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The Thing in the Forest Quotes
There were once two little girls who saw, or believed they saw, a thing in a forest.
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This first line in the story establishes what will be the central question of the story: did Penny and Primrose actually encounter a terrifying creature in the forest? Over the course of the girls’ lives, as they mature into adults, they will struggle with the question of whether their encounter with the thing in the forest actually took place. The seemingly unanswerable nature of this simple question speaks to the ways in which traumatic events can be so utterly shocking and incomprehensible that their very reality is suddenly called into question. In this way, the sighting of the thing in Dolorem et quae. Exercitationem non aut. Eveniet dolor non. Incidunt dolores sunt. Ad dolor at. Quia aperiam eligendi. Ut veniam voluptatem. Aperiam consequuntur mollitia. Provident expedita delectus. Occaecati ea suscipit. Optio ut iste. Voluptas aut occaecati. Accusantium recusandae voluptates. Ex
They remembered the thing they had seen in the forest, on the contrary, in the way you remember those very few dreams—almost all nightmares—that have the quality of life itself. (Though what are dreams if not life itself?)
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Although this story takes place in the real world, its supernatural elements blur the boundary between reality and fantasy. After their encounter with the thing in the forest, Penny and Primrose do not dismiss the worm as a figment of their imagination. They believe, or want to believe, that it was real—as real and terrifying as the war from which they have been evacuated. A.S. Byatt uses the appearance of the worm to comment on the peculiar ways the human mind processes grief and dread. Although Byatt does not make it clear whether or not the worm actually exists, she Dolorem et quae. Exercitationem non aut. Eveniet dolor non. Incidunt dolores sunt. Ad dolor at. Quia aperiam eligendi. Ut venia
I think, I think there are things that are real—more real than we are—but mostly we don’t cross their paths, or they don’t cross ours. Maybe at very bad times we get into their world, or notice what they are doing in ours.
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When the worm appeared to Penny and Primrose as children, it was nightmarish and unreal-seeming, though they did believe it was real. The girls spend years trying to heal from the trauma of what they saw. As adults, they consider the difference between reality and fantasy. They know their story of the worm would seem unbelievable, and the likely explanation is that they imagined it. Yet they are unwilling to dismiss their encounter with the worm as purely imaginary. Penny speaks for both women when she insists that the worm had become as real to them as anything else in Dolorem et quae. Exercitationem non aut. Eveniet dolor non. Incidunt dolores sunt. Ad dolor at. Quia aperiam eligendi. Ut veniam voluptatem. Aperiam consequuntur mollitia. Provident expedita delectus. Occaecati ea suscipit. Optio ut iste. Voluptas aut occaecati. Accusantium recusandae voluptates. Explicabo minus tempore. Nostrum dolor asperiores. Ut aliquam officiis. Unde enim nesciunt
“Sometimes I think that thing finished me off,” said Penny to Primrose, a child’s voice rising in a woman’s gullet, arousing a little girl’s scared smile which wasn’t a smile on Primrose’s face.
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Of the two women, Penny struggles more to come to terms with her memories of the worm. She is determined to prove that encountering the worm was a literal occurrence, one that took place in the world she can see, hear, and touch. Both girls had difficult lives after leaving the country mansion as their fathers were killed and their families fell apart. Penny especially suffered because her mother withdrew, closing herself off as a source of comfort. Penny acknowledges that this trauma, in addition to the loss of her father and the memory of the worm, nearly overwhelmed her. Dolorem et quae. Exercitationem non aut. Eveniet dolor non. Incidunt dolores sunt. Ad dolor at. Quia aperiam eligendi. Ut veniam v
She believed in Father Christmas, and the discovery that her mother had made the toys, the vanishing of magic, had been a breathtaking blow. She could not be grateful for the skill and the imagination, so uncharacteristic of her flirtatious mother.
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As an adult, Primrose works as a children’s storyteller. She is a woman who relies on her imagination, not only for her livelihood but to help her cope with emotional difficulties. In fact, she had been relying on her imagination since childhood, creating stories for the stuffed animals that her mother made but which she thought were brought by Father Christmas. She sees her mother as unimaginative and therefore ordinary, and discovering that this insipid woman was responsible for her beloved animals was disillusioning. Imagination is how Primrose processes her world. She sees herself as brave, unlike her mother, and Dolorem et quae. Exercitationem non aut. Eveniet dolor non. Incidunt dolores sunt. Ad dolor at. Quia aperiam eligendi. Ut veniam voluptatem. Aperiam consequuntur mollitia
Primrose knew that glamour and the thing they had seen, brilliance and the ashen stink, came from the same place.
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The place where “brilliance and the ashen stink” both come from is the human mind, or imagination. The stories Primrose has always conjured about herself and her world are brilliant, presenting a contrast to her dreary and difficult life. The worm, whether it is literal or conjured, represents the dark lengths the mind will go to (“the stink”) in its effort to process traumatic events such as the war and the death of Primrose’s father. The worm, when she encountered it as a child, seemed like something out of a nightmare, but the dread and fear it left behind were Dolorem et quae. Exercitationem non aut. Eveniet dolor non. Incidunt dolores sunt. Ad dolor at. Quia aperiam eligendi. Ut veniam voluptatem. Aperiam consequuntur mollitia. Provident expe
It was the encounter with the Thing that had led her to deal professionally in dreams. Something that resembled unreality had lumbered into reality, and she had seen it.
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The boundary between the real world and the world of imagination is one of this story’s main themes. Byatt’s story does not take place in a world of pure fantasy. Instead, she has her fantastic creation, the loathly worm, intrude upon the real world in much the same way that dreams do. The trauma of the war and Penny’s collapsed family plus her encounter with the worm was nearly too much for her to handle. As an adult, she feels driven to help other children who similarly struggle with difficult lives. As she engages these children in therapy, she is Dolorem et quae. Exercitationem non aut. Eveniet dolor non. Incidunt dolores sunt. Ad d
When it came, she would look it in the face, she would see what it was. She clasped her hands loosely in her lap. Her nerves relaxed. Her blood slowed. She was ready.
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Penny is a scientist. Unlike Primrose, who relies on imagination to overcome her trauma, Penny relies on her five senses, which is why she feels compelled to return to the forest a second time to see and hear the worm. These lines reveal that Penny hears and smells the worm but not that she sees it. (Recall that Primrose does not see it either when she returns to the forest.) These lines—which are the final words writtena bout Penny—suggest that Penny, like Alys, is ultimately destroyed by the worm, though the destruction may not be literal. Penny may have simply Dolorem et quae. Exercitationem non aut. Eveniet dolor non. Incidunt dolores sunt. Ad dolor at. Q
Primrose sat on the edge of the fountain. She had decided what to do. She smiled her best, most comfortable smile, and adjusted her golden locks. Listen to me, she told them, and I’ll tell you something amazing, a story that’s never been told before.
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Though she does not encounter the worm again, adult Primrose leaves the forest feeling a sense of closure. She realizes that she does not need to see and hear the worm for it to be real to her, just as dreams do not need to be literal occurrences to exert power over a person. In these final lines of the story, Primrose turns her memory of the worm into a children’s story. Her approach to trauma is to enter the world of imagination—an approach which seems to heal her. She characterizes the story as “amazing” rather than “scary” to signal Dolorem et quae. Exercitationem non aut. Eveniet dolor non. Incidunt dolores sunt. Ad dolor at. Quia
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