The Children of Men

Content Warning: The following Themes section contains references to suicide, which is discussed in the source text.

Once people know that the human race will end with the death of the Omega generation, questions of meaning and existential purpose become urgent. Many in the novel no longer feel that life is worth living, collapsing existence at both sides of a life span. On one end, adults dismantle playgrounds and stop maintaining elementary schools because there are no children. On the other end, the Quietus—State-sponsored mass suicides—claim to give a legally valid way for the elderly to end their lives. The novel opens with a painful summary of global grief: “In our universal bereavement, like grieving parents, we have put away all painful reminders of our loss” (10).

Those who choose life are often consumed by despair and ennui. Theo often feels the heavy burden of pointlessness: “despair dragged at his mind and limbs, leaving him physically weakened so that the instinct to sink to the earth almost overpowered him” (227). The prospect of a life without meaning weighs on the characters. One of Theo’s history students asks him, “What is the point of all this?” (13), to which he can only give an unsatisfying answer. Later, he tries to adopt an existentialist attitude as a way of managing his despair, cautioning that, “We should not, perhaps, assume that nature has a purpose” (142).

The world tries to manage the idea of meaningless existence in different ways. Religious evangelists see an opportunity to spread their faith, moving away from Christianity’s focus on Jesus—possibly because the story of savior born only to die young is too on-the-nose for the Omega world. Nevertheless, Christianity seems compatible with the situation, as one of its key tenets is that earthly misery is a prerequisite for the afterlife: Inspector Cathcart describes his grandfather as “one of those hellfire preachers” who “thought that everything had a purpose, particularly pain” (142). The novel’s politicians try to find meaning in their policies, hoping that future historians will find their actions justifiable: “Whatever man has done for good or ill has been done in the knowledge that […] there will be a future, for the nation, for the race, for the tribe” (113).