Siegfred Kendall L.

Belleza Professor Jacobs ENC-1102 April 2, 2014 The Thing in the Forest According to Samantha Matthews, A.S Byatt has a reputation of intellectual heavyweight. She is known for her works with graphic and textual representation. She also said that the thing is only evoked by the readers imagination. The story is written after World War II and the characters are two little girls who moved away because of the war. They say that they saw a thing in the forest but is it possible that the thing they saw is only something that is only made up by their imagination. Later on, the two little girls grew up and they went back to where they started their friendship, now with different perspective of the thing that they saw in the forest. Maria Margaronis said in her article about the Thing in the Forest that the thing is the Loathly Worm of medieval ballads. She talked about how this story relates to the other short stories that Byatt wrote. Byatt ended the story with the character Primrose who became a professional storyteller telling the kids there were once two little girls who saw, or believed they saw, a thing in the forest. Reading the story can make a reader think what the thing really is. Is it really a creature or is it something the mind of a child with a post-world war scar can make up. This type of story is a fairy tale so there is a real possibility that the thing is something the author just made up and it might not really exist but analyzing the story with all the symbolism

can make a reader understand better. The thing in the forest can be understood more by analyzing the symbols and theme in the story.