A. S. Byatt's The Thin Child In Peacetime

In A.S Byatt’s novel, Ragnarok, a young girl is sent away to the countryside during World War II. This character, called the thin child, receives a book of Norse myths and struggles to make sense of this new war-tom life while reading the story of destruction of life and the end of the gods. Throughout the novel, thin child’s father is away at war and she doubts her father’s return. In the final chapter, “The Thin Child in Peacetime”, thin child’s father finally returns back from war and the thin child compares her life before and after her father’s return home, trying to understand if one stage is more reflective of decay or renewal than the other.

Before the return of the thin child’s father she comes to realize that beauty and positivity, or renewal, can exist even in times of war. An example of renewal in the final chapter occurs when the narrator explains “the roses had run wild in the war. They spread in thorny thickets like those in fairy tales.” (150) In society, roses can be depicted as a sign of beauty and love.

Thin child’s life is beginning to renew with the return of her father and the end of the war. However, the peacetime also brings new aspects of destruction like when thin child’s father cuts down the beloved wild tree. The narrator explains “the thin child’s father said it must come down. It was a wild tree, out of place in an urban garden. The thin child loved the tree… she watched him take an axe to the tree, singing as he hacked, making logs, a stump, bundles of brushwood out of the living wood.” (153-154). The tree symbolizes peace and a time when there is no war or destruction. When the tree is cut down during a moment of peacetime, a form of decay occurs. The cutting down of the tree symbolizes that destruction may occur even in times of