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Chapter 3
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
Several days later, Stormgren is still considering attempting to observe Karellen. He enlists the help of his physicist friend, Pierre Duval, and together they begin conspiring. When Stormgren explains the shape and build of the meeting room to Duval, Duval surmises that perhaps the viewing screen is no screen at all, but merely a sheet of one-way glass, and that it could potentially be seen through with the right equipment. Duval suggests they hide such a device in Stormgren’s briefcase.
Duval is the first to see that often the Overlords’ tricks are much simpler than they first seem. Just as the screen is just a piece of glass, so humanity will discover, fifty years later, that all of the Overlord ships that filled them with fear in the early days are simply mirages, except for Karellen’s. The impression of power makes the viewer more susceptible to being deceived.
Themes
Days later, Stormgren is finishing his meeting with Karellen, his briefcase sitting inches away from the viewing screen. Karellen announces that he has received word from his superiors—to ease some of the tension, the Overlords will announce that they will emerge from their ship and let humanity see them in fifty years. Stormgren will not live to see them.
Announcing that the Overlords will reveal themselves is an elegant solution to the protestations of the Freedom League and the resistance movements. Humanity can be assuaged by the knowledge that someday the questions will be answered, even though very few people will live to see them, and by that point humanity will have grown far more used to their presence.
Themes
Karellen alludes to the fact that, in the past, other races have reacted negatively to seeing the Overlords, revealing that Earth is not the only planet the Overlords have supervised. Stormgren pushes Karellen for more information, but Karellen dodges his questions. This strengthens Stormgren’s resolution; as they are speaking, he presses a button to activate the scanner in his briefcase. Karellen seems unaware of the plot, and they part ways.
The revelation that the Overlords have “colonized” several other races on several other planets only reinforces humanity’s smallness. On Earth, human beings are the only beings of intelligence and seem like the center of the universe. In the scope of countless intelligent races on countless planets, they seem startlingly insignificant.
Themes
Stormgren reads an early release of Karellen’s pronouncement to the head of the Freedom League. Wainwright is disappointed and bitter, knowing that in fifty years, anyone who can remember life without the Overlords will be gone, but even so, it is better than nothing. Stormgren hopes that time will ease things, reflecting that good men who are deluded are far more dangerous than evil men.
Wainwright astutely recognizes the use of the Overlords’ power to affect humanity’s perception of them. Though his generation can remember a time of greater freedom, those born in the midst of the Overlords’ occupation of Earth will have much less resistance to the idea; it will be another fact of life that has always been.
Themes
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Duval returns Stormgren’s case, having analyzed the results of the scan. He tells Stormgren that the results show that Karellen is indeed sitting some six feet behind the sheet of one-way glass of the viewing screen. Karellen is sitting in a dark room and Stormgren in a brightly lit room, thus Stormgren cannot see through. The next thing to do, Duval determines, is to shine a high-powered flashlight through the glass. Stormgren is concerned about hurting Karellen, but Duval assures him it is completely safe.
The simplicity of the ruse is made possible by the severe imbalance of power and ability between Stormgren the human and Karellen the Overlord. Stormgren would never have guessed that such a simple, easily explainable set up was used to conceal Karellen’s appearance when the Overlords are so technologically adept.
Themes
During Stormgren’s next meeting with Karellen, Karellen is explaining that the Freedom League will be even more hindered when Stormgren retires, as Karellen does not plan to find a new liaison. His plan is proceeding as it should and when the Overlords reveal themselves to the humans, their “real work” will begin, though, sadly, Stormgren will have died of old age by then. When Stormgren asks if Karellen’s plans have ever gone awry, he quietly admits that the Overlords have had failures in the past.
With Stormgren’s retirement, as with his kidnapping, the Overlords will become an even more faceless entity and thus that much harder to resist. Rather than an alien power personified by Stormgren, they will be an alien power who is faceless, shapeless, and because of that, even more pervasive and harder to target.
Themes
Karellen pauses for five seconds, and then suddenly says goodbye to Stormgren for the final time, calling him “Rikki.” Stormgren realizes that he has been tricked, briefly paralyzed like the Welshman and his comrades had been when Karellen had rescued him. Stormgren moves quickly and presses his light against the glass of the viewing screen.
That Karellen uses Stormgren’s first name show his fondness for the human. Even so, he exerts his own power by freezing Stormgren, an unfair advantage only previously used on his enemies.
Themes
Thirty years later, an elderly Stormgren is walking among the trees at his secluded retirement home. A reporter suddenly arrives by aircraft and accosts him. It seems that the equipment that Duval had built for Stormgren had been discovered, and the reporter wants to know if Stormgren ever managed to see Karellen. Stormgren lies and tells him he did not, understanding now that mankind still is not ready to see the Overlords. However, he thinks back to his final meeting with Karellen, where he did catch a glimpse of him leaving through the door, but decided to keep what he had seen to himself.
Having seen a glimpse of Karellen, Stormgren adopts the same tactics as the Overlords: deception. As is later revealed, there is a good reason for the Overlords to keep their appearance hidden for now. Once Stormgren understands this, he sees fit to also keep certain things hidden. His proximity to Karellen’s power and secrecy seem to have rubbed off.
Themes
