The Wasp Factory

Frank puts a wasp’s corpse in a matchbook with a photo of Eric and their father. Eric’s mother was his Angus’s first wife. Then Frank goes to the beach to check the Poles. He puts the matchbox on one side of the bridge after cutting his thumb with a knife and smearing blood down one full girder. Mary Cauldhame, Eric’s mother, died in the house during childbirth. Frank thinks that Eric’s mother dying has a lot to do with “What Happened to Eric” (23). He realizes that Eric murdered someone even before he did—his own mother.

He recalls that the Factory warned him about fire, which may refer to Eric, given his history with fire and animals, but sometimes the Factory is evasive or tricky with its answers. Overall, Frank is glad Eric is returning, but he also notes that his return will interrupt a War Frank has been planning. Frank’s last war was the Ordinary Soldiers versus the Aerosols. During the wars, Frank builds dams using a spade he calls “Stoutstroke” (25). He usually builds a small village downstream from his dams, which then washes away when he releases the water.

That night, his father leaves after telling Frank to stay out of Diggs’s way. As usual, Frank tries the study door once he is alone, but it is locked. He gets his air rifle and goes to a place he calls the Rabbit Grounds, which is near the dump. He dislikes using the air rifle because it is too accurate and easy to use on most animals. Rabbits are more challenging, however, because if he misses a shot, they bolt for their holes. When he thinks about deaths in his extended family, he doesn’t think any of his relatives have been killed with guns.

What Frank considers his territory stops at the end of the bridge. He recalls three of his uncles who were killed in unusual ways. His uncle Leviticus went to South Africa and was killed when a man jumped from a building and landed on him.

His uncle Athelwald tried to take his life with a gas stove and heater but forgot to light them. After lighting them, he distractedly lit a cigarette and caught fire. He then jumped into a barrel of rainwater, got stuck, and drowned. His uncle, Harmsworth Stove, took his life with a power drill. The Stoves didn’t know that Frank had killed their daughter, Esmerelda, less than a year prior.

At the Rabbit Grounds, Frank sees a large buck sitting very still, and he wants its head for the top of a Pole. When he puts the rabbit in the crosshairs, it is so still that he wonders if it is stuffed. He shoots and the rabbit rushes toward him. It jumps on him, and he holds it off as it snaps at his throat as he thinks, “It was crazy! This wasn’t Africa!” (32). It bites his index finger. After a protracted fight, Frank manages to strangle it. His catapult (a slingshot), named the Black Destroyer, is broken during the fight. He goes back to his shed and gets his “War Bag” (33) before returning to the Rabbit Grounds. He puts a pipe bomb inside the buck, then fills the holes of a burrow with six more bombs before lighting their fuses.

Frank squirts the rabbits that emerge with gas from a bottle, held behind his lighter. He kills three rabbits before a larger explosion scatters the buck. Then he burns the remains of the Black Destroyer and names the hill Black Destroyer Hill, avenging the catapult.

He thinks the buck’s appearance is an omen, but he doesn’t think it was grand enough to be the fire hinted at by the Factory. He thinks, “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” (37). His first kills were rabbits because his cousin, Blyth Cauldhame, had killed rabbits belonging to Frank and Eric. He had burned their hutches with the Flame Thrower Eric invented. That was the beginning of what he would eventually call the Skull Grounds, where they buried their pets. Even at five years old, Frank wanted to kill Blyth. When he was 10 years old, Blyth lost half a leg in a car accident. Frank caught a snake in the Bunker and put it in Blyth’s prosthetic leg, which Blyth had removed during a nap. The snake killed Blyth, and Frank never told Eric that he was responsible, although he did say that Blyth’s death was judgment for the rabbits.

He recalls killing his brother, Paul, two years after killing Blyth. A year later he killed his cousin Esmerelda, “more or less on a whim” (42). However, he thinks, “I haven’t killed anybody for years, and don’t intend to ever again. It was just a stage I was going through” (42).

Frank thinks about things that frustrate him:

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 (43).

Then he showers. Sometimes Frank goes without bathing for days when he has to make “precious substances” (44) like toenail cheese. He always shaves and clips his nails in the same pattern.

On the shore later, he sees two jets overhead. Two years earlier, a jet had startled him, causing the wasp he was putting in a jar to sting him. That afternoon, Frank had blown up a model of a jet. Two weeks later a real jet crashed, and Frank though it was a coincidence, although he wondered if he had caused it.

He remembers buying various pets and using the Black Destroyer to practice on them. He did it because he was “looking for Old Saul’s skull” (46). In the Bunker, he lights candles and uses the wax to imprison wasps. He lights a candle inside Saul’s Skull. The severed heads of various animals watch him from the walls. The drawers of a plastic cabinet each hold a wasp’s corpse. He puts one of their bodies on a pile of white powder of weedkiller and lights it, but despite his concentration, he receives no vision and goes home.

After lunch Frank takes his bike to the gun and tackle shop. He gets pellets for a new catapult. Then he goes to a café, where he thinks about his relationship with his father: “As far as I can tell, we have some sort of unspoken agreement that I keep quiet about not officially existing in return for being able to do more or less as I like on the island and buy more or less what I like in the town” (51). He doesn’t really know how he and his father feel about each other.

After Eric’s incident, mothers warned their children that Eric would get them if they misbehaved, and some kids started associating Frank with Eric. Frank didn’t mind because he knew that he wasn’t like Eric.

When he gets home, he cleans Gravel (his bike), and makes some bombs with sugar, weedkiller, and cordite in the shed. Frank’s grandfather, Colin, bought the cordite from a warship much earlier, to use as a firestarter. Frank doesn’t know how much cordite is in the cellar, but he has no way to get it without his father knowing. Angus became more suspicious and watchful after what Frank calls the “Bomb Circle” (53), which was the site of Frank’s second murder.

At dinner, Angus says the authorities are searching for Eric. He quizzes Frank about the lengths of objects and warns him not to get too drunk. Frank thinks about a manuscript his father wrote called “The State of the Fart” (55), which links the relationship between the mind and the bowels. Angus believes flatulence can serve as a tool for divination.

That night, Frank remembers threatening bullies with a knife a couple of years prior. The next week they had tried to attack the island, but he held them off. That is when he began stockpiling supplies and snares around the island. He keeps a meticulous Defense Manual that contains plans for future traps, although he doesn’t plan on killing again.

Eric calls while Frank is trying to sleep. Over the phone, Eric tells Frank that he’s been eating dogs. He also says that he never sleeps because sleep is a tool for control. He steals what he needs and gets mad when Frank keeps asking about dogs. Frank hears Eric smashing the handset and hangs up. In the morning, he plans on a naming ceremony for the new catapult.