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Chapter 23
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
Rashaverak gives Jan the news: the time of the Overlords’ departure is approaching. Jan wakes with a start one night, walks outside, looks at the moon, and realizes that it is not in the same position it has always been, for millennia. The children have rotated it. They are playing, gathering their strength.
In the same way that human children play to learn and grow stronger, the entity of the children who will soon join the Overmind are growing in their capability, strengthening the psychic muscles and their mastery over the physical world. With the powers of the mind unlocked and enough collective energy, it is suggested that complete mastery of the physical universe is possible.
Themes
It is dangerous for the Overlords to remain, Rashaverak tells Jan. The moon is trivial, but the children could begin playing with the sun. The Overlords will leave in a few hours, as soon as they are packed. Jan elects to stay, even as the Earth shakes underfoot. Rashaverak admits that the Overlords were hoping Jan would stay, for they have something he can help them with.
Jan’s decision to stay represents a distinct change in character. Although Jan could have gone with the Overlords back into the stars, back to the adventure of the unknown, he chooses to accept the fate that has been doled out to humanity and die with his planet. The humanistic hero is submitting to the greater forces around him.
Themes
Jan watches as the Overlord ship disappears into the vastness of space. They have left him their base and some communications equipment so that he can tell them what he sees as the children unite with the Overmind. Jan enters the base and readies himself. Through the great window in front of him he can see a wide expanse of the Earth.
Jan has the opportunity to offer the Overlords what they most desire: information. This too, is a decisive shift in character for Jan. Before he left Earth, Jan was resentful of the Overlords. Now, though it will cost him his life, Jan offers them one last parting gift, his final contribution to the universe.
Themes
Jan speaks into the microphone, feeling like a radio broadcaster announcing the end of the world. There are a few quakes and then the stars begin to dim. Jan can see a sort of field forming around the globe, and then a great pillar of fire, which he understands to be the children, ready for their ascension, shedding their material forms. Jan realizes that it is very similar to the mountain he saw on Karellen’s world. He sees the pillar of fire become like a curtain, similar to the aurora. He can feel his weight decrease as the gravity changes.
As the children leave their material bodies behind, they become raw energy, a pillar of fire. They have now transcended the physical world, and they exist on a different plane as a single, psychic entity, a hopeful vision of a future, liberated humanity. Yet this vision is also destructive as this new humanity consumes the Earth.
Themes
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The atmosphere seems to be pulling Earth away from itself, drawing its matter into the Overmind. The pillar of fire re-forms into a funnel. Jan, still narrating for Karellen, can see the Earth dissolving around him, trees and buildings and ground becoming transparent. A light seems to swell from within the ground, and the Earth explodes. The children, now the Overmind, have consumed it.
Like any evolutionary process, the newly transcendent vestiges of humanity leave the rest to die, destroying their habitat and wiping out any trace of what once existed. Though Clarke has cast a compelling alternative vision for humanity’s future, it is also incredibly grim.
Themes
Millions of miles away, beyond Pluto, Karellen sits, having just witnessed the end of Earth. His mission is complete, and he is going home. He is sorrowful for the Overlord race, for they will never unite with the Overmind, never transcend what they already are. Despite their powerful intelligence, they feel like a tribe that lives its entire history on the same dusty patch of ground, unable to experience the majesty of the universe.
Despite their power, intelligence, and nearly god-like depiction throughout the majority of the story, the Overlords look very small by the end. They are intelligent beyond doubt, but trapped and powerless, beholden to the Overmind but never able to become a part of it. As humanity was trapped on Earth, so the Overlords are trapped in their physical, rational realm.
Themes
A message informs him that they are exiting the solar system. Karellen looks once more at the former-Earth’s sun, “saluted the men he had known, whether they had hindered or helped him in his purpose,” and leaves.
Karellen once again seems fond of humanity, despite how petulant and unintelligent they were, as he moves on, his purpose completed.
Themes
