Themes
Key
LitCharts assigns a color and icon to each theme in Childhood’s End, which you can use to track the themes throughout the work.
Science and Mysticism
Benevolent Dictatorship and Freedom
Utopia and Creative Apathy
Individuality, Globalization, and Progress
The Fate of Humanity
Summary
Analysis
With his viewing device, Karellen shows Jan that the children are all gathered onto one continent, endlessly moving together in coordinated patterns. He explains that it is not even safe for the Overlords to be among the children anymore, which is fine since the children no longer have need of any sort of help. Karellen explains that the children have merged into one being, and there is no longer any individuality to them, no longer any humanity. Rather than eat, they simply absorb energy from the Earth. As Jan watches, the children instantly absorb all of the plant and animal life, all living organic matter around them, leaving only dead earth.
Just as Stormgren argued that progress inevitably meant individuals being absorbed into the collective whole, so the children have abandoned their individual selves and become a singular entity. In particular, their egos have been abandoned. The children will no longer be driven by self-interest, suggesting perhaps, that for humanity to ever advance, ever transcend, it will have to face a similar stripping of the self so that it can act in the interest of all.
Themes
Karellen explains that all they have seen on the viewing device happened several years ago, but since then, not much has changed. Now, the children are testing their new powers, playing, causing rivers to flow uphill, changing the shape of the earth, but nothing with an observable purpose. And they have ignored the Overlords completely. Karellen explains that the Overlords only remain to observe for as long as it is safe, in the hope that their scientists can gain some understanding.
With most of old humanity already extinct, the remaining children are nearing the end of their “childhood,” the phase that the Overlords were sent to guide them through. Having transcended the physical world, the children are discovering that they have mastery over it, possessing the power to create and destroy, and to even alter the laws of physics.
Themes
Jan is sad that this is the inevitable end of humanity, one that no one had foreseen, and yet it seems immensely appropriate. He has seen other worlds and knows that humanity was never ready to enter the cosmos. Evolutionarily, there are only two options: either become like the Overlords (powerfully intelligent and independent, yet powerless to move on to something greater), or join the Overmind (infinite, undying, every individual absorbed like cells into a single entity, tragic in one sense but transcendent in another). At last, Jan understands the purposes of the Overlords’ time on Earth.
The Overlords, too, seem trapped in their service to the Overmind, whom they dare not disobey. Just as humanity lived under the Overlords and dared not cross them, so too the Overlords live under the Overmind. Jan realizes that merging into the Overmind is better than the eternal servitude of the Overlords, even though he will be left behind to die.
Themes
Jan had once asked why the Overmind should need the Overlords’ help. Rashaverak explained that, vast as it is, the Overmind has difficulty interacting with races that are so different from it and uses the Overlords as interpreters and guardians, sheltering civilizations until they are ready to merge with the Overmind. Jan asked if the Overlords resent their position, but Rashaverak advised him that, “No one of intelligence resists the inevitable.”
It seems that even the Overmind has its limitations and is not all-powerful. The Overlords have resigned themselves to their fate as tools of the Overmind. Their position is tragic, but not something they will fight, just as Jan realizes that humanity’s role is tragic, but ultimately inevitable. Jan, the humanistic hero, surrenders himself and his race to the inevitability of fate, subverting the norms of science fiction and offering a pessimistic alternate future for humanity.
Themes
Get the entire Childhood’s End LitChart as a printable PDF.
Rashaverak also explained to Jan that the memory of the Overlords, as the legendary devils, was not actually a memory but a premonition of the future.
Rather than a past interaction, as everyone had believed, humanity, in its paranormal capacity, had had a vision of its future rulers who brought about the end of human civilization and wrote the Overlords into its mythology as villains, suggesting that perhaps the source of much of human mythos is actually future interaction with other beings.
Themes
Jan is the last man on Earth. The rest of the human race had ended itself either by suicide or suicidal hobbies until there was no one left. Jan keeps company with the Overlords, goes for walks, and plays piano.
Jan, in being the first man to travel to the stars, had imagined he might leave a legacy. Now, he makes history as the last human being to ever live, but there will be no one to leave his legacy for. However, now Jan is comfortably resigned to this.
Themes
