Childhood’s End: Chapter 15 Summary & Analysis

George throws his newspaper across the table, telling Jean to read it. She scrapes the breakfast off of it and sees a review of one of George’s theatrical works that was broadcast on TV. George is furious, but to Jean, the review seems favorable. He eventually tells her that he is furious about a slight mischaracterization of his color palette, which Jean simply does not see the gravity of. George mentions that he is considering accepting an invitation he has received to join a recently-developed artist’s colony called New Athens. Though Jean is somewhat skeptical, she is willing to move there with George and their two children.

George and Jean have traveled to the two-island colony of New Athens, where a guide explains to George that it was built on an extinct volcano as a colony for intellectuals and artists. Their goal is to “save something of humanity’s independence, its artistic traditions,” not as an act of rebellion against the Overlords, but just to be able to set their own course. New Athens is an attempt to strip away many of the distractions of modern life and cultivate the arts once again. While New Athens does not force its people to stay, it is rare that any choose to leave. Jean is open to it, George is quite intrigued, and they both agree that their children would love it there.

Six weeks later, George, Jean, and the children move into a small house. Jean is relieved to see that it has basic amenities, but she is confused by the presence of a kitchen, since normally they would just order from Food Central. The view from the house is beautiful, looking down a hill and across the thin strip of land that connects the second island and its dormant volcano, though Jean wonders how they can be so certain it will not come back to life. She can hear George clumsily riding his bicycle up the hill, not quite stable on it yet, since motor vehicles are not allowed except for emergency use on the island.

George comes in, kisses Jean, and tells her about his day. He is meeting interesting people and starting to work with the local theater. Overall, he is quite happy and artistically stimulated, even though he has difficulty with the bicycle.

New Athens is a deliberate product of very careful social engineering by highly-intelligent men. Initially, it was an act of open resistance against the Overlords and their methods, and they expected Karellen to interfere. He did not, which made the designers of New Athens somewhat nervous, but they pressed on. The fact that it is situated on an island keeps the population ideally low, 100,000 at the most, which suits their aims for a small, closely-knit community.

The main personality amidst the founders was a man named Ben Salomon, a Jew who was old enough to just barely remember what life was like before the arrival of the Overlords, and who had died three years before the colony was established. Though Salomon never desired to return to those dark days, he did wonder if the Overlords were inadvertently killing man’s spirit. He could see that the arts were in decline, as were the sciences, and the idea of New Athens became the solution to that decline, a solution that took 20 years and billions of dollars to build. Using principles of probability discovered by early-20th century mathematicians, the colony’s attributes were calculated extremely precisely.

Though it was a gamble, thus far New Athens has been a success. There have been breakthroughs in every format of the arts aside from painting, which everyone assumes is archaic and dead. An interesting trend is that time has played a central role in much of the artwork that has been developed, even in sculpture. Work is being done on virtual reality, but so far this has been unsuccessful, to the great relief of some. In all, New Athens has enjoyed a successful beginning, summoning up some of the spirit of old Athens, but without the slaves and superstition. It remains to be seen if it will continue to be so successful.