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Summary
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
A Russian cosmonaut is preparing for a launch. Before traveling to launch site, she enacts her customary pre-flight ritual of speaking to now-deceased Yuri Gagarin, the first human to enter outer space. She is accosted by a group of tourists with cameras, but before they take a single photo, a massive shadow blots out the moon.
The original Chapter 1, written in 1952, contained a narrative about the race between Russia and the U.S. to put a human being in space, which Clarke imagined would take decades to achieve. Yuri Gagarin reached space less than a decade later, in 1961, and Clarke rewrote his first chapter. This opening scene foreshadows how the Overlords will put an end to space travel and human exploration.
Themes
The commander of an upcoming multi-nation mission to Mars stands on the rim of a volcano in Hawaii, preparing himself to face the volcano, Olympus Mons, on Mars. He reflects on the president’s inauguration day in 2001 and the push for space travel that had been announced. He begins leaving when he sees massive ships flying through the clouds above him, and he realizes that humanity is “no longer alone.”
This scene reveals the scope of this event to be global. Since the arrival of the Overlords effectively ends humanity’s ambitions to achieve space travel, even before the full prohibition, these cosmonauts are the last in human history (aside from the stowaway, Jan Rodricks, introduced later in the story).
Themes
