Chapitre 113: Society is cruel, seek redemption, not approval

Ickapoo is an alien. He is a misfit. Outcasts are often rejected for being different. The way to overcome this is to find a more tolerant community to belong to.

In Doris Lessing’s The Fifth Child, Harriet’s child Ben is used as a metaphor for the monstrosity of child birth and rearing as well as the ugliness and deformity that is brought into the world by the act of childbirth. The myth of the bliss of child rearing and heterosexual family life is thus brought into question after Ben’s arrival distorts the idea of the loving heterosexual nuclear family as it is not clear quite what Ben is- an alien, a monster, a deformity- what is clear is that Ben’s arrival throws the Lovatt family into chaos and destroys the idea of marital bliss between Harriet and David Lovatt. The idea of woman as child-rearer, mother, child-bearer experiencing the domestic bliss of bringing up a family is thus brought into question by Lessing’s The Fifth Child.