Chapters 5 & 6

I find this part of the book interesting in that it begins with David and Sophie catching some sort of creatures down by a stream and uses this to show that Sophie is very self-conscious about her feet. I think that this is to make the need for her and her family to leave far more hard-hitting to reader, as well as their eventual capture. Something of note that I saw was that for David's father to whip him was not seen as out of the ordinary, which, along with the talk of the steam engine, makes me place the current pace of their technological and social development somewhere along the lines of the nineteenth century.

The rest of chapter six follows a conversation between David and Uncle Axle involving David's plans to run away. The discussion later moves toward what lies South of Labrador and Newf. It is then revealed to the reader the exact extent of the knowledge these people posses on the rest of the world and allows the reader to piece together what is really going on. It is noted that there are large coverages of Badlands with grossly mutated organisms that reside there, such as giant stalks of corn and vines growing into or out of the sea. I then remembered a piece of wisdom that relates to the world of the novel: on an alien planet, never, ever go in the water. I was reminded of this fact when they talked about monsters in the ocean. All the really, really big, really, really messed up and downright scary stuff are ALWAYS in the ocean. ALWAYS.

The conversation then moves to discussing the people that live in these other parts of the world. Up until this point in the novel it is not ever stated that any humans are known to exist outside of Labradorian civilization. They talk about all sorts of savages and tribes sounding very similar to South American type cultures, in my opinion. These parts do not stop deviations from spreading like in Labrador, but they do have rules regarding it, such as limiting child birth to multi-breasted females. Now one thing that caught my attention was the mention of a race of people with white hair and pink eyes, which I read somewhere is caused by condition which name I now forget. Another race of people is mentioned which have no bodily hair, this could point towards them being irradiated, having some sort of radiation sickness passed from generation to generation or simply having had their genes for hair growth altered.

The final realization I had was when they described a group of people nearly perfect true images but for having dark skin, as well as another strange group of humans; the description of whom matches those of apes. This made me realize that the Labradorians have their own definition of what is in the true image and, in being so, is right. But this definition is built around what they know and see as being normal, and they only know animals and flora from the region of Labrador. This would lead anything not native to Labrador being seen as mutational. So if the Labradorians were to spread further, they would destroy everything since they could not possibly know what is a mutant and what is not.