![]() With language that mimics the clichés of fairytales, Byatt explores themes of trauma, fantasy, unprocessed grief, and losing one's innocence. The story closes with Primrose telling an audience, for the first time, the story of two girls who see, or think they see, something in the forest. After not seeing the Thing again, Penny returns to the forest a third time and awaits her confrontation with the Thing. ![]() Independently, they return to the forest to process their memories. Both women skip the dinner they agreed to have. Over tea, the women discuss how they both believe they definitely saw the strange creature, and how memories of the creature have impacted their lives ever since. They find a book on display that tells of a local legend about a monster called the Loathly Worm. Penny is now a child psychologist and Primrose is a children's storyteller. Penny and Primrose don't see each other again until 1984, when coincidentally they both visit the mansion house, which has been converted into a war museum. However, they do not discuss it, and the next day they are sent to stay with different families. ![]() The Thing's miserable face and strange, turd-like body made up of trash and bones are seared on the girls' memories. On their first day there, the girls venture into the surrounding forest and duck out of sight when they hear and smell the giant, worm-like creature struggling toward them. The girls, along with other evacuated children, are temporarily housed in a mansion house in the country. Neither girl's parents have explained the full danger of staying in the city, and the confused girls find comfort in agreeing to stick together during the evacuation. In 1940, Penny and Primrose meet on a train taking them out of London. Decades later, the women have difficulty processing the trauma of WWII and their encounter with the Thing. Byatt's " The Thing in the Forest" is a short story about two girls who leave London to escape Nazi bombings only to encounter a miserable, worm-like creature in a rural English forest.
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