Aggresive Apathy

"We are outraged and demoralized less by the impending end of our species,
less even by our inability to prevent it, than our failure to discover the cause” (5).
P. D. James's The Children of Men (1992)

Points for Reflection

P. D. James' The Children of Men (1992), 3-120

1. Why does Theo begin a diary on his fiftieth birthday (3-4), and do this week’s chapters suggest that the diary is successfully serving its set purpose?
2. Does the post-Omega world create new interpersonal problems concerning sexual intimacy, or does it merely uncover and/or magnify already existent problems?
3. Do Theo’s many failings make him less or more sympathetic as this novel’s protagonist? [Tricia L]
4. Compare certain elements of chps 6 and 8 with chps 1-5 and 7. Is there something about the content, tone, and/or organization of these different chapters that explains why the author might have temporarily switched from first-person diary entries to a third-person, omniscient narrator for chapters 6 and 8?
5. Why might the author give Julian (the former student of Theo’s who asks for his help in convincing the Warden to change his policies) a disability, a swollen hand with middle and forefinger fused together (39)?
6. In a well-written novel, no character is extraneous. What purpose is served by the introduction in chapter seven of Jasper Palmer-Smith? Does this fellow professor mirror Theo in every particular? Do his perspectives on the cataclysm, women, Christianity, and marriage echo or deviate from those of Theo himself?
7. Do Theo’s comments about Christianity’s changing, post-Omega significance constitute a complete rejection of a disproven superstition, or something else?
8. Theo has consistently described himself as emotionally enervated. Pre-Omega, he had difficulty loving his own mother (24), and failed to show compassion for his dying father (25). Post-Omega, he fights lassitude and depression—as do many others—and believes that his enjoyment of beauty has become more of an intellectual than sensual experience (9). He also castigates himself for having felt less than his wife when his daughter died (29,) and notes his failure to comfort a grieving woman when her baby doll is cruelly broken by another woman (35). Later in the novel, is Theo beginning to undergo an emotional renaissance, or do his feelings remain buried and undeveloped?
9. Is Theo the misanthrope he believes himself to be?
10. Is science impotent in the post-Omega world?
11. Julian tells Theo she’s involved with a secret group calling for social change because God has called her to this course of action (109 bottom). Has the novel, to this point, exploded religious ideas so completely that Julian’s faith sounds either misguided or crazy?
12. Theo notes that the current government’s primary goal is to provide the people with freedom from not only fear and want but boredom--something Xan also hopes to avoid by continuing to lead the country (89, 101). Does such ennui seem to be a pervasive problem in the lives of those characters we have met thus far, or are they successfully staving off boredom?

"St. Margaret's, Binsey"
anonymous photographer

Dr. Paul Marchbanks
pmarchba@calpoly.edu