<doc.id=1010.a4>
<title> Theme and setting in the book "The 5th Child" </title>
I have read the book The 5th child by Doris Lessing. In my literature essay I intend to give my view of what is the main theme of the book and how it is supported by its settings. The main theme of the book is the "the Primitive versus the Civilized" or in other words the fear of the unknown.
The book starts in the 1960s when Harriet and David meet and become a married couple. They buy a big house at some distance from London where David goes to work every day. Harriet is an educated graphic designer but does not want to make a career but instead prefers to be a housewife and take care of their children and the big house. This big house is a very central setting in the book. Most of the events are taken place in the house like all the family celebrations at Christmas and Easter and also some of the dramatic events later on with Ben, their fifth child. The big house supports very much the theme of the nuclear family versus society which I found to be an important theme in the book. What goes on outside the house is not concerning the Lovatt family very much. They are not affected by it but live their own family life within the walls of the house. Even though they watch the news on TV and read in the papers about the crime it is outside "their fortress, their kingdom" (p. 30) and could not disturb their happy, growing family with four small children and "where so many people come to immerse themselves in safety, comfort, kindness" (p. 30). They have very traditional family values which also supports the theme.
Their choise of living in a small village at a distance from London supports another theme that I have found to be very important in the book, namely "the nuclear family versus society". Living like this contributes to the values of living near nature and not in a big, unhealthy, insecure city where the pace is too high. The disadvantage is that David has to spend a few hours every day at the train. But it is also cheaper to live at a distance from London. But the house is really too expensive for them which means that David has to do a lot of extra work to be able to afford it. David's father is paying the mortages of the house which is experienced as unfair by David's sister. This is one of the family's conflicts. Harriet and David are afraid of conflicts and don't want to deal with any conflicts. In their world everything should be very happy and perfect with many children, a big family with a lot of family celebrations and a big house. If something goes wrong it is your own fault like, according to Harriet who is a fatalist, like when Harriet's sister Sara and her husband William are unhappy in their marriage and have a baby with Down's syndrome. Their marriage is a contrast to Harriet's and David's marriage which is so extremely happy. At least that is the image she is fighting so hard to show up even after four pregnancies, childbirths and nursing four babies in six years. At one moment she gets very irritated of the children, p.33, (who wouldn't in her situation) but blames herself very much for this. It does not match her image of happiness. Even when being tired to death Harriet expects herself showing a happy face to the rest of the family who really thinks it is quite natural that she is tired due to the circumstances.. Both David and especially Harriet have a very unrealistic view of happiness and that nothing must destroy or disturb their happiness. This setting and all the events contribute to the themes of happiness versus unhappiness and family versus society. There are no nuances in Harriet's and David's world. They do have an unrealistic and naive view of how life should be.
And then their fifth child Ben was born and Harriet's and David's whole life and idyll falls apart. Everything becomes problematic and filled with conflicts. Ben is everything they don't want according to their narrowminded idea of a happy family. He is really a primitive creature; wild, uncontrolled, ugly, strong, always fighting, noncommunicative and definitely not being able of to give or receive love. Even Sara's and Williams's baby has turned out to be a very loveable child despite her Down's syndrome. Harriet, the fatalist, asks herself all the time what did they and especially she do wrong to get a child like Ben, when they really deserved being happy. She is the "scapegoat - Harriet, the destroyer of her family". "We are being punished". David, on the other hand, thinks this is "...rubbish. It was chance. Anyone could have got Ben." (p. 141). The conflict between them becomes very evident in this paragraph.
After Ben's birth the narrator is Harriet. It is through her eyes, her point of view, we are being told about Ben. She sees him as "the alien, the destroyer". (p.156). But is he really that awful? Or is he just a lonely child who doesn't get the love every child deserves because he is different? She, and so us the rest of the family, is unable to give him love because she can't deal with anything that is primitive or differs from the rest of her family or is outside her very rigid ideas of a happy family. She does one good thing, I think, and that is when she takes Ben home from the institution. Maybe it is some sort of mother's love to her child. The institution itself is a horrifying setting which emphasises the theme of the fear of the primitive and unknown.
The story runs through the 60s, 70s and ends in 1986 when Ben is eleven. By then all the five children have left home while they are still very young and Harriet is feeling very lonely. She blames Ben for the destruction of the family and that Paul has become so disturbed that he needs a psychiatrist, when he really is just a spoilt child, I think.
So in my opinion the central theme; the fear of the unknown which in this book is materialized through Ben, is emphasised through the settings of:
- the big house
- the nuclear family, with very traditional values
- the small middleclass English village and
- the period of time
</doc>