The Day of the Triffids

Bill expects the meeting to be a brief info dump about when the group will leave and their short-term objectives for survival. He and Josella are shocked to see the meeting hall filled with more than 100 people, many of them both female and blind. A self-appointed committee kicks off the meeting, including the Colonel and Beadley, who give speeches about the group’s duty to the survival of humankind. An older man, Dr. Vorless, then begins talking. He speaks somewhat vaguely about the community needing to operate under different morals and rules before reaching his true point: “There is one thing to be made quite clear to you […] the men must work—the women must have babies. Unless you can agree to that, there can be no place for you in our community” (87). He believes that the babies born, even to blind women, will be sighted and therefore grow to be a useful labor force.

Bill, and many others, cannot believe what they are hearing, but Josella not only finds it amusing, she agrees. Later, Bill admits that he would like to be the one to sire her children. Though she agrees, she makes an impassioned speech about men needing to partner with sightless women. She believes it is a way to give back to those who now have nothing because of blindness. Therefore, Bill should have children not only her but with two blind women as well. As Bill contemplates this, Josella begins dancing, and he joins her.

Bill awakes from a dream to the sound of a bell ringing and people shouting “Fire!” He rushes toward the sound but falls headfirst and blacks out. When he wakes up, his hands are tied, and a rough-looking blind man named Alf is standing guard over him. Bill learns that there was no fire—the angry leader of the mob he and Josella saw at the University Building gates, Coker, engineered the whole ruse. He and his lackeys knocked out everyone who ran out to fight the fire, while other members of Bill’s group fled and left the blind behind. 

Coker wants the sighted to help the blind, whether they want to or not. He believes that everyone simply needs to hold out until help arrives, though Bill thinks this is naïve. Coker instructs Bill on his new duties and warns him against trying to flee. Bill is then handcuffed to two blind men and given a party of blind people to take care of. He must find them food and shelter and keep them alive until help arrives. Right before Bill leaves, Alf tells him Josella is stationed in Westminster with her own party. Bill plans to help those in his charge but eventually run off to join Josella.

Bill soon discovers that his group needs far more help than he can give. He secures lodging in a tenement where a few others are already hiding. The group then goes on scouting missions, but the work is hard since Bill is the only one who can see—and is still handcuffed. Soon, people begin falling sick; Bill initially wonders if its typhoid. 

Despite the sickness, Bill continues taking his scouting party out. One day, they come across another group. Bill wants to leave without interacting with the other group, but they are spotted by a red-headed man with a pistol. The man fires on them and kills one of Bill’s captors. Bill then kills the other one when the man refuses to uncuff him. Bill scurries away and watches as the redhead follows Bill’s group, which is fleeing in fear. Bill realizes the redhead plans to follow them to their hideout and take what he can. Luckily, Bill’s group cannot find their way back. A sick man in the group falls. The redhead man walks up, observes the fallen man, and then shoots him and leaves. 

Bill returns to the hideout with his demoralized group and forms another. They hit up a store near Hampstead Heath but are attacked by triffids in the process. Bill manages to get some of them to safety, and when they return, they find that still others have come down with the strange sickness. Bill takes his own room now, and the others worry that he will leave them. A young girl comes into his room to inform him of all this, then offers herself sexually, suggesting that the others believe he might stay if he has someone to stay for. He refuses and bids her goodnight. 

The next morning, he awakens later than usual to find that the girl has come down with the sickness and the others left because they thought Bill abandoned them. He goes into town and finds medicine for the girl so she can die without pain. He then leaves, lamenting that he does not even know her name.

Bill heads to Westminster, stopping to procure more weapons, including a shotgun. There are now many triffids throughout London, and though they may be docked (i.e., harmless), he does not want to chance it. 

In Westminster, everything once held as sacred is now in shambles. Of the Houses of Parliament, Bill says: “Let it shower its crumbling pinnacles onto the terrace as it would—there would be no more indignant members complaining of the risk to their valuable lives” (111). Josella is nowhere to be found, so Bill returns to University Building. While searching the grounds, he finds an inscription etched onto a wall: the address for Tynsham Manor. He hopes Josella is there. 

It is too late to head for Tynsham, so Bill decides to stay at University Building for the night. He goes to Russell Square Garden to think and relax, keeping an ever-watchful eye out for triffids that might attempt to ambush him. Just before the sun sets, a man walks toward him, and Bill fires a warning shot in the air. The man is a now-penitent Coker. Though Bill has obvious reasons to distrust him, Coker admits that Bill and his group were right to flee, and he concedes that his attempt at saving the blind was problematic. He also reveals that his own group came down with the mysterious disease too. The men return to University Building with a plan to leave for Tynsham the following day.

After breakfast, Bill and Coker each drive a truck loaded with supplies. The route is tiresome and long, and they eventually stop for rest. Bill comments on Coker’s affected speech, and Coker admits that, because he is a “hybrid” (116), he speaks differently depending on the situation. He was born to lower-class parents, but business interests (and a love of learning) caused him to study hard and adopt the speech of those in power. He says, “You have to talk the kind of lingo they’re accustomed to taking seriously” (116). This gives Coker leverage with any group. He then explains how he missed seeing the comet; he was protesting, and when the cops broke up the meeting, he hid in a basement. It was so comfortable that he fell asleep, and when he woke, the blindness had hit.  

Back on the road, Bill feels a lightness of spirit, much like Coker’s, despite the chaos. Even as more triffids ambling about, he sings as they reach Tynsham.

Bill and Coker spot a large mansion and are stopped at the gate by a serious young woman wielding a shotgun. She does not trust anyone, and Bill is weary of the careless way she holds the shotgun. Eventually, she checks the trucks and listens to his story, then allows them to enter. 

The grounds of the mansion are expansive, with different buildings constructed according to different architectural whims, “as though none of its previous owners had been able to resist the temptation to leave his personal mark upon it” (119). Inside, Bill and Coker are immediately assigned to kitchen duties. Bill serves food to the blind while looking for Josella, who is nowhere to be found. He notes that there are more women than men, though most of the men are blind while there are many more women who can see. There are also some familiar faces from the group at University Building, including a woman who angrily notices Coker. 

After the meal, Bill and Coker meet Miss Durrant, the woman in charge. She takes an immediate dislike to Coker because she knows he organized the raid on University Building. She warns them both that Tynsham is a moral refuge. They can remain if they follow Christian virtues; she vetoed the University Building group’s ideas concerning sex without marriage. Bill, wanting information on Beadley, agrees to everything. Coker, on the other hand, challenges the morality of Miss Durrant’s decision of leaving University Building while it was on fire: “Who is to judge who were the more brutal? Those who saw an immediate responsibility, and stayed—or those who saw a future responsibility, and cleared out?” (121). He says he will decide his own usefulness at Tynsham, despite Miss Durrant wanting to assign them specific roles. She acquiesces, but she does not reveal where Beadley’s group went. When Bill brings up Josella—who Miss Durrant realizes wrote the shocking book—the matter is closed.

Coker leaves to gather info from people, while Bill finds a woman who can see and inquiries about Josella. The woman is patching and sewing up clothes by candlelight; she is overjoyed when the lights suddenly come on. Coker enters, having fixed the electricity after tinkering with the generator. He is visibly upset and voices his annoyance at the woman—and others by extension—just waiting around to be saved. He believes they could have easily fixed the generator if they had tried. 

Coker and the woman argue, and Bill berates him for his aggression when she leaves in anger. Bill feels that Beadley’s group will also have a lot of trouble, but they are at least willing to act. Despite this, Bill warns Coker about treating even docile people like “a lot of chassis fitted for remote-thought control” (126). Coker agrees that he should consider being nicer.

Bill is unable to sleep because he does not know what to do about Josella. He sets out early to find someone who saw her, but no one recognizes her description. 

Bill and Coker meet for lunch. Miss Durrant rebuffs Coker when he tries to explain ways to ensure their survival, causing both Coker and Bill to speculate on the Tynsham group’s fate. They both know the place can be made operational and sustainable, but not under Miss Durrant’s direction. Coker says, “[T]he trouble is that in spite of all that’s happened this thing hasn’t got home to these people yet. They don’t want to turn to—that’d be making it too final” (128). However, the sighted men are already grumbling, and the blind far outnumber those who can see. Bill and Coker know this group will likely dissolve if it does not adjust to reality. 

Later, Bill speaks with Miss Durrant and manages to get the possible whereabouts of Beadley’s group: a town called Beaminster. Bill and Coker head out in their trucks; they do not see anything out of the ordinary until they reach Steeple Honey, a quaint river village. They spy a blind man waving a white flag from the window and double back to pick him up. However, he is cut down by a triffid in hiding as soon as he exits the door. Bill kills the triffid, and Coker is stunned at the seeming coincidence of the triffid waiting for the man. 

They go get drinks, and Bill explains Walter’s beliefs about the triffids, including the possibility that they talk to each other and possess intelligence. Bill then kills another triffid that shows up outside. As he and Coker leave, two more triffids appear near where the first one was killed. Bill dispatches them, and Coker wonders if they came to check on their friend. The men get food and a few supplies, then finally make it to Beaminster. The town looks vacated until a man steps onto the main street and fires a rifle off over their heads.