In Short: A summary

     The Wasp Factory is a sort of coming-of-age story that revolves around Frank Cauldhame, a seemingly disillusioned sixteen-year-old, as ze discovers that everything that ze once believed is a lie. The book starts off with Frank describing the island that ze lives on in Scotland, where ze has isolated hirself from most of the surrounding community. The plot is deceptively simple in the sense that the main action of the book revolves around Frank waiting for hir brother, Eric, to return home: Eric has escaped from an insane asylum—having been put there for losing his mind and eventually causing all sorts of chaos, such as lighting fire to dogs and eating them—and the entire story takes place in the span of around two weeks. During this time, Frank describes hir way of living, hir way of thinking, and hir past.

     Frank committed hir first murder at age six and then ze killed two more family members a few years later; during the book’s present time, Frank describes this as “just a stage [ze] was going through” at the time and that ze doesn’t intend to kill anybody else. The actual reasons for the murders are varied, but each instance points back to the abstract ideas of innocence, justice, and reason that we as humans tend to value. Frank lives hir life following a set of ritualized behaviors and looking for “signs” for what to do next; as ze waits, Frank keeps busy by building weapons and killing animals so that ze can attach their heads to the “Sacrifice Poles” ze has created to protect hir island.

***Spoiler alert***

     Throughout the novel, Frank expresses hir hatred of women: ze sees them as being weak and stupid by nature. In the end, however, it is revealed that Frank was actually born female and that hir father decided to perform an experiment to see if Frank could successfully be raised male: Frank was told that zir enlarged clitoris (caused by the hormones the father has been giving hir for years) was actually a dismembered penis, the result of being castrated during a brutal dog attack. The book ends with Frank’s realization that hir whole world has just been shattered and that hir entire reality has been undermined. Now, ze is left to question everything ze once knew about hirself and the world around hir.