The Wasp Factory

“Looking at me, you’d never guess I’d killed three people. It isn’t fair.”

Frank is unhappy with his self-image, even before he learns the truth about his identity. This quote foreshadows the reveal that Frank was assigned female at birth, and he killed because he thought it was a masculine thing to do. However, he also wants to look like someone who is capable of killing, which, from his perspective, means looking physically intimidating and formidable.

“From the smaller to the greater, the patterns always hold true, and the Factory has taught me to watch out for them and respect them.”

Frank is committed to taking the Factory’s warnings seriously. He is either unwilling or unable to imagine a situation where the Factory and its influence are merely a mistake, a distortion of his perspective. Not only does Frank believe that he sees patterns in everything, but he also thinks that it is dangerous to ignore them. Therefore, acknowledging and respecting the patterns is a duty.

“A death is always exciting, always makes you realise how alive you are, how vulnerable but so-far-lucky; but the death of somebody close gives you a good excuse to go a bit crazy for a while and do things that would otherwise be inexcusable. What delight to behave really badly and still get loads of sympathy!”

Frank ponders the eventual loss of his father with ambivalence. The possibility doesn’t sadden him. Rather, he almost looks forward to the permission slip that it would grant him if he chose to lash out during his ostensible grieving.

“My greatest enemies are the Women and the Sea. These things I hate. Women because they are weak and stupid and live in the shadow of men and are nothing compared to them, and the Sea because it has always frustrated me, destroying what I have built, washing away what I have left, wiping clean the marks I have made.”

Frank claims to hate women with a senseless vitriol, particularly given that there are almost no women in his life. He never had the chance to know his mother, which makes sense if he has challenges with abandonment. However, it is irrational in light of this quote, given that he never had a chance to see his mother act well or badly, stupidly or wisely. The Sea erases proof of Frank’s work, just as his father has aggressively tried to erase the proof of Frank’s real identity. The existence of women, and of the sea, is also an ineradicable truth, framing Frank’s war against them as an even greater, hopeless struggle.

“Sometimes the thoughts and feelings I had didn’t really agree with each other, so I decided I must be lots of different people inside my brain.”

Frank is aware that he holds clashing viewpoints in his mind, and that many contradictory ideas feel equally true to him. Rather than investigate this cognitive friction with curiosity, he accepts instead that the best explanation is that his mind hosts multiple people. This allows Frank to treat each mental contradiction with equal weight and disavow his own agency, since the responsibility for the feelings and ideas is spread across several people.

“I think reprisals against people only distantly or circumstantially connected with those who have done others wrong are to make the people doing the avenging feel good. Like the death penalty, you want it because it makes you feel better, not because it’s a deterrent or any nonsense like that.”

Frank contemplates the irrationality of capital punishment, and the hollowness of a dedication to vengeance. He understands that the rabbits did not deserve to die because of the buck that attacked him, but it made him feel better to punish them for things that were not their fault.

“Children aren’t real people, in the sense that they are not small males and females but a separate species which will (probably) grow into one or the other in due time. Younger children in particular, before the insidious and evil influence of society and their parents have properly got to them, are sexlessly open and hence perfectly likable.”

When Frank reminisces about killing Esmerelda, he reassures himself that he did not hold any particular ill will against her. She was a child, so she could not be targeted, yet, for reasons that were sex specific. Frank equates the most unlikable traits in people with the aging process.

“That was my mother’s last visit to the island and the house. She left one dead, one born and two crippled for life, one way or the other. Not a bad score for a fortnight in the summer of groovy and psychedelic love, peace, and general niceness.”

Frank succinctly and glibly summarizes the effect his mother’s return had on their household. Despite the devastation she brought on the family, Frank is bemused at her efficiency and effectiveness at destruction, perhaps even with a hint of grudging admiration. Frank’s hatred of women is inordinate and abhorrent, but given his view of his mother, it is not completely unexpected.

“My enemy is twice dead, and I still have him.”

Frank describes his revenge on Old Saul, the dog who he thinks castrated him. His father killed the dog, which was its first death. Frank then exhumed the body, took the skull, and enslaved its essence to use as a tool for his divinations. He describes his revenge as something ongoing, not comprising two single deaths, but a continual purgatory he has created for his enemy.

“I don’t know. Maybe he really is crazy. Maybe I am. Maybe everybody is. Or at least all of my family.”

Frank admits that he may be unstable while discussing Eric’s past with Jamie. However, even if he might be right, Frank never shows any signs about changing his course or ignoring the promptings of the Wasp Factory. The nature of Frank’s mental health is almost irrelevant to him: He does what he feels compelled to do. The sense of duty that the Factory instills in him would be no less potent, even if he doubted that the Factory was real.

“Or maybe they’re the only sane ones. After all, they’re the ones with all the power and riches. They’re the ones who get everybody else to do what they want them to do, like die for them and work for them and get them into power and protect them and pay taxes and buy them toys, and they’re the ones who’ll survive another big war, in their bunkers and tunnels. So, given things being the way they are, who’s to say they’re the loonies because they don’t do things the way Joe Punter thinks they ought to be done? If they thought the same way as Joe Punter, they’d be Joe Punter, and somebody else would be having all the fun.”

Frank talks to Jamie about the nature of mental stability. People who make the rules tend to be, in Frank’s opinion, the ones who do not feel confined by them. If these are the people who create the systems in which everyone else has to participate, then arguments against the mental instability of the leaders is irrelevant, because of their powerful positions. He also equates the possession of power to an increased level of amusement and fun.

“All our lives are symbols. Everything we do is part of a pattern we have at least some say in. The strong make their own patterns and influence other people’s, the weak have their courses mapped out for them. The weak and the unlucky, and the stupid.”

Frank does not believe in absolute predestination, or in the total absence of free will, but he does believe that some people have greater control over their destinies than others. He sees himself as one of the privileged who can enforce his pattern on others, creating a reality that suits him, even if it hurts others. When his pattern hurts other people, Frank believes it is because they are weak, stupid, and unfortunate, not because they happened to cross paths with someone who has such a distorted perspective.

“Both sexes can do one thing especially well—woman can give birth and men can kill. We—I consider myself an honorary man—are the harder sex. We strike out, push through, thrust and take. The fact that it is only an analogue of this sexual terminology I am capable of does not discourage me. I can feel it in my bones, in my uncastrated genes.”

Frank ponders the relationship between the sexes as he prepares to use the Factory and contact Eric. He associates masculinity with the acts of taking and penetration. He does not consider himself a “real” man, but does not yet know that he never lost a penis. He makes himself into an “honorary man” by trying to become harder, more violent, and more vigilant in protecting the island.

“It can be unsettling to hear yourself described as you have thought of yourself in your most honest and abject moods, just as it is humbling to hear what you have thought about in your most hopeful and unrealistic moments.”

Frank is unnerved when he recites the catechisms at the altar. This is the moment when he is the most honest with himself, although he doesn’t know the truth about his identity yet.

“I like to get away from the island now and then. Not too far; I still like to be able to see it if possible, but it is good to remove oneself sometimes and get a sense of perspective from a little farther away. Of course, I know how small a piece of land it is; I’m not a fool. I know the size of the planet and just how minuscule is that part of it I know. I’ve watched too much television and seen too many nature and travel programs not to appreciate how limited my own knowledge is in terms of first-hand experiences of other places.”

Frank believes that Eric’s experience is a cautionary tale that validates his reluctance to leave the island completely. Again, it is ironic that, given Frank’s supreme self-importance, he freely admits that he is insignificant on the grand scale of reality. Whatever status he believes his powers and strength grant him, he does not pretend to be a well-traveled, educated cosmopolite. Rather he believes that venturing far beyond the island would be more likely to harm him than edify him.

“It was years, and a long slow process, before I eventually realized just what sheep really represented; not their own stupidity, but our power, our avarice and egotism.”

Frank does not believe that the stupidity and proverbial conformity of sheep is their salient feature. Rather, he sees sheep—and their ability to be subjugated—as a manifestation of humanity’s might. The sheep do not only represent a facet of humanity’s willingness to dominate weaker races, but also illustrate the greed and self-importance required for relegating another species to enslavement for labor, commodities, and food.

“Women, I know from watching hundreds—maybe thousands—of films and television programs, cannot withstand really major things happening to them; they get raped, or their loved ones die, and they go to pieces, go crazy and commit suicide, or just pine away until they die. Of course, I realize that not all of them will react this way, but obviously it’s the rule, and the ones who don’t obey it are in the minority.”

Frank speaks with complete conviction about women, despite having almost no interaction with them. His omniscient attitude is even more naïve, given that he admits that his education regarding women is gleaned from films and TV shows. Once he knows the truth about his father’s experiment, Frank will have to learn whether he will also “go to pieces” in the aftermath of a major event happening to him.

“Maybe some deep part of him, buried under layers of time and growth like the Roman remains of a modern city, still believed in God, and could not suffer the realization that, if such an unlikely being did exist, it could suffer that to happen to any of the creatures it had supposedly fashioned in its own image.”

Frank is exasperated that the smiling baby changed Eric so drastically. His only explanation is that Eric’s mind simply refused to believe such a thing could happen. If all people are made in God’s image, then the baby was as well, as were Eric and Frank. In Frank’s view, a god that could allow a baby to suffer such a fate would not be worth respecting, let alone worshipping.

“I thought of that delicate face, those lightly haired arms. I tried to think of one time I had seen my father naked to the waist, but for the life of me I couldn’t. The secret. It couldn’t be. I shook my head, but I couldn’t let go of the idea. Angus. Agnes. I had only his word for anything that had happened.”

When Frank finally enters the study, he thinks the mystery is that his father is actually a woman. The idea that his father might be a woman is so horrific to Frank that it makes the foreshadowing even more effective. In fact, Frank is about to learn that his own gender identity is the secret, not that of his father. His father has tricked him, but not in the way that he thinks.

“I’m a woman. Scarred thighs, outer labia a bit chewed up, and I’ll never be attractive, but according to Dad a normal female, capable of intercourse and giving birth (I shiver at the thought of either).”

Frank contemplates the fact that he was assigned female at birth. The explanation for the physical disability is revealed, but Frank has no desire to participate in the unique skills or strengths that he attributed to women. He is now forced into a situation where he must rethink everything he believed about women, or accept that he has the same faults he attributes to what he calls the weaker sex.

“Lacking, as one might say, one will, I forged another; to lick my wounds, I cut them off, reciprocating in my angry innocence the emasculation I could not then fully appreciate, but somehow—through the attitudes of others perhaps—sensed as an unfair, irrecoverable loss. Having no purpose in life or procreation, I invested all my worth in that grim opposite.”

Frank tries to make sense of his violent urges and actions. Violence was his purpose, given that he thought procreation was not possible. Without the ability to create life, Frank chose to end life whenever it seemed necessary or entertaining. He believed himself to be an emasculated man, but he never experienced a literal emasculation.

“It is always easier to succeed at death. Inside this greater machine, things are not quite so cut and dried (or cut and pickled) as they have appeared in my experience.”

At the story’s conclusion Frances has a choice of how to live. His reality has been binary up until this point. His predictions for his future were based on realities that were not true. Frances has proved that it is easy to take a life, but it is more difficult to live well. Eventually, everyone succeeds at death.

“Our destination is the same in the end, but our journey—part chosen, part determined—is different for us all, and changes even as we live and grow. I thought one door had snicked shut behind me years ago; in fact I was still crawling about the face. Now the door closes, and my journey begins.”

The novel ends on an optimistic note. Frank—now Frances—hopes that he can still determine which path he will use in the real-life version of the Wasp Factory. Given that he now has a better understanding of his motivations to kill, he is able to move into the future rather than try to control it.