The Thing in the Forest Essay Questions

What is significant about the opening line of "The Thing in the Forest"?

Byatt opens the story with the line, "There were once two little girls who saw, or believed they saw, a thing in a forest." This line signals several things to the reader. For one, the phrase "there were once" self-consciously borrows from the clichés of fairytales despite most of the story existing within the narrative conventions of literary realism. The line also hints at the central conflict Penny and Primrose face in the story: whether the Thing they see is real or something they imagined. This combination of fairytale language and conflict sets the tone for a story in which the line between imagination and reality is blurred, throwing the two girls into a whirlwind of confusion and self-mistrust. The opening line is also significant because the same line closes the story. While Penny confronts her trauma by returning to the forest to face down the Thing, Primrose processes the memory by turning it into a fairytale for children. Once her audience has taken their seats, "Aunty" Primrose speaks aloud the line that begins the story, leaving the reader to wonder how she will interpret the life-changing event in narrative form.

What does the forest symbolize in "The Thing in the Forest"?

The forest where Penny and Primrose witness the Thing symbolizes the boundary between unknown and known. Before entering the forest, the girls are innocent and curious beings, too young still to understand the true danger and deprivation of the war they are living through. They go in the forest because they have never, as urban children, been in a forest before. Crossing the threshold into this new realm, they are met with unfamiliar scents and sounds and sights, chief among them the Thing. This hitherto unknown creature represents the misery and despair the girls must now contend with as they come of age during WWII. Decades later, both characters return to the forest—the site of loss, confusion, and misery—to reconcile their childhood encounter with a being that ensured they would live their lives split between the worlds of known and unknown things.

How do Penny and Primrose differ in their lives after the war? How are their professions similar?

Despite going through the same haunting experience and having eerily similar lives following the war, the two girls grow up to take on different roles in society. Although both women are similar in that they lose their fathers during the war, never marry, never have children, and develop careers that involve working with children, class differences lead the women down different paths. While Penny pursues education and trains to become a child psychologist who specializes in severely autistic children, Primrose's educational opportunities are hampered by the time she spends looking after her five siblings while her mother works. Primrose takes on various working-class jobs, eventually making a modest career for herself as a children's entertainer and storyteller. While Primrose thinks of herself as being little more than a glorified babysitter, the job allows her to tap into her creativity and imagination as she lets her mind roam in the dream-like realm of the unknown and unreal. Penny, meanwhile, becomes someone who "deals professionally in dreams" as a psychologist who seeks to understand human beings' subconsciouses. In this way, both women's work is concerned with the realm of the unknown and the unreal. Despite the class-based differences between them, both women have developed professions that involve, indirectly, making sense of their encounter with the unknown Thing.