Ape & Essence

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William Tallis:
This book is quite an odd book, not at all like an ordinary novel. It begins with Bob Briggs, a person who works in the movies, finding a script written by William Tallis. Then the rest of the book is this script, and it’s quite much as a screenplay. The plot in the script, and therefore the plot in this book, is so that it has been a big nuclear war in the world, and only New Zealand survived without damage. Almost every other area is polluted by radioactivity. This nuclear war was the Third World War, and the year is 2108. A group of scientists from New Zealand go to Los Angeles to find out what’s left after the massdestruction, with Dr Alfred Poole as the leader. They soon find out that it isn’t like in the old time. Unfortunately, all his colleagues are being killed when they get there, and Poole is being kidnapped and brought to The Chief. The Chief is about to kill him, when Poole says that he can help them making food and so, because they have no industry. Due to the fact that they do not have any industry, they can’t produce any clothes, so they have to dig out buried people, for taking their clothes. Because Poole’s a botanist, he starts working in a laboratory, and it doesn’t take long time until he has fallen in love with Loola. The time passes and Poole learns more and more how the society is being controlled. First of all, the Devil won the big battle and he took possession of the people, God doesn’t exist any more. The women walk around with ”NO”-signs on their back, which means that it’s clearly against the law to be having sex, except one day per year. That day it is like a big orgy, because they have to get some new children. The society is really religious, believing in Belial and they don’t at all like the technology, because that was the reason for the big war. This big war is called ”The Thing”, and the Devil is called ”He” or ”Him”. Everytime someone mention him, he or she makes the sign of the horns. One big difference is also that there aren’t any ”real” people (except a few) any more; everyone is mutated in some way already at their birth, maybe with four nipples or something like that. The book is quite much as this, with texts telling us how the society is in the 22nd century according to William Tallis. Dr Poole, who comes from an ”ordinary” place, still believes in God and not in the Devil. He doesn’t really understand all that the Arch-Vicar, the Head of the Church, tells him and Poole is unwilling to suit to the society. Instead he trys to escape with Loola. They manage to escape a bit, and suddenly the story ends after Poole has found the graveyard of William Tallis.

Wierd human beings:
The main character in this book is Dr Alfred Poole. He is a 38-year-old botanist from New Zealand who thinks that he has had many problems in his life. He is really conservative, because his mother raised him like that and he can’t see himself in a bed with a woman. This you can see clearly when one of his colleagues from New Zealand, Miss Hook, tells him that she likes him very much etc. He doesn’t care at all and is more comfortable looking at differents plants. But in Los Angeles somethings happens. For the first time in his life, he falls in love, in Loola. Unfortunately, he looses his faith to Loola after a while, but he still escapes with her. Loola is a gravedigger, which means that she digs up dead people for taking their clothes and jewellery. She also buries people when the Chief tells her to do that. She and her friend Flossie were about to bury Poole, when the Chief suddenly changed his mind due to the food problem. She afterwards told Poole that she doesn’t want to do such things, but that she doesn’t have any choice. She is a kind person, and begins going crazy in Pool after a while. She kisses him, and throws herself in Poole’s arms and such things, with Dr Poole responding sometimes. One other big character in the book is of course the Chief. He is respected by the citizens, and is like the leader of the people, an evil leader. When someone has got a child, they have to show it for him, and most of the times, he thinks the child is useless or looking too odd. Then the child is to be destroyed, and this is just one of his odd ways of handling the society. Another important character in the book is the Arch-Vicar, who is the Head of the Church. Poole often talks to the Arch-Vicar, and he is telling Poole how the society works. That is mainly that the church controls the most, such as work and love. He also gives Poole a summary of the development for the human beings, and why it looks like it looks today. There are som “small” characters too in this book of course, and almost everyone in this book has something in common. They don’t like the Chief, and think he’s not taking care of what is left in the world.

The Third World War:
The main conflict in this book doesn’t take place in the plot. The Third World War took place some years before, and everything is changed. The Devil, ”He”, has taken over. There are many people that don’t like his way of doing thins, but nobody does a thing about it. So you could say that the main conflict in this book isn’t to be cleared up, because the story ends, still with the Devil as “the master”.

Poole and Loola:
Dr Poole and Loola, the gravedigger, has an own little story in this book. They first met when she was about to bury him, and after that they talked a bit with eachother. The biggest time for them both was on Belial’s Day, the day when you are free to have sex, when they said that they loved eachother. In the beginning of the script, there is a little story about apes, and how they are smartier than human beings. For example, they have captured two (!) Albert Einsteins, and it’s quite clearly shown the humans incapabilty to use our brains. Otherwise, I don’t think there are any ”sub-plots”, there is mostly quite a slow story, when it sometimes is told a little about the society etc.

2108, Los Angeles:
The story takes place in Los Angeles, and the year is 2108. This book is a science fiction book, and of course the ”time” for the novel affects the story. This because the plot is based on how the world may be in the beginning of the 22th century. Science fiction books are always!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

Yes, it may be like this:
Probably Huxley wrote this book to give us a little gleam on how the world maybe is going to look like later on. Maybe Huxley wants to send us an alert, before it’s to late. Before the Devil has taken over and has almost ruined mankind. In the plot, the countries have taken out eachother with different dangerous weapons, and now almost everything is ruined. I think it’s a possibly way of the end of this planet. The World War Three has taken place and many countries are participating, with many nuclear weapons, atom bombs etc, it isn’t an impossible scenario for “the end”. In this book, the most parts of the world are polluted, and in my opinion, it’s quite obvious that it someday on planet Earth will be like that.

Ape and Essence:
When I choose to read this book, I right away wondered what the title meant. I’m not so familiar to titles ”like this one”. As I’ve said, there is a little story about apes in this book, and how smart they are. It is also said that after ”The Thing”, Third World War, the development of the technology took a step backwards, with no industry, no clothing and so on. Maybe Huxley means that we now aren’t any smarter than ordinary apes. The word ”essence” is much harder to understand and describe I think, and I didn’t come up with something worth telling. One time in the book, he compares theese two words: ”glassy essence” and ”angry ape”.

A new style of writing in my eyes:
I haven’t said it yet, but this book is written in quite an odd way, and it’s for sure the first time I read something like this. The beginning of the book is like usual books, but in this case, ”the book” is the script that they’ve found. The script is like copied right off, so in many places in this books, you see “movie sentences” like ”cut back to Dr Poole”, ”dissolve to a night sky”, ”close shot of the Chief”, “close-up of mouths and paws”, “the Camera moves across the sky” and so on. There is also a narrator in the text who talks sometimes, like in some films. It was quite fun I think with this style of writing, because it’s always fun to ”test” something new, thats a fact.

Here we go,...