The Day of the Triffids

From the very start of the novel, the question of moral duty is raised. When Bill Masen learns he is one of the “lucky few” who can still see after a catastrophe causes mass blindness, he is immediately thrown into an ethical dilemma of choosing between altruism and self-preservation (i.e., helping himself or others). When considering whether to aid the blind hospital residents, he ultimately decides it would be useless: “There was a feeling that I ought to do something about it. […] if I were to, if I did get them outside—what then?” (17). 

With no governmental help, and no real understanding if what occurred, neither Bill nor those he might help stand a good chance of living long. Bill determines early on that the sighted, who can fend for themselves, will survive longer than the blind. While fleeing to London, he sees people struggling to find food and help, and he constantly wonders if he should do something. Quite often, he chooses to keep going on his own. Though he does try to save a blind girl from being forced into sexual slavery by a group of drunken men, he ultimately decides she is better off with them: “[i]f there was to be any survival, anyone adopted by this gang would stand a far better chance than she would on her own” (42).

Finally, Bill chooses altruism when he rescues Josella, a sighted woman, from a blind captor who was attempting to beat her into submission. Despite the man’s harsh treatment, Josella later defends his actions: “[…] he wasn’t too bad a man really. Only he was frightened. Deep down inside him he was much more frightened than I was” (49). In fact, Josella grows to feel guilty for not helping the blind more, even though the blind are increasingly turning to violence if they come across a person who can see.

Bill and Josella’s ruminations about helping the blind or helping themselves take on a larger significance when they find a group of survivors at University Building. The group, comprised of both the sighed and the blind, plans to make a self-sufficient community where blind and sighted people will engage in compulsory intercourse to hopefully produce children that can see. Josella quickly agrees with this unorthodox edict, feeling it is the only way to both save society and help the blind. Bill, however, must be coerced as his sense of altruism does not naturally extend to sex as a communal act of survival.

Another struggle between the concepts of altruism and self-preservation takes shape at Tynsham. Miss Durrant, who balked at the mandatory procreation decree at University Building, makes her own community where it is imperative that members adhere to Christian values or face expulsion. This makes Miss Durrant a bit of an ironic figure, as Christian compassion would dictate that she helps everyone, regardless of their beliefs. As such, her group is altruistic in name but self-preservationist in practice. Because of this, neither Bill nor Coker can remain, and ultimately the group falls to ruin.

In the final chapter, Bill and Josella must decide once more between saving themselves, by staying on Shirning Farm, or helping others, by joining Beadley’s group on the Isle of Wight. Bill ponders what he has learned about survival up to now: “I thought of Coker and his talk of the leader, the teacher, and the doctor—and of all the work that would be needed to support us on our few acres” (181). In the end, they decide to join the group and work to build a better world for others.