucible its puritan society managed to alienate certain members of the community by accusing them of being witches, this is a misinterpretation of people different from themselves.

The discrimination could have been a portrayal of the actual feeling of envy within all of the communities.

In my opinion all the communities from the texts seemed to feel threatened, The Crucible seemed to feel threatened by the dangers of the wilderness, the possible corruption influences of the Christian sects and a genuine fear of the devil. The Chrysalids society seemed to feel threatened by the danger of mutation; I think this is because mutation had led to a strict and ruthless definition of what constituted humanity in their community.

I also think that segregation was inevitable to some extent due to how the atomic war had shattered civilization and left large parts of the world uninhabitable. In The Yarn the Dowser family secluded themselves from the village and "built on a patch of land at the far side of the heath", this may have been because they felt threatened by the community in the actual village. In The Children it was clear that as soon as the estate was built on the children's allotment they began to feel threatened, by the new "snobs" taking over. One difference that particularly stood out between the four texts was the theme of conflict.

In The Chrysalids, The Children and The Crucible conflict was clearly identifiable but was not revealed in our extract of The Yarn, however, may have been evident later on in the novel. The Chrysalids displayed conflict between "The Fringe people" and "The Dreamers". The Children demonstrated conflict as the "snobs" arrived and took over the allotment from the estates children and the conflict between the security of the community and "individual freedom" then became clear which also was one theme, which ran throughout The Crucible. Religious faith was apparent in 3 out of the 4 texts.

I think religion played a pivotal role in these communities. The Yarn showed how the "Dowser" family relied on the Lord's Prayer to bring them good luck, when no good came to the family from saying the prayer in its original state they decided to recite it backwards. In The Crucible's society everybody was expected to conform to a strict code of belief. Anyone who expressed an opinion, which was slightly out of keeping with the existence of the devil, was liable to be accused of heresy. The people took a rather literal view of The Old Testament and relied upon it to explain much that was unknown.

The Chrysalids's community seemed to be overwhelmed by religious faith and religious fanaticism whereas The Children's community did not indicate any association with religion. I believe that the ideas of a community displayed in these four texts have many similarities and differences and with the use of physical theatre all the themes could be enhanced to create a more intense and evocative piece of drama. If I was to produce a piece of physical theatre based around these texts the predominant theme that stood out was the idea that; any deviation from the norm was considered abomination.