The Day of the Triffids

“There was a feeling that I ought to do something about it. Lead them out into the street, perhaps, and at least put an end to that dreadful slow milling. […] if I were to, if I did get them outside—what then?”

When Bill realizes the hospital is filled with blind people, he struggles with the thought of helping them find a way out. There is no precedent for such a widescale catastrophe, so he is unsure what civility dictates. He knows he cannot help everyone and that he would possibly be forced to help to his own detriment. He decides it is better to help himself instead.

“It was the appearance of the triffids which really decided the matter for us. Indeed, they did a lot more than that for me.”

Growing up, Bill did not have a purpose in life. His father assumed Bill would share his predisposition for numbers, but Bill had no talent for them. As such, it was unclear how he would become a successful adult—until the triffids arrived. Bill was obsessed with them as a teenager and as an adult, he made a career of studying them. This was somewhat serendipitous, as getting stung by one of his subjects keeps Bill from being blinded by the comet. 

“Such a swerve of interest from swords to plowshares was undoubtedly a social improvement, but, at the same time, it was a mistake for the optimistic to claim it as showing a change in the human spirit.”

This quote underscores the warlike—and dangerously curious—nature of humankind. Despite numerous technological advancements, humankind’s desire to meddle and improve its station was never sated. Countries began an arms race on the premise that they were helping advance civilization, likely being the catalyst for the novel’s catastrophes.

“Anybody who has had a great treasure has always led a precarious existence.”

Josella says this to Bill as they consider how precarious their lives are now. As sighted people in a world full of desperate, and increasingly dangerous, blind people, they are now considered a commodity that ensures survival. As such, they are in constant danger.

“The thing paused by the gatepost. One could have sworn that it was listening.”

This quote offers a large clue about how the triffids find their prey. Though Bill researches triffids, he still had knowledge gaps regarding how they operate. This foreshadows Bill’s later realization that triffids indeed hear and are drawn to noise.

“It must be, I thought, one of the race's most persistent and comforting hallucinations to trust that ‘it can't happen here’—that one's own little time and place is beyond cataclysms.”

Bill thinks about the whimsical nature of belief—specifically, humankind’s belief in safety and security as inviolable rights. Though destruction happens, people distance themselves from it by believing they are somehow special, or safer.

“We all have our youthful follies, embarrassing to recall—but people somehow find it hard to dismiss as a youthful folly anything that has happened to be a financial success.”

Bill underscores the hypocrisy that comes with money. People make mistakes and are often forgiven. However, when such a folly leads to financial gain, as is the case with Josella and her infamous book, people are more critical and merciless.

“I don't think it had ever occurred to me that man's supremacy is not primarily due to his brain […] It is due to the brain's capacity to make use of the information conveyed to it by a narrow band of visible light rays. […] Without that, he was lost.”

Bill considers how humankind believes itself superior because of its mental faculties. However, it is not just intellect that makes man superior; it is the brain’s ability to derive information from the senses—most notably, sight. Therefore, if humans lost the ability to see, they would likely lose their place as the dominant species.

“And we danced, on the brink of an unknown future, to an echo from a vanished past.”

Despite the catastrophe all around them and his doubts about staying with Michael Beadley’s survivor group, Bill and Josella are able to enjoy a romantic moment. This act of happiness amid chaos symbolizes the human spirit’s ability to overcome obstacles.

“Death is just the shocking end of animation; it is dissolution that is final.”

As Bill watches the dead and dying around him, the victims of the unexplained sickness, he reasons that death is simply an ending—a final act, so to speak. What makes death truly final is the actual decomposition and breakdown of bodies—or cities.

“It was difficult to believe that all of that meant nothing any more, that it was now just a pretentious confection in uncertain stone which would decay in peace.”

Bill looks at Parliament, once the seat of power in London, and is glad to see it crumbling from neglect. His assessment underscores how fragile power and security is. Humankind built and supported institutions like this to ensure their wellbeing, yet it is all ultimately pointless because such systems could not save the world from the blinding catastrophe.

“There’s a whole lot of people don’t seem to understand that you have to talk to a man in his own language before he’ll take you seriously.”

Coker explains the usefulness of his ability to speak to both the lower and upper classes. It is this talent that makes him an opportunist, as he uses it indiscriminately, and suggests that trust is paramount to communication.

“There is an inability to sustain the tragic mood, a phoenix quality of the mind.”

Despite mass blindness, civilization in shambles, and the danger of triffids, Bill reasons that humankind cannot remain sad and afraid. A tragic mood takes effort to maintain, while happiness can rise from the proverbial ashes when the mind allows it.

“Most people aren’t [reasonable], even though they’d protest that they are. They prefer to be coaxed or wheedled, or even driven. That way they never make a mistake […]”

Coker is annoyed because the people at Tynsham do not think for themselves or do anything to ensure their survival. Here, Bill explains that many people prefer to be told what to do because it allows them to shirk responsibility when mistakes are made.

“It’s queer, isn’t it? Decent intentions seem to be the most dangerous things around just now.”

Coker cannot understand Miss Durrant’s group, which does not want to improve its surroundings by working harder. Miss Durrant and others claim their decision to only help those who think like them is morally right, and they cling to Christian values. However, in a lawless and disorderly world where everyone needs to work together, these values are actually dangerous enough to get people killed.

“It came to me that here and there, dotted about the country, there must be men and women who were believing themselves to be utterly alone, sole survivors. I felt as sorry for them as anyone else in the disaster.”

Bill suffers from loneliness while driving to Tynsham to find Josella and Beadley’s group. The feeling is described as an agent actively seeking to destroy the human spirit. For Bill, survivors suffering from loneliness are just as tragic as those who are now blind.

“Only I, as far as I could see, had promptly formed a new link—and that so briefly that I had scarcely been aware how important it was to me at the time….”

Bill is experiencing a change of heart. He began the narrative with a lightness of spirit because he had no loved ones to worry about. When he met Josella, however, he formed an attachment to her. Now, ironically, Bill is the only one in his current group with a loved one.

“It showed one as an atom adrift in vastness, and it waited all the time its chance to frighten and frighten horribly […].”

Bill likens loneliness to a cosmic entity. Humankind is but a speck of dust amid loneliness, and that vast emptiness is forever lying in wait for an opportunity to frighten humankind.

“To deprive a gregarious creature of companionship is to maim it, to outrage its nature.”

Bill continues his ruminations on loneliness. In this quote, he admits that humankind is animalistic and easy to wound. Moreover, humans are pack creatures and therefore social by nature, so separation from the herd is paramount to being maimed.

“[…] children have a different convention of the fearful until they are taught the proper things to be shocked at.”

It is often said that children see the world honestly and innocently. Bill affirms this by saying that children do not know fear until adults teach it to them. Though it is a useless lesson, it perhaps negatively impacts children by teaching them fear more than anything else.

‘“It’s queer,’ I said, ‘the way things go on, I mean. Like a seed—it looks all shriveled and finished, you’d think it was dead, but it isn’t. And now a new life starting, coming into all this…”’

Bill ruminates on the nature of destruction and death. Though the world has virtually ended, and humankind’s existence is in the balance, new life begins when he and Josella have children. The feeling of life from death is both confusing and amazing to him.

“There must be thousands of little groups like this dotted all over Europe—all over the world. Some of them will get together. They’ll begin to rebuild.”

Bill offers Josella hope when they are both feeling down. He speaks of the human spirit and the ability for humans to regroup, reconstruct, and thrive. Humans are social beings, and once they come together in unity, they can overcome many obstacles.

“And, curiously, as the living things increasingly took charge, the effect of the place became less oppressive. As it passed beyond the scope of any magic wand, most of the ghosts were going with it, withdrawing slowly into history.”

The world’s destruction feels like a supernatural event. Bill watches as cities are reclaimed by nature and people die from starvation and triffid attacks. Strangely, when nature takes over, enveloping houses, cars, skeletons, and streets, the eeriness of death disappears like the fear of ghosts.