Childhoods End

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Childhoods End

• Themes, Motifs and Symbols

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THEME A central idea or statement that unifies
and controls an entire literary work.

• Utopia
• No utopia can make everyone happy
• Jan Roddricks still longs to explore outer space
• Freedom League rebels against the Overlords rule
• With the promise of utopia comes the threat of
  boredom and complacency
• The New Athens Colony has to be founded in order
  to perpetuate artistic and scientific achievement

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Themes Knowledge and Adventure

• Humans have an innate need for adventure and
  exploration
• At the Grand Canyon Hundreds of meters down the
  shadowed slope at whose brim Karellen stood, a
  mule-train was slowly winding its way into the
  valleys depths. It was strange, Karellen
  thought, that so many human beings still seized
  every opportunity for primitive behavior. They
  could reach the bottom of the canyon in a
  fraction of the time, and in far greater comfort,
  if they chose. Yet they preferred to be jolted
  along tracks which were probably as unsafe as
  they looked. (102)

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Themes Knowledge and Adventure

• Some knowledge exceeds human capacity
• Jan realizes that the stars are not for man.
• Karellen reminds humanity that some knowledge
  exceeds our capacity.
• The aim of all humanity is to do something better
  than anyone else, that is, to be an individual.
• Jan and Professor Stanley both long to achieve
  something that will be remembered by posterity.
• Even in the face of the worlds destruction, Jan
  takes pride in being the worlds best pianist.

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Now, its your turn

• With a partner, identify one theme from
  Childhoods End
• Explain the theme and connect it to the text

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MOTIF A conspicuous recurring element, such
as a type of incident, a device, a reference, or
verbal formula

• Humans as children the Overlords are the
  caretakers and protectors of a race that is
  coming into maturity.
• The universe was great and vast, but that fact
  terrified him less than its mystery. George was
  not a person who thought deeply on such matters,
  yet sometimes it seemed to him that men were like
  children amusing themselves in some secluded
  playground, protected from the fierce realities
  of the outer world. (150)
• Dr. Sen to Overlord Inspector Our problem in
  bringing up these children must, I imagine, be
  very similar to yours when confronted with the
  human race. (161)

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Motifs Christian Imagery

• Childhood's End may be read as an allegorical
  tale, a morality play set on a science fiction
  stage.
• The arrival of the Antichrist, or Satan (the
  Overlords)
• the end of humanity (as it dies out after the
  Overlords' announcement of the coming of the
  Overmind)
• an Armageddon and assumption of the faithful into
  Heaven (as the children of the last generation
  join the Overmind, destroying the Earth in the
  process)

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Motif Collective Consciousness

• The Overmind is that it is a kind of collective
  conscious, a being of thought and energy composed
  of the minds of millions of other beings, all
  working as a single entity.
• As a race, all humanseven those thousands of
  years before the children of the last
  generationhave had some latent abilities of this
  sort. Ie. When Rashaverak discovers 11 clear
  cases of partial breakthrough and 27 probables.
• This is what provides the explanation for why the
  Overlords look so similar to a Christian image of
  the Devil humans, as a collective, had a
  premonition or memory of their ultimate end, and
  they feared that end. Therefore, they made the
  Overlords into demons, an object of fear and
  evil.

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Motifs Children are unknowable

• Enjoy them while you may They will not be
  yours for long. It was advice that might have
  been given in any age but now it contained a
  threat and a terror it had never held before.
  (177)

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Now, its your turn

• With a partner, identify one motif from
  Childhoods End
• Explain the motif and connect it to the text

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Symbols The Overlords

• The Overlords can be seen as ironic symbols of
  the Devil. Like the devil, the Overlords bring
  about the end of humanity. However, whereas
  Satan would have brought about much death and
  destruction before the final end, the Overlords
  bring about peace and prosperity.
• In the end, humanity does degrade into violence
  and death, just as predicted in Revelations and
  the shepherds of this end are the Overlords.
  Whether they are evil or not is a matter of
  perspective they do the bidding of the Overmind
  and play a part in the end of humanity and the
  destruction of Earth.

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Symbols New Athens

• New Athens is symbolic of the inevitable decay of
  a utopian society and the uselessness of
  peacefully attempting to combat those problems.
  For all its hopes of artistic achievement, the
  New Athens colony is ultimately impotent. It is a
  symbol of the broader utopia of Earth around it.
  Both are doomed to failure.

New
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Symbols The Overmind

• If the Overlords represent the devil, then the
  Overmind is the closest thing there is to god.
  The way in which the children of the last
  generation are incorporated into the Overmind is
  reminiscent of Christian descriptions of the
  Rapture, when the souls of the faithful are
  called into the Divine Presence, there to remain
  for eternity as part of the Holy Trinity.
• But, in theory, the Overmind is a thing of
  science it should be capable of being studied,
  understood, and perhaps even destroyed. By
  placing the Overmind in a science fiction novel,
  there are certain constraints on how far a
  symbolic or allegorical comparison can be taken.

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SymbolsOverlords as British colonists

• The Overlordsseldom left their one remaining
  ship. Perhaps they found it physically
  uncomfortable on Earth They were never seen
  without a belt adorned with complex mechanisms
  which, it was generally believed, controlled
  their weight and enabled them to communicate with
  each other. Direct sunlight was painful to them,
  and they never stayed in it for more than a few
  seconds. When they had to go into the open for
  any length of time, they wore dark glasses which
  gave them a somewhat incongruous appearance. (71)

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Overlords as British Colonists, ctd.

• At his party, Rupert Boyce explains the
  Overlords interest in paranormal phenomena and
  human psychology
• Surely youd study the superstitions of any
  primitive race you were having dealings with!

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Now, its your turn

• With a partner, find one symbol from Childhoods
  End
• Explain the symbol and connect it to the text