Eggs being served in the Village?

I couldn't help but thinking of M.Night Shyamalan's movie, "The Village" as I was reading Pearce. In particular, Pearce makes references to "the clearing" and the "dark forest" both which characterize the setting of the film, but symbolically portray what we are told, believe, and know (or hold) to be true, and that which is uncertain or yet explored. On page 17 Pearce states, "But the nature of the dark forest is the real problem. For our attitude toward the forest influences sharply the way we look upon our clearing, and affects the kind of new clearing we can make." In regards to the movie, "our clearing" is similar to the community the elders created for their new society - what they wished to teach and instill upon the children. The elders perceived the outside world- that land past their clearing, or the dark forest if you will, as a destructive, corrupt and demoralized society. It was in this place the elders warned the younger members to stay away for this is where "things we do not speak of" dwell. Almost as if what Pearce is trying to portray is that which we as children are kept from learning, or even as adults deem taboo, are ignorant to, or just simply unaware of. In the movie, this society's shell acquires a "crack" as well (and in efforts not to spoil the movie ending for those who have not seen it), and one of the individuals has a revelation about her community's "egg", a Eureka! moment as Pearce describes it, and must decide whether to use this new information to abolish or preserve those which whom she resides with. On page 19 Pearce states, "there is available to us a crack in this egg. For there are times when the shell no longer protects but suffocates and destroys. The crack must be approached with care, however, lest the egg itself be destroyed". I just couldn't help correlating this first chapter with the symbolism of the movie.


In Chapter two I enjoyed Pearce's descriptions of A-thinking. Having a few friends who have autistic children and watching their idiosyncrasies, I naively assumed that those children must be missing some type of component that would otherwise make them behave as other children diagnosed as "normal". However, Pearce sheds light on this autistic mode that it "adds something not in the given context. There is a catalystic quality in A-thinking that gives more than the sum of the parts suggesting and bringing about the new possibility". So according to Pearce, perhaps it is not those with autistic tendencies missing something, it is "us normal folk".