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<title> The Fifth Child </title>
	This essay will discuss how three settings support the theme Primitive vs Civilisation- Fear of the unknown.
Geographical setting
	Quote p.31, "It's important, said David, fierce; everyone should have a room."
For David one room in one of his parent's houses became his home when he was a child, and to have a home is very essential for both him and his wife, because there were the rooth of happiness. A home which could be filled with children, relatives and guests and there would be happiness, and that's why they bought a big Victorian house in a small village outside London. To make their dream of a happy family come true. 
Quote p.146, "Harriet watched Ben with his followers and tried to imagine him among a group of his own kind, squatting in the mouth of a cave around roaring flames. Or a settlement of huts in a thick forest? No, Ben's people were at home under the earth, she was sure, deep underground in black caverns lit by torches - that was more like it. Probably those peculiar eyes of his were adapted for quite different conditions of light." This quote shows that Harriet thinks that her fifth child, Ben, is primitive. Ben does not fit in in the happy home Harriet and David have created. Maybe Ben doesn't fit in in any home. He was very different in both the way he looked and the way he acted. Because of him the family gatherings at Christmas and Easter were not as happy as they use to be. People didn't show up because they were afraid of the unusual baby, the destroyer. They felt horror because of the strange things that happened, for instance the incident when Ben sprained Paul's arm. Ben had a way of staring at people which made them feel really uncomfortable. After the incident with the pet Ben's parents locked him in because they were afraid of what he would be able to do next. When they could not lock him in any more he ran off with different gangs and spent little time at home. Quote p.157, "He already knew about the half-derelict buildings, the caves and caverns and shelters of the big cities where people lived who could not find a place in ordinary homes and houses: he must do, for where else could he have been during the periods of days, or weeks, when he was gone from home?" Here Harriet tells us that Ben may live in a primitive way while he is not at home with the family. In the end of the book the mother mentions that she wants to leave this unhappy house that Ben had created.
Sociological setting
	Quote p.73, The day he stood alone, by himself, without holding on, he roared out his triumph. All the other children had laughed, chuckled, and wanted to be loved, admired, praised, on reaching this moment of achievement. This one did not. It was a cold triumph, and he staggered about, eyes gleaming with hard pleasure, while he ignored his mother." Quote p.158, "No schoolteacher, or doctor, or specialist had been able to say, "That is what he is": neither could any policeman, or police doctor, or social worker."
Ben was "not civilized", therefore primitive, in the people's point of view. Especially the lack of empathy made people afraid of him, because they couldn't understand him, and noone could tell what he really was, or what kind of illness he might have. His mother thinks that he's a Neanderthal, while his father thinks that he's from Mars et cetera. The words normal and ordinary can be found several times in the book. Ben is everything but normal and even though his mother tried to make him ordinary he, quote p.69, "Never, not once, did he subside into a loving moment. He resisted, he strove, he fought". This is why almost everyone finds it difficult to accept Ben. He is abnormal, and quote p.71, "invaded their ordinariness", and that's why they don't want to have anything to do with him.
Time setting
	Quote p.79, "You two are going to have to face it. Ben has got to go into an institution." Relatives, friends, doctors et cetera, have difficulty in accepting Ben, and this has probably partly something to do with the time this story is told, 1960s-1980s. One knew less about children with for example ADHD (Attention Deficit Hyperactive Disorder), and that led to the fear of the child, and the attitude to send him to an institution, where one doesn't have to deal with the problems anymore. The rejection of Ben from society shows of ignorance and fear of encountering the unknown. The mother, Harriet, reacts to the way peolpe in society treat her, even though she herself reacted in a strange way when there was a woman who gave birth to a child with Down's syndrom: quote p.74, "I suppose in the old times, in primitive societies, this was how they treated a woman who'd given birth to a freak. As if it was her fault. But we are supposed to be civilized!"
Quote p.29, "It had been hard preserving their belief in themselves when the spirit of the times, the greedy and selfish sixties, had been so ready to condemn them, to isolate, to diminish their best selves." Both David and Harriet liked things to be old-fashioned. If they had chosen another doctor maybe they could have understood him and his behaviour better. It wasn't only because they lived in the sixties people were against the unknown or the abnormal. There are of course several examples of people rejecting the unknown today.
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