PENGUIN READERS Teacher’s notes LEVEL 5 Teacher Support Programme Web John Wyndham developed a group intelligence and work together to catch and eat anything that moves, including humans. Thick spiders’ webs cover more than half the island. All the newcomers’ ideas of a perfect society are forgotten as they focus all their strength of body and mind just on staying alive. Everyone gets killed except Arnold and Camilla who are finally rescued. Chapter 1: Arnold Delgrange has a car accident in which his wife and daughter die. Through his sister’s acquaintance, Walter Tirrie, he meets Lord Foxfield. This rich man wants to be remembered for creating a free, politically independent society with a new way of life based on the principles of Knowledge and Reason. About the author Delgrange joins them enthusiastically and drafts the laws John Wyndham is one of England’s best-known writers of of the new society. Once they have selected the place, imaginative science stories. He was born in 1903 in the an island called Tanakuatua, they set to gather suitable English Midlands. After his parents separated in 1911, he people. and his mother and brother lived in many different parts Chapter 2: The night before setting off to the island, the of England. When he finished school he went on to try group gathers in a hotel. They listen to Lord Foxfield’s various careers, but none was a success, so he tried writing. convincing speech and a photograph is taken. They are a From 1930 until the outbreak of the Second World War, mixed group with different backgrounds, professions and he wrote stories mainly for American magazines. After the motives. The people look hopeful, yet it is a sad picture. war he started writing again, and found fame and fortune Chapter 3: On the way to the island, after a man drops in 1951 with the publication of The Day of the Triffids. out, the people on the ship get to know each other. Wyndham went on to write many more best-selling Delgrange is worried that they have different views on novels. He died in 1969. the project. He talks to Camilla Cogent, a biologist, who Summary is surprised to see so few birds. Web opens in England in the 1960s. The narrator of the Chapter 4: After five days, they have unloaded their story, Arnold Delgrange, loses his wife and daughter in a equipment and the ship leaves. They decide on a place for car accident, and with them his reason for living. the settlement but when they are about to send a message to Lord Foxfield, they find the radio crushed under heavy Lord Foxfield is a rich and important member of society. boxes. After six days of hard work, a group explores the He has plenty of money but not many years left to live. island on foot. While Camilla and Arnold sail round it, He wants to be remembered for something grand. He she sees something white, which she takes for fog. After comes up with the idea of a perfect society where there a brown patch of poisonous spiders on the beach attacks is no war, no prejudice, no class structure. He calls it his David and kills him, she realizes the white thing is a web. Project. He buys a Pacific Island and advertises for people to make his dream a reality. For Arnold Delgrange, this is Chapter 5: The group coming in the boat go up to the perfect opportunity to start his life again. Gradually Walter to tell them about David’s death and its cause. a strange collection of people is brought together, all They are also very concerned about the people who have with different skills and different reasons for joining the gone up the mountain and haven’t returned. One of the Project. However, when they get to the island there seems children then tells Charles that he has seen a black man to be something strange about it. People from nearby thereabouts. They don’t understand why the men who islands say there is a curse on it. They begin to explore and came with them have stayed. The following morning the soon discover what is wrong with the island – millions group has not returned yet, so Joe and Camilla put on of spiders live on it. Not only that, but the spiders have the necessary clothes to cover their bodies, pour some insecticide on them and leave the camp. Four hours later c Pearson Education Limited 2008 Web - Teacher’s notes 1 of 5 PENGUIN READERS Teacher’s notes LEVEL 5 Teacher Support Programme Web Camilla returns and tells them that the whole party has Background and themes been killed by the spiders. After the deaths a group of Spiders: Some facts about spiders are: they have six or people want to leave the island but as the radio has been eight eyes as well; they kill by biting and paralysing their broken Walter cannot send a message. Camilla wants to prey and sucking out the juices; some types of spider, go on an expedition to find out how far the spiders are. e.g. tarantulas, can live for up to 25 years; they don’t get Arnold goes with her. caught in their own webs because they have oily, non-stick Chapter 6: Charles and Walter decide to burn trees down feet; in an average square metre of grassland there will be to keep the spiders away as long as possible. Camilla 500 spiders. and Arnold begin cutting a path to start fires along it. Man versus nature: Wyndham’s characters are ordinary Camilla is very concerned about what may happen in the people who are put in a terrifying situation in which they future with the spiders on this island because they have are fighting for their lives. As well as battling for survival, developed group intelligence. When Camilla and Arnold these people try to preserve the moral and social values come to a path they are made prisoners by two men whose of everyday life under difficult conditions. They try to dark skin was shining as if covered in oil. Camilla and re-establish Man’s dominance over Nature and rebuild Arnold follow the men and when they are told to stop society on the basis of western European civilization they see four large bags made of leaves which are moving. – honour between friends, loyalty to friends and country, Then they are told to continue walking and they come to honesty, hard work and an appreciation of natural and the lip of a volcano. They finally meet another man, older man-made beauty. than the rest, who has the picture of a spider drawn on his Utopia: The story of Web begins with a search for Utopia chest. – an ideal society where people live in peace and harmony, Chapter 7: Naeta, the man with the picture of a spider, without greed and jealousy. The term Utopia means ‘no orders his men to get Arnold and Camilla to take off their place’ and was coined by Sir Thomas More, a sixteenth clothes and they pour their insecticide. Then he tells them century English writer and politician. He wrote an how the island was cursed by Nokiki, Naeta’s father, and essay about the search for a perfect form of government. that they are there only to help their ‘Little Sisters’, the His solution was very advanced for his day – a form of spiders. The spiders have been sent to punish the world communism, national education for men and women, and in this way they will take revenge on what the white and tolerance of all religions. John Wyndham brings the people have done to them. Camilla and Arnold look for idea up to the mid-twentieth century. In Lord Foxfield’s a plant with which to cover their bodies with oil to keep perfect world, the priority is for people to be able to think spiders away. When they come back to the settlement they creatively. His theory is never tested, however, because discover empty bags lying around and all the people dead, the first spider attack takes place within a fortnight of the eaten by the spiders that the black men left before leaving group’s arrival on the island. the island by boat. Islands in the Pacific Ocean: Between 1875 and 1914 Chapter 8: A week later a small airplane comes to rescue the major European powers all built empires around them but when the two men on the plane come down the globe. By 1914 the British Empire covered a fifth of to the shore they are killed by the spiders. Arnold and the world’s land surface and included a quarter of the Camilla use the plane radio but with no results. Five days world’s population. After the First World War (1914–18), later a ship rescues them. One of the men from the ship however, Europe was exhausted and it was no longer wants to have a closer look at the spiders and gets beaten. considered acceptable to take whatever land was available. He gets rid of them, but is badly hurt. After that, the Western powers started to test their atomic weapons in the Pacific Ocean. They chose the Pacific Chapter 9: Arnold and Camilla go back to the island because it is far from major centres of population. On with other scientists only to discover that the spiders 12 May 1951, the first hydrogen bomb was tested in the have spread even more.