A Christian Morality Tale?

“Children of Men,” by P.D. James, 1992

This book is the foundation of the 2006 film of the same name but the film is actually more left-wing and apocalyptic than the book.  The film is a great example of a dystopian story, set in 2027 Britain.  It seems like a very near reality, given it pictures mass prisons for migrants, violent internal police, an authoritarian government, constant protests or war around the world and an underground rebellion in the U.K.  I would imagine most know of the book through the movie.

Most future fiction books include one ‘event’ that changes everything, an event that is sometimes unexplained, such as in Cormac McCarthy’s The Road.  The key apocalyptic twist in this book (and film) is that no human baby has been born in the world since the 1990s, so the human race is seemingly done. A bit similar to the fertility crisis in the earlier "The Handmaid's Tale." Both center around this calamity. Infertility in these stories might function as a reflection of other dooms that could befall humans - climate change, starvation, war or pandemics.  Though there is present evidence that testosterone levels are dropping in males.

James wrote elegant and intricate detective stories, serving as a modern Agatha Christie.  So this 1992 book is quite the exception given its social theme. The narrator of the novel, Theo, is an upper-class Oxford professor ruminating on life at the age of 50 in 2021.  He’s been a failure at everything except studying Victorian England – a lousy son, father and husband.  At the beginning he’s also something of a physical incompetent, a “Mr. Peepers.”  Theo gets drawn into a conspiracy by the self-named ‘Five Fishes,’ as he is a former advisor to the Warden of England and they want his help contacting the Warden.  The Fishes want some modest changes to the English government.  They want an end to ‘Quietus,’ which is a way groups of old people commit suicide by drowning.  They want better treatment of poor migrant ‘Sojourners’ who do much of the grunt work in the society; an end to compulsory sperm testing and better supervision of the Isle of Man, which has been turned into an island prison camp run by the most violent inmates.  Altogether quite modest goals for these five somewhat inept and isolated rebels.

In the novel religion is a constant theme and dialog.  The title itself is from multiple quotes in the Bible that see the ‘children of men’ as a lesser, sinful group. Theo is a rational agnostic while two of the Fishes are good Christians, one of whom is carrying the first baby to be born in two decades, while the other Christian is the father. The father even sacrifices himself for the mother and baby during a violent confrontation, his ‘Jesus’ move. Male infertility is the problem in the book, not female infertility as in the film, so they had wished to keep the father alive too. At the end, the baby is born and Theo puts a little blood cross on its forehead, reflecting James’ own archaic Church of England obsession.

The Fishes in the film are not as pathetic.  They are a large organized group that uses violence when necessary but are blamed for bombings that the government itself carries out.  They represent illegal immigrants and their British supporters who are trying to make ‘Britain’ a legal home for everyone, as the rest of the world has dissolved into barbarism and rebellions.  Even the French are trying to cross the Channel for refuge!  But most of the Fishes also want to keep the first baby born for their own purposes and so become ‘bad guys.’ The film’s version of Theo, a handsome, cynical, yet well-meaning cube drone, turns out to be the only reliable person to help the baby and its dark-skinned mother.  Theo in the book also becomes something more than the isolated loveless academic and instead transforms into the ‘father’ in reality for the new baby and light-skinned mother.  This is because he has finally found love.

The First Mother in the Movie

The novel has no living Jasper, the charming old hippie played by Michael Caine in the film ("Pull my finger").  No migrant detention camp at Bexhill, no Uprising nor a Human Project ship.  Instead the Five Fishes try to find a hidden rural place where Julian can have her baby out of the hands of the grasping leader of the British government, Xan.  The end up in a large woodshed in the woods near Oxford.

The British, after the counter-revolution called ‘Omega,’ have given up their democratic rights to the Warden’s Council of Five in exchange for ‘security, stability and fun.’  Rural towns are being closed as the population decreases and is moved into larger places.  The old are shuffling into the sea, sometimes even when they don’t want to.  The Isle of Man prison, which became Bexhill in the film, is a violent world where the strong crush the weak, though we only hear of it in the book.  Everyone in society has given up long-range hope due to the prospective end of humanity.  Barbarous groups of Omegas (the last-born young) and Painted Faces roam the countryside.  Other than that, life in a seemingly old-fashioned and aging England goes on, tea and crumpets-style – evidently without a labor movement or any social movements except these five rebels.  Even without an economy! P.D. James was no radical herself, so the Fishes have one power-hungry mini-leader who betrays them, proving that rebel leaders are also not to be trusted.  At the end all that is left is the new mother Julian and Theo – the Adam & Eve of the new human wave.  Or as James puts it in her conservative way, a new 'race.’

The book is written switching between 1^st and 3^rd person, between Theo and narration.  It has many good lines such as this dyspeptic one on religion.  After one new Christian replaces the cross with a sun symbol to popular acclaim, Theo says:  “Even to unbelievers like myself, the cross, stigma of the barbarism of officialdom and of man’s ineluctable cruelty, has never been a comfortable symbol.”

Both book and film predict a world where crisis leads society to a dystopian authoritarianism, even when sincere individuals do their small part. There are no forces strong enough or trustworthy enough to change the situation.  In other words, they are expressions of deep historical pessimism in classes or humanity, as neither has a positive view of the future.  Of course understanding that negative outcomes are possible is an improvement over the complacent Panglossian ‘best of all possible worlds’ approach.  Both are the opposite of a socialist perspective, which understands ‘pessimism of the intellect; optimism of the will’ as one of its guidelines.  This book and film might be called “pessimism of the intellect, pessimism of the will except for a few exceptions…”  Essentially both are portrayals of heroic individualism on an historic canvas.

Prior reviews on dystopian books and films, some of which are carried at May Day.  Use blog search box, upper left: “The Testaments,” “Handmaid’s Tale” and “The Heart Goes Last” (all 3 by Atwood) “The Dispossessed” (Le Guin), “American War,” “Good News” (Abbey), “The Road (McCarthy) and “Blade Runner 2049,” “Do Android’s Dream of Electric Sheep?” (Dick), “The Golden Age of Television,” “Hunger Games,” “Planet of the Apes” (various modern sequels); “Divergent-Insurgent,” “Cloud Atlas.”

And I got it at May Day's excellent used / cutout book section!

The Cultural Marxist

January 21, 2020