The Wasp Factory

In the morning, Frank performs his maintenance tasks on the Factory before going out to check the Sacrifice Poles. He shoots cans for target practice, then practices throwing his Bowie knife into a tree trunk. At home, he and his father eat with Mrs. Clamp, who says the Mackie’s dog is missing.

Outside later, Frank sees his father unexpectedly heading to town. He runs back to the house and is surprised to see dirty dishes in the sink, which is unlike his father. The phone is off the hook. Frank throws himself against the study door, but it still won’t budge. He thinks Eric called their father, who must be going to see him. Frank assumes that Eric will get in touch and decides to wait at the house.

His father calls later and is obviously drunk. He asks Frank to come to town and meet him at the library because they caught Eric. When Frank goes outside to walk to town, he sees that a phone line has been cut and a furry ear is nailed to the telephone pole. He goes back home because he thinks his father was too frightened to meet Eric alone. Frank packs a meal for Eric and then scans the land with the binoculars, believing that Eric will come to the house to find him.

Later, he wakes in the house to the sound of breaking glass. He hears his father stumbling and muttering. Finally, he hears the TV start. When Frank goes to the living room, his father’s jacket is on the chair, and he takes the key to the study from the pocket. In the study, Frank finds a specimen bottle with tiny genitals in it. He cries as he searches the rest of the room.

In a locked cabinet he finds a box of tampons and a vial that says it contains male hormones. Frank immediately thinks about how he has never seen his father naked below the waist. He thinks about how slight his father’s build is, and how softly he talks. Frank believes this is the secret: His father is a woman, and the name Angus is suspiciously close to Agnes. His mind rejects the secret even as he wonders if Mrs. Clamp knew. He takes the knife to his father’s room, where he slaps him awake before showing him the tampons. He makes him pull down his underpants and is surprised to see that his father has a penis. Something screams outside and Frank sees an orange light at the Skull Grounds. A herd of burning sheep run down the hill. Eric appears at the top of the dune, holding an axe and a torch.

Eric reaches the house and chops the cellar door with the axe. Frank catches up and aims the catapult at Eric, who sees the cordite, laughs, throws the torch into the cellar, and runs away. The bombs in the shed explode. Frank finds his father in the kitchen with the specimen jar from the study. Frank demands to know what is happening. His father smashes the glass and holds up a pink ball, not the pair of testicles that Frank expected.

On Sunday morning, Frank thinks about what his father told him the night before after they barricaded the cellar. Diggs arrives as Frank goes out to look for Eric. Frank finds Eric sleeping on the dune by the Bunker. Eric wakes, smiles, then goes back to sleep with his head in Frank’s lap.

The night before, Angus revealed that Frank is actually Frances Lesley Cauldhame. His father claimed he had often dressed Eric as a girl as a rehearsal for Frances. After Frank’s mutilation by Saul, his father saw his chance to live without any female influence in the home. He gave Frank male hormones, which made Frank grow a beard and prevented the onset of menstruation. The stump that Frank believed was the remains of a penis was in fact an enlarged clitoris. Angus had made fake testicles from wax in case Frank ever got into the study, which was what Frank found in the vial.

Now Frances, Frank thinks he may have to leave the island. He would consider suicide if his relatives hadn’t taken their lives in such bombastic fashion. He thinks about winter, still six months away, and wonders about his identity: “But I am still me; I am the same person, with the same memories and the same deeds done, the same (small) achievements, the same (appalling) crimes to my name” (182). Frank thinks he has experienced several deaths. He killed to become more like a man, after the alleged castration. Now it was all for nothing. He believes he took his life too seriously, and the lives of others too lightly: “The murders were my conception; my sex. The Factory was my attempt to construct life, to replace the involvement which otherwise I did not want” (183). Finally, Frank thinks that Eric came home to his brother, and must now learn that he has a sister.