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Web John Wyndham

About the author John Wyndham is one of England’s best-known writers of imaginative science stories. He was born in 1903 in the English Midlands. After his parents separated in 1911, he and his mother and brother lived in many different parts of England. When he finished school he went on to try various careers, but none was a success, so he tried writing. From 1930 until the outbreak of the Second World War, he wrote stories mainly for American magazines. After the war he started writing again, and found fame and fortune in 1951 with the publication of The Day of the Triffids. Wyndham went on to write many more best-selling novels. He died in 1969.

Summary Web opens in England in the 1960s. The narrator of the story, Arnold Delgrange, loses his wife and daughter in a car accident, and with them his reason for living. Lord Foxfield is a rich and important member of society. He has plenty of money but not many years left to live. He wants to be remembered for something grand. He comes up with the idea of a perfect society where there is no war, no prejudice, no class structure. He calls it his Project. He buys a Pacific Island and advertises for people to make his dream a reality. For Arnold Delgrange, this is the perfect opportunity to start his life again. Gradually a strange collection of people is brought together, all with different skills and different reasons for joining the Project. However, when they get to the island there seems to be something strange about it. People from nearby islands say there is a curse on it. They begin to explore and soon discover what is wrong with the island – millions of spiders live on it. Not only that, but the spiders have

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developed a group intelligence and work together to catch and eat anything that moves, including humans. Thick spiders’ webs cover more than half the island. All the newcomers’ ideas of a perfect society are forgotten as they focus all their strength of body and mind just on staying alive. Everyone gets killed except Arnold and Camilla who are finally rescued. Chapter 1: Arnold Delgrange has a car accident in which his wife and daughter die. Through his sister’s acquaintance, Walter Tirrie, he meets Lord Foxfield. This rich man wants to be remembered for creating a free, politically independent society with a new way of life based on the principles of Knowledge and Reason. Delgrange joins them enthusiastically and drafts the laws of the new society. Once they have selected the place, an island called Tanakuatua, they set to gather suitable people. Chapter 2: The night before setting off to the island, the group gathers in a hotel. They listen to Lord Foxfield’s convincing speech and a photograph is taken. They are a mixed group with different backgrounds, professions and motives. The people look hopeful, yet it is a sad picture. Chapter 3: On the way to the island, after a man drops out, the people on the ship get to know each other. Delgrange is worried that they have different views on the project. He talks to Camilla Cogent, a biologist, who is surprised to see so few birds. Chapter 4: After five days, they have unloaded their equipment and the ship leaves. They decide on a place for the settlement but when they are about to send a message to Lord Foxfield, they find the radio crushed under heavy boxes. After six days of hard work, a group explores the island on foot. While Camilla and Arnold sail round it, she sees something white, which she takes for fog. After a brown patch of poisonous spiders on the beach attacks David and kills him, she realizes the white thing is a web. Chapter 5: The group coming in the boat go up to Walter to tell them about David’s death and its cause. They are also very concerned about the people who have gone up the mountain and haven’t returned. One of the children then tells Charles that he has seen a black man thereabouts. They don’t understand why the men who came with them have stayed. The following morning the group has not returned yet, so Joe and Camilla put on the necessary clothes to cover their bodies, pour some insecticide on them and leave the camp. Four hours later Web - Teacher’s notes

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Teacher’s notes

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Web Camilla returns and tells them that the whole party has been killed by the spiders. After the deaths a group of people want to leave the island but as the radio has been broken Walter cannot send a message. Camilla wants to go on an expedition to find out how far the spiders are. Arnold goes with her. Chapter 6: Charles and Walter decide to burn trees down to keep the spiders away as long as possible. Camilla and Arnold begin cutting a path to start fires along it. Camilla is very concerned about what may happen in the future with the spiders on this island because they have developed group intelligence. When Camilla and Arnold come to a path they are made prisoners by two men whose dark skin was shining as if covered in oil. Camilla and Arnold follow the men and when they are told to stop they see four large bags made of leaves which are moving. Then they are told to continue walking and they come to the lip of a volcano. They finally meet another man, older than the rest, who has the picture of a spider drawn on his chest. Chapter 7: Naeta, the man with the picture of a spider, orders his men to get Arnold and Camilla to take off their clothes and they pour their insecticide. Then he tells them how the island was cursed by Nokiki, Naeta’s father, and that they are there only to help their ‘Little Sisters’, the spiders. The spiders have been sent to punish the world and in this way they will take revenge on what the white people have done to them. Camilla and Arnold look for a plant with which to cover their bodies with oil to keep spiders away. When they come back to the settlement they discover empty bags lying around and all the people dead, eaten by the spiders that the black men left before leaving the island by boat. Chapter 8: A week later a small airplane comes to rescue them but when the two men on the plane come down to the shore they are killed by the spiders. Arnold and Camilla use the plane radio but with no results. Five days later a ship rescues them. One of the men from the ship wants to have a closer look at the spiders and gets beaten. He gets rid of them, but is badly hurt. Chapter 9: Arnold and Camilla go back to the island with other scientists only to discover that the spiders have spread even more. There are no plans to destroy the spiders. Luckily, Tanakuatua’s eruption seems to have ended life on the island. Camilla, however, continues with the ideas that the spiders are still alive and causing deaths.


Background and themes Spiders: Some facts about spiders are: they have six or eight eyes as well; they kill by biting and paralysing their prey and sucking out the juices; some types of spider, e.g. tarantulas, can live for up to 25 years; they don’t get caught in their own webs because they have oily, non-stick feet; in an average square metre of grassland there will be 500 spiders. Man versus nature: Wyndham’s characters are ordinary people who are put in a terrifying situation in which they are fighting for their lives. As well as battling for survival, these people try to preserve the moral and social values of everyday life under difficult conditions. They try to re-establish Man’s dominance over Nature and rebuild society on the basis of western European civilization – honour between friends, loyalty to friends and country, honesty, hard work and an appreciation of natural and man-made beauty. Utopia: The story of Web begins with a search for Utopia – an ideal society where people live in peace and harmony, without greed and jealousy. The term Utopia means ‘no place’ and was coined by Sir Thomas More, a sixteenth century English writer and politician. He wrote an essay about the search for a perfect form of government. His solution was very advanced for his day – a form of communism, national education for men and women, and tolerance of all religions. John Wyndham brings the idea up to the mid-twentieth century. In Lord Foxfield’s perfect world, the priority is for people to be able to think creatively. His theory is never tested, however, because the first spider attack takes place within a fortnight of the group’s arrival on the island. Islands in the Pacific Ocean: Between 1875 and 1914 the major European powers all built empires around the globe. By 1914 the British Empire covered a fifth of the world’s land surface and included a quarter of the world’s population. After the First World War (1914–18), however, Europe was exhausted and it was no longer considered acceptable to take whatever land was available. After that, the Western powers started to test their atomic weapons in the Pacific Ocean. They chose the Pacific because it is far from major centres of population. On 12 May 1951, the first hydrogen bomb was tested in the middle of the Pacific Ocean by the United States. The question of first world powers testing atomic weapons in the Pacific Ocean continues to be an issue today, with France carrying out nuclear tests at Mururoa Atoll in the 1990s. Web - Teacher’s notes of 5

Teacher’s notes


LEVEL 5

Web Discussion activities

Before reading

1 Discuss: Tell students to imagine a new and ideal society on a tropical island. It will be a society without war and jealousy. Divide the class into groups. Give each group one aspect of the new society to think and talk about: social organization, government, the law, money, population size, work, growing food. Get the class back together. Groups share their ideas. What problems will the perfect society have? Write students’ ideas on the board. 2 Discuss: Divide the class into groups. Ask groups what the front cover of the reader is trying to say about the book and how well it does this. Make sure they think about the style of the letters as well as the picture. What does the cover tell them about the plot or the themes? Write the main points on the board.

Introduction After reading 3 Discuss: Get your students to read the Introduction on page iv. David touches some ‘white stuff ’ that covers a tree. Ask students: What do you think the white stuff is? 4 Discuss: Ask your students the following question: Which jobs did John Wyndham try before becoming a writer? Get them to work in groups and then elicit their opinions. Write the main points on the board.

Chapter 1 While reading 5 Role play: (page 1) Delgrange says that ‘giving up work was the worst possible thing to do.’ He left his job and went to live with his sister. What did she say? What advice did she give him? Ask students to role play the conversation between the two people. 6 Group work: (page 2) Ask students in small groups to discuss what social ills (in the world or in their country) Tirrie might want to give a speech about. They make notes. Then they exchange notes with another group and prepare Tirrie’s speech to deliver to the class. They can vote for the most convincing speech. 7 Discuss: (page 4) Ask students to discuss why Walter was disappointed with the people who wanted to go on the Project. What could be wrong with these people?

After reading 8 Discuss: Ask students to discuss the following questions: a What aspects of the present society (e.g. in your city or area) would you like to change? Why?


b What values must be present in a society which is better than the present one? c Would Delgrange have shared the enthusiasm of the creators of the Project if he had not lost his family? Why (not)? d How was Delgrange useful to the Project? e What problems might the Project have?

Chapter 2 Before reading 9 Discuss: Ask students to read the title of the chapter and discuss why the group is ‘strange’.

While reading 10 Pair work: Tell students to imagine they are joining the group going to Tanakuatua. What are the five most important things you will take with you – things that you cannot live without? Make a list. Students show their list to a friend to see if they have chosen the same things. 11 Group work: (pages 8 and 9) Ask students in small groups to make a list of the professions of the people in the Project. Then they order them from the most to the least necessary. They must account for their answer.

After reading 12 Guess: The narrator, Arnold Delgrange, tells us that the Project was not lucky. Ask students to talk to another student and discuss this question: What do you think is going to go wrong?

Chapter 3 Before reading 13 Group work: An island was chosen as the place for the project. Ask students to work in small groups to brainstorm advantages and disadvantages of settling down on an island.

While reading 14 Pair work: In pairs, students read the first two paragraphs of Chapter 3 again and answer this question: Can you think of a reason why nobody lives on Tanakuatua? Write down your ideas. 15 Role play: (page 10) We learn that Horace Tupple dropped out of the project at Panama. Ask students to pretend they are Horace. They explain to the class why they have given up the project. Then have a class vote for the most convincing. 16 Discuss: (page 15) Delgrange believes ‘this project could succeed and become a powerful centre of knowledge in a way that democracy will never allow.’ Ask students to discuss these questions: What does he mean by this? How can democracy prevent the development of knowledge?

Web - Teacher’s notes

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Teacher’s notes


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Web After reading 17 Discuss: Ask students what they think of the view of the island in Arnold’s mind. Is it a dream? A possibility? An illusion?

Chapter 4 Before reading 18 Guess: Camilla is surprised that there are so few birds. Ask the students: Can you guess why?

While reading 19 Write: (page 17) Ask students to write out the message they would have sent Lord Foxfield if the radio had worked. 20 Discuss: (page 17) Ask students to decide whether they would have explored the island on foot or by boat. Then they discuss effective ways to explore unknown territory. 21 Pair work: Below are some of the things the people do as soon as they land on the island. Tell students to put them in order of importance in their opinion. choosing a place to live; getting power; going to operate lights; making a kitchen; arranging a water supply; building shelters; exploring the island Students show their order to another student to see if it is the same. If there are differences, students say why they think one thing is more important than another.

After reading 22 Pair work: Get the students to talk to another student. Ask them to discuss the following: How did you feel when you read the last page of this chapter? Are you afraid of spiders? What would be more frightening than spiders in this situation? 23 Write: The story reads We looked at each other in silence. Ask students to write what the characters would have said if they had talked.

Chapter 5 Before reading 24 Guess: Get students to speculate what will happen to the group when they learn about David’s death.

While reading 25 Role play: Ask students to work in pairs. Get them to read the first page of Chapter 5. Joe Shuttleshaw wants to go and look for his son. One student is Joe; the other is another person in the group who will try to persuade Joe not to go.


26 Write: Get students to look at the picture on page 24. Ask them to imagine they are Mrs Shuttleshaw and to write a paragraph describing what happened to her son. 27 Group work: Write on the board what Camilla says: What we are seeing here is an amazing development. (page 28) Discuss the meaning of this statement. Divide the students into small groups. Each group writes down why Camilla considers the way spiders have changed ‘amazing’.

After reading 28 Discuss: Get the students to discuss the following: What are the group going to do to protect themselves against the spiders? Have you got any better ideas? 29 Pair work: Put students into pairs. Get them to discuss the following questions: a What worries Camilla about the spiders? b How is Joe Shuttleshaw persuaded not to go and look for the exploring group? c What solution does Camilla suggest for the search-party ? d Why is Camilla in shock when she comes back from the search? e How does the group discover the radio doesn’t work? f Why do they need to know how fast the spiders make progress? g What does Camilla discover about the spiders when they attack the crab? Then get them to share their views with the rest of the class.

Chapter 6 Before reading 30 Pair work: Ask students to work in pairs and to speculate what other plans they can think of to protect themselves of a spiders’ attack.

While reading 31 Role play: (after page 29) Get the students to imagine the conversation when Camilla and Arnold tell Walter and Charles what they had seen beside the stream. 32 Discuss: (after page 31) Get students to discuss the following questions: What is it that has made the spiders so powerful, according to Camilla? Does Camilla think the spiders have intelligence? 33 Write: Get the students to imagine that Camilla keeps a record of what she sees in a notebook. What questions is she likely to write during the walk in which Arnold and she herself are taken as prisoners: e.g. Why were the bags made of leaves moving?

Web - Teacher’s notes

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Teacher’s notes


LEVEL 5

Web After reading 34 Write: Ask students to make notes of the different views Arnold (a more optimistic view) and Camilla (a more pessimistic view) have of the same phenomenon. Then they compare notes with a partner. For example, Future of spiders Optimistic view: when the spiders have eaten everything on the island they will all die. Pessimistic view: before that happens they will learn how to catch fish and will not die.

Chapter 7 Before reading 35 Guess: Get the students to speculate why Arnold and Camilla are taken prisoners by the black men.

While reading 36 Pair work: Put students into pairs. They are Arnold and Camilla. They have to think of arguments to persuade the islanders not to kill them. Each pair writes down three reasons why they should stay alive. At the end, compare reasons across the class. Which is the best? Which is the worst?

After reading 37 Discuss: Get students to discuss the following: When Camilla and Arnold get back to the settlement, they find the rest of the group dead. What did Naeta mean by ‘helping the Little Sisters’?

Chapters 8–9 Before reading 38 Predict: Ask students to work in pairs. They read the titles of the last chapters and try to anticipate the end of the novel.

While reading 39 Group work: (page 49) Put students into small groups. Arnold and Camilla fail to save the men in the plane from the spiders. Ask students to imagine that they are Arnold and Camilla. What would they do to warn the men?


40 Role play: (page 49) When the small plane arrives, two men get into a boat and bring the boat to the shore. When they reach the shore, they see a brown patch in the water. Get students to work in pairs and act out a short conversation between them. 41 Discuss: (page 53) Write on the board what Camilla says: The longer we leave them, the more chance they have to spread. Discuss the meaning of this statement. Divide the students into small groups and get them to speculate what might happen if the spiders spread all around the world.

After reading 42 Write: Get the students to talk with other students or write a paragraph: What do you think the narrator of the story learnt from his experiences on Tanakuatua? 43 Group work: Ask students in groups to write down as many facts as they remember about the events that happened to Arnold and Camilla as from the moment they come back to the settlement and find everyone is dead until they meet Lord Foxfield. Then they compare their list against the details in the chapter. 44 Pair work: Put students into pairs. Get them to discuss the following questions: Which of the characters was the most helpful? Why is a small island in the middle of the Pacific Ocean so relevant to this story? Could it have taken place anywhere else? Justify your answers.

Extra activities 45 Discuss: Put students into small groups. Ask them to discuss what they liked about Web and what they disliked. Then have a whole class discussion.

Vocabulary activities For the Word List and vocabulary activities, go to www.penguinreaders.com.

Web - Teacher’s notes of 5