The End of the World

A lot was made of how quickly the characters’ relationships progressed in Children of Men, especially that between Theo and Julian. The consensus in our class discussions seemed to be that their relationship was rushed and/or forced and its lack of realism took the reader out of the story. On the surface I agree, but I think it was actually intentional and it doesn’t bother me as it did some.

I think that PD James either used the setting as a reason to accelerate their relationship, as a reason to cover up its quick development, or both. Either way I found it an effective tactic. The “end of the world,” or in the case of Children of Men the end of humanity, is a scenario that incites panic in us, as our survival instinct attempts to reject the notion. We have an innate desire to live a full life and experience everything one normally would in their expected ~80-90 years. The prospect of our lives, or the world around us, coming to an end before we reach that age causes us to want to still fit a lifetime’s worth of experiences into that short time span.

In this case the development of Theo and Julian’s relationship, the high likelihood that they would both die soon, along with the rest of humanity, accelerated it to a point that would have been uncomfortable under any other circumstances. James attempted the monumental task bringing the reader in so closely to the story that they felt the same primal panic as the characters and accepted the rapid advances of Theo and Julian’s relationship. Though it wasn’t executed well enough for me to read the novel without noticing the tactic, it didn’t take away from my experience reading it.