The Children of Men

by P.D. James

On the whole I’m glad; you can’t mourn for unborn grandchildren when there never was a hope of them. This planet is doomed anyway. Eventually the sun will explode or cool and one small insignificant particle of the universe will disappear with only a tremble. If man is doomed to perish, then universal infertility is as painless a way as any. And there are, after all, personal compensations. For the last sixty years we have sycophantically pandered to the most ignorant, the most criminal and the most selfish section of society. Now, for the rest of our lives, we’re going to be spared the intrusive barbarism of the young, their noise, their pounding, repetitive, computer-produced so-called music, their violence, their egotism disguised as idealism. My God, we might even succeed in getting rid of Christmas, that annual celebration of parental guilt and juvenile greed. I intend that my life shall be comfortable, and, when it no longer is, then I shall wash down my final pill with a bottle of claret.”

This is a passage that converges with the tone of the film -- particularly Theo's whole outlook. The gaze of the film -- where the camera pans and tilts along the way -- leans heavily into hope in the face of complete despair; it is really well done.

Text after damning Old Testament text fell from his lips as he held aloft his well-thumbed Bible. But the product had a short shelf-life. It is difficult to fulminate successfully against sexual licence in a world overcome by ennui, to condemn the sexual abuse of children when there are no more children, to denounce inner-city violence when the cities are increasingly becoming the peaceful repositories of the docile aged. Roger has never fulminated against the violence and selfishness of the Omegas; he has a well-developed sense of self-preservation.

During the mid-1990s the recognized churches, particularly the Church of England, moved from the theology of sin and redemption to a less uncompromising doctrine: corporate social responsibility coupled with a sentimental humanism. Rosie has gone further and has virtually abolished the Second Person of the Trinity together with His cross, substituting a golden orb of the sun in glory, like a garish Victorian pub sign. The change was immediately popular. 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.

Hahahhahaa!!!😂

“Julian explained to you why we agreed to see you.” He made it sound as if Theo were the supplicant.

This is important. Subject and object nouns are always important. When they fall in tension (or outright contradiction, as here) of the plot is when you have a story. Pins and needles. 😶😬

“What sort of group are you? Do you always meet here in this church? Are you some kind of religious organization?” It was Miriam who answered. “No. As Rolf explained, Luke is a priest, although he hasn’t a full-time job or a parish. Julian and he are Christians, the rest of us aren’t. We meet in churches because they’re available, they’re open, they’re free and they’re usually empty, at least the ones we choose are. We may have to give this one up. Other people are beginning to use it.” Rolf broke in, his voice impatient, over-emphatic. “Religion and Christianity have nothing to do with it. Nothing!” As if she hadn’t heard him, Miriam went on: “All sorts of eccentrics meet in churches. We’re just one set of oddballs among many. No one asks any questions. If they do, we’re the Cranmer Club. We meet to read and study the old Book of Common Prayer.”

One of the major themes of this book is the place of good (lower-case 'g'; specifically Christian) faith to a society spiraling into hopelessness. Not to give the game away, or anything. Where as, this interloper group is starting to negotiate away the subject-object relationship (as seen above) from our protagonist Theo, this exchange ratchets up the sub-textual, thematic tension massively by trying to negotiate away its Christian specificity -- while also using a BCP study group (and deeply well-observed commentary on them) as a way of creating more specificity. And this is really well done. My palms are sweating. 😅

Theo turned to him. “Is it? So what do you reply when the State Security Police ask you to recite the Collect for the first Sunday in Advent?” Seeing Gascoigne’s embarrassed incomprehension, he added: “Hardly a convincing cover.”

Boom raosted. Appendix I, for the aspiring Fish Almighty God, give us grace that we may cast away the works of darkness, and put upon us the armour of light, now in the time of this mortal life, in which thy Son Jesus Christ came to visit in great humility; that in the last day, when he shall come again in his glorious majesty to judge both the quick and the dead, we may rise to the life immortal, through him who liveth and reigneth with thee and the Holy Ghost, now and ever. Amen. BCP 1928, natch.

“You may not sympathize with us but you don’t have to despise us. The cover isn’t meant to convince the SSP. If they started taking an interest in us no cover would protect us. They’d break us in ten minutes. We know that. The cover gives us a reason, an excuse for meeting regularly and in churches. We don’t publicize it. It’s there if anyone asks, if we need it.” Gascoigne said: “I know the prayers are called Collects. Do you know the one you asked me?” He wasn’t being accusatory, merely interested. Theo said: “I was brought up with the old Book. The church my mother took me to as a boy must have been one of the last to use it. I’m a historian. I have an interest in the Victorian church, in old liturgies, defunct forms of worship.” Rolf said impatiently: “All this is irrelevant. As Julian says, if the SSP take us they’re not going to waste time examining us on the old catechism. We’re not in any danger yet; not unless you betray us. What have we done so far? Nothing but talk. Before we do act two of us thought it might be sensible to make an appeal to the Warden of England, your cousin.”

You could teach a whole course on what is going on here. The lesson: Never give a binary response to anyone trying to hijack a narrative. Keep the conversation sideways. Use it to place in more specificity. It does two things at once: 1) creates a knowing defiance in the protagonist; 2) expands the world they are living in much beyond the borders of the plot

“And we want something done about the Sojourners. Do you think it’s right that there’s an edict prohibiting our Omegas from emigrating? We import Omegas and others from less affluent countries to do our dirty work, clean the sewers, clear away the rubbish, look after the incontinent, the aged.” Theo said: “They’re anxious enough to come, presumably because they get a better quality of life.” Julian said: “They come to eat. Then, when they get old—sixty is the age limit, isn’t it?—they’re sent back whether they want to go or not.” “That’s an evil their own countries could redress. They could begin by managing their affairs better. Anyway, their numbers aren’t great. There’s a quota, the intake is carefully controlled.” “Not only a quota, stringent requirements. They have to be strong, healthy, without criminal convictions. We take the best and then chuck them back when they’re no longer wanted. And who gets them? Not the people who need them most. The Council and their friends. And who looks after the foreigners when they’re here? They work for a pittance, they live in camps, the women separate from the men. We don’t even give them citizenship; it’s a form of legalized slavery.”

Ahhh!! 😵😡😠 So, so angry -- I'm shaking. This is an Amazing passage. The movie translates this really really well. It puts exactly this sharpness into visual language. Every way this book hits you in the guts the movie does as well -- as good or better. Cuarón has a very specific way of managing grace in his films, and the way he puts this kind of passage to work is just phenomenal. He doesn't take the piss out of it; in his words "we took it, and we made it more Mexican."

“I don’t think you’ll start a revolution on the issue of the Sojourners, or on the Quietus for that matter. People don’t care enough.” Julian said: “We want to help them to care.” “Why should they? They live without hope on a dying planet. What they want is security, comfort, pleasure. The Warden of England can promise the first two, which is more than most foreign governments are managing to do.” Rolf had been listening to their exchange without speaking. Then he said suddenly: “What’s he like, the Warden of England? What sort of man is he? You should know, you were brought up with him.” “That doesn’t give me an open entry to his mind.” “All that power, more than anyone has ever had before—in this country anyway—all in his hands. Does he enjoy it?” “Presumably. He doesn’t seem anxious to let it go.” He added: “If you want democracy, you have somehow to revitalize the Local Council. It begins there.” Rolf said: “It ends there too. It’s how the Warden exercises control at that level. And have you seen our local chairman, Reggie Dimsdale? He’s seventy, querulous, shit-scared, only doing the job because it gets him a double petrol allowance and a couple of foreign Omegas to look after his bloody great barn of a house and wipe his bum for him when he gets incontinent. No Quietus for him.”

“He was elected to the Council. They were all elected.” “By whom? Did you vote? Who cares? People are just relieved that someone will do the job. And you know how it works. The Chairman of the Local Council can’t be appointed without the approval of the District Council. That needs the approval of the Regional Council. He or she has to be approved by the Council of England. The Warden controls the system from top to bottom, you must know that. He controls it, too, in Scotland and Wales. Each has its own Warden, but who appoin...

“Protection, comfort, pleasure. There has to be something more.” “It’s what people care about, what they want. What more should the Council be offering?” “Compassion, justice, love.” “No state has ever concerned itself with love, and no state ever can.” Julian said: “But it can concern itself with justice.” Rolf was impatient: “Justice, compassion, love. They’re all words. What we’re talking about is power. The Warden is a dictator masquerading as a democratic leader. He ought to be made to be responsible to the will of the people.”

“Ah, the will of the people. That’s a fine sounding phrase. At present, the will of the people seems to be for protection, comfort, pleasure.” He thought: I know what offends you—the fact that Xan enjoys such power, not the way he exercises it. The little group had no real cohesion and, he suspected, no common purpose. Gascoigne was fuelled by indignation about the appropriation of the name Grenadier, Miriam by some motive which was, as yet, unclear, Julian and Luke by religious idealism, Rolf by jealousy and ambition. As a historian he could have pointed out a dozen parallels.

Julian touched Theo’s arm and looked him full in the face. “They shouldn’t treat human beings like that. No matter what they’ve done, what they are, they shouldn’t treat people like that. We have to stop it.” Theo said: “Obviously there are social evils, but they are nothing to what is happening in other parts of the world. It’s a question of what the country is prepared to tolerate as the price of sound government.” Julian asked: “What do you mean by sound government?” “Good public order, no corruption in high places, freedom from fear of war and crime, a reasonably equitable distribution of wealth and resources, concern for the individual life.” Luke said: “Then we haven’t got sound government.” “We may have the best that is possible in the circumstances. There was wide public support for setting up the Man Penal Colony. No government can act in advance of the moral will of the people.”

Here is a part where the movie is able to reach further than the book. All of this feels present while you watch, but it is given to the audience entirely through setting and incident. The text here lays the subtext all out, and it kind of demystifies itself by doing so -- the wires being completely visible and textual. The movie accomplishes this same idea through 'show don't tell' -- like I said, through blocking and incident. By doing so, it is much harder to objectify, deflect and/or get a hold of -- it takes a hold of you.

“I do. It’s part of the Ashmolean, an exhibition of plaster casts and marble copies of Greek and Roman statues. We used to be taken there during art class at school. I haven’t been there for years. I didn’t even know that the Ashmolean was keeping it open.” Theo said: “There’s no particular reason to close it. It doesn’t require much supervision. A few elderly scholars occasionally drift in. The opening hours are on the board outside.” Rolf was suspicious. “Why there?” “Because I like to visit it occasionally and the attendant is used to seeing me. Because it provides a number of accessible hiding places. Mainly because it’s convenient for me. Nothing else about this enterprise is.”

I actually feel like the books urgency theme railroaded the plot. At this point, an experienced wonk with high level access in government is compelled to action by five amateurish, uncoordinated, ad hoc revolutionaries. And their big ask is to proselytize social justice to a highly competent, technocratic, semi-dictator. Where is their leverage over Theo; and how /are/ they leveraging it? Where is Theo's over the Warden; and how is he supposed to use it? He isn't a 'true believer' in their cause; nor are we lead to believe he has had a change of heart. And the cost of their errand -- for Theo -- is significant. I'm thinking the rub, as Theo's name is meant to suggest, is that our hero is guided by some (at this point secret, deeply withheld) faith. Idk. Let's keep reading!

It was just before eleven when Theo left them in the church. He stood for a moment in the porch, glanced at his watch and looked out over the unkept graveyard. He wished that he hadn’t come, hadn’t got involved in this futile and embarrassing enterprise. He was more affected by Miriam’s story than he cared to admit.

Got it. And none too soon!!

“The old system wasn’t entirely without profit, though, was it? The police got well paid. And the middle classes did very well out of it, probation officers, social workers, magistrates, judges, court officials, quite a profitable little industry all depending on the offender. Your profession, Felicia, did particularly well, exercising their expensive legal skills in getting people convicted so that their colleagues could have the satisfaction of getting the verdicts overturned on appeal. Today the encouragement of criminals is an indulgence we cannot afford, even to provide comfortable living for middle-class liberals. But I suspect the Man Penal Colony isn’t the last of your concerns.”

Woolvington’s first two lines of cavalry were complete, prancing elegantly across the top of the paper. He looked up and said: “You’re not suggesting we should have unrestricted immigration? Remember what happened in Europe in the 1990s? People became tired of invading hordes, from countries with just as many natural advantages as this, who had allowed themselves to be misgoverned for decades through their own cowardice, indolence and stupidity and who expected to take over and exploit the benefits which had been won over centuries by intelligence, industry and courage, while incidentally perverting and destroying the civilization of which they were so anxious to become part.”

They even speak alike now. But, whoever speaks, the voice is the voice of Xan. He said: “We’re not talking about history. We’ve no shortage of resources, no shortage of jobs, no shortage of houses. Restricting immigration in a dying and underpopulated world isn’t a particularly generous policy.” Xan said: “It never was. Generosity is a virtue for individuals, not governments. When governments are generous it is with other people’s money, other people’s safety, other people’s future.”

Almost everything they say is with a calm, even voice -- and it is all basically evil. So, just like -- in most cases -- real life. 👿👤👥

“You are a historian. You know what evils have been perpetrated through the ages to ensure the survival of nations, sects, religions, even of individual families. Whatever man has done for good or ill has been done in the knowledge that he has been formed by history, that his life-span is brief, uncertain, insubstantial, but that there will be a future, for the nation, for the race, for the tribe. That hope has finally gone except in the minds of fools and fanatics. Man is diminished if he lives without knowledge of his past; without hope of a future he becomes a beast. We see in every country in the world the loss of that hope, the end of science and invention, except for discoveries which may extend life or add to its comfort and pleasure, the end of our care for the physical world and our planet. What does it matter what turds we leave behind as legacies of our brief disruptive tenancy? The mass emigrations, the great internal tumults, the religious and tribal wars of the 1990s have given way to a universal anomie which leaves crops unsown and unharvested, animals neglected, starvation, civil war, the grabbing from the weak by the strong. We see reversions to old myths, old superstitions, even to human sacrifice, sometimes on a massive scale. That this country has been largely spared this universal catastrophe is due to the five people round this table. In particular it is due to the Warden of England. We have a system extending from this Council, down to the Local Coun...

Oh... 😨😕

It must have been a question he’d thought over often enough. Then he turned, walked on, and said: “At first because I thought I’d enjoy it. The power, I suppose. But it wasn’t only that. I could never bear to watch someone doing badly what I knew I could do well. After the first five years I found I was enjoying it less, but by then it was too late. Someone has to do it and the only people who want to are the four round that table. Would you prefer Felicia? Harriet? Martin? Carl? Carl could do it, but he’s dying. The other three couldn’t keep the Council together, let alone the country.” “So that’s why. Disinterested public duty?” “Have you ever known anyone to give up power, real power?” “Some people do.” “And have you seen them, the walking dead? But it’s not the power, not entirely. I’ll tell you the real reason. I’m not bored. Whatever else I am now, I’m never bored.”

This is a really insightful passage. There are some folks in this world who have been at their point of power for 40 years or more. I don't think we have to project more on to their intentions than this right here.

“If they can breed, good luck to them, but while there are limited facilities for the testing, let’s keep it for the physically and morally fit.”

Hahhaha. This guy right here.

“You could say, yes. No one with a criminal record or a family record of offending ought to be allowed to breed, if we have a choice.” “So the criminal law is to be the measure of virtue?” “How else can it be measured? The State can’t look into men’s hearts. All right, it’s rough and ready and we’ll disregard small delinquencies. But why breed from the stupid, the feckless, the violent?”

😕 Something horrific going on here can be fully seen in the history of lynching and lynch mobs in my country. These were public events, sometimes advertised in advance, of extrajudicial killing. The bodies of the victims would be held over fires, hung and mutilated -- in some kind of order. I stress the extrajudicial of these events. Everyone, young and old, who attended were murderers and accessories to murder by any basic civil standard. Out of 7,000+ documented lynchings in America from the end of the Civil War (1865) to Jim Crow (1970), not a single person was convicted of murder for these crimes. On the other hand, anyone who was caught up in a lynching and slaughtered was widely considered /de facto/ as a criminal. But back to the passage at hand. This is what power looks like. Light, arrogant, creepy; Power. I feel like the text weights it just right in this section.

“Then there are the pornography centres. Are they really necessary?”

Fine. Porn is fine. That is: Porn is fine when it is made by a consenting, enthusiastic creator; and taken in by an informed, conscientious consumer. There is nothing inherently wrong with creating things for/from sex, or an industry which exists for the creation and distribution of those things. I have a feeling there is a significant generational difference on attitudes on this, and it is important to trace the underpinnings of where the younger folks have developed this acceptance. Obviously, the Internet has a lot to do with it; changing attitudes on sexuality (and -- more complicated -- on race); so too, the hijacking of 'sex positivity' from Third Wave Feminists by Fourth Wave ('intersectional', millennial) Feminists. And that would be a lot to unpack. I'm not going to attempt it here. Most kids, even ones who don't partake, see a well regulated THC industry as an overall good for a variety of economic and public health reasons. So too, with sex workers and the sex industry -- even for folks who don't partake in it personally or economically -- there exists a broad consensus that a well-regulated, visible economy around sex work is significantly better for the public's health and well being (as well as the [highly organized] workers themselves) than a clandestine, underground, organized crime economy. I'm actually cautiously optimistic that reported decrease in sex by younger folks is from them having more, better consensual and egalitarian sex -- with partners who are aware of and maintain good boundaries. On the other hand -- and I am being completely serious -- lower rates of sex in people my age and younger could be from lowered libido due to a mental health crisis instigated by the negative effects of social media. Recent neurochemical studies seem to bare this out. Same too, the ongoing crisis of not being entirely sure this planet with be inhabitable by humans within three or four generations. We live in the country that has contributed to this most -- and don't all the young kids know it. Shout out to Scott Pruitt. The heady weight of all this, as a daily part of your life, can be a real drag. So, why not 'do you' for as long as it is feasible and not drag anybody's mess into their own -- careful, quiet, safe -- space. What all this -- if I had to sum it up -- is saying: nobody is judging you for the sex stuff you are into. Enthusiastic consent, healthy boundaries, and non-exploitative practices are the cost of entry into that space. Fuck that up and it will end you.

“Do you often go back to Woolcombe?” “That living mausoleum? The place appals me. I used to make the occasional duty visit to my mother. I haven’t been back for five years. No one ever dies now at Woolcombe. What the place needs is its own Quietus by way of a bomb. Odd, isn’t it? Almost the whole of modern medical research is dedicated to improving health in old age and extending the human life-span and we get more senility, not less. Extending it for what? We give them drugs to improve short-term memory, drugs to raise mood, drugs to increase appetite. They don’t need anything to make them sleep, that’s all they seem to do. What, I wonder, goes on in those senile minds during those long periods of half-consciousness. Memories, I suppose, prayers.” Theo said: “One prayer. ‘That I may see my children’s children and peace upon Israel.

Then he heard Xan’s voice, Xan’s parting words: “Tell your friends, whoever they are, to be sensible. If they can’t be sensible, tell them to be prudent. I’m not a tyrant, but I can’t afford to be merciful. Whatever it is necessary to do, I shall do.”

Oh boy.

But he knew that his unfamiliar tingle of excitement, more worrying than pleasant, had less to do with the building than with his meeting with Julian, and he tried to control it by concentrating on the ingenuity and quality of the wrought-iron work, the beauty of the carvings. It was, after all, his period. Here was Victorian confidence, Victorian earnestness; the respect for learning, for craftsmanship, for art; the conviction that the whole of man’s life could be lived in harmony with the natural world. He hadn’t been in the museum for over three years, yet nothing had changed. Nothing, indeed, had changed since he had first entered it as an undergraduate except the notice which he remembered seeing propped against a pillar, welcoming children but admonishing them—ineffectually, he recalled—not to run about or make a noise.

“And the Man Penal Colony?” “Nothing. He won’t waste men and resources on pacifying the island. Why should he? Setting up the Penal Colony is probably the most popular thing he’s ever done.” “And the treatment of the Sojourners? Giving them full civil rights, a decent life here, the chance to stay?” “That seems very unimportant to him compared to what is important: the good order of Britain, ensuring that the race dies with some dignity.” She said: “Dignity? How can there be dignity if we care so little for the dignity of others?”

“Perhaps if a few people, a group of friends, got themselves exiled to the island deliberately, they could do something to change things. Or if we offered to go there voluntarily, why should the Warden forbid us, why should he care? Even a small group could help if they arrived in love.” Theo could hear the contempt in his voice. “Holding up the Cross of Christ before the savages, as the missionaries did in South America. Like them, get yourselves butchered on the beaches? Don’t you read any history? There are only two reasons for that kind of folly. One is that you have a yearning for martyrdom. There’s nothing new in that, if it’s the way your religion takes you. I’ve always seen it as an unhealthy mixture of masochism and sensuality but I can see its appeal to a certain cast of mind. What is new is that your martyrdom won’t even be commemorated, won’t even be noticed. In seventy-odd years it will have no possible value because there will be no one left on earth to give it value, no one even to put up a small wayside shrine to the new Oxford martyrs. The second reason is more ignoble and Xan would understand it very well. If you did succeed, what an intoxication of power! The Isle of Man pacified, the violent living in peace, crops sown and harvested, the sick cared for, Sunday services in the churches, the redeemed kissing the hands of the living saint who made it all possible. Then you’ll know what the Warden of England feels every waking moment, what he enjoys, what h...

“I can’t think of any group less equipped to confront the apparatus of state. You’ve no money, no resources, no influence, no popular backing. You haven’t even a coherent philosophy of revolt. Miriam is doing it to avenge her brother. Gascoigne, apparently, because the Warden has appropriated the word Grenadiers. Luke out of some vague Christian idealism and a yearning for such abstracts as compassion, justice and love. Rolf hasn’t even the justification of moral indignation. His motive is ambition; he resents the Warden’s absolute power and would like it for himself. You’re doing it because you’re married to Rolf. He’s dragging you into dreadful danger to satisfy his own ambitions. He can’t compel you. Leave him. Break free.”

I wish this were better presented, but the basic idea of what is going on here is really interesting.

He didn’t believe that Xan would condone torture, but for him the threat of torture would have been enough, and it struck him for the first time that he had, perhaps, misjudged Xan for the most naïve of reasons; he couldn’t believe that a man who was highly intelligent, who had humour and charm, a man he had called his friend, could be evil. Perhaps it was he, not Julian, who needed a lesson in history.

Everyone at this point is going about their business like they are on bath salts. Genre is taking on a heavy load to get us through. Keep with us, travelers.

TO THE PEOPLE OF BRITAIN We cannot shut our eyes any longer to the evils in our society. If our race is to die, let us at least die as free men and women, as human beings, not as devils. We make the following demands to the Warden of England. Call a general election and put your policies before the people. Give the Sojourners full civil rights including the right to live in their own homes, to send for their families and to remain in Britain at the end of their contract of service. Abolish the Quietus. Stop deporting convicted offenders to the Isle of Man Penal Colony and ensure that people already there can live in peace and decency. Stop the compulsory testing of semen and the examination of healthy young women and shut down the public porn shops. THE FIVE FISHES

And so it begins!!

The country would hardly welcome the expense and disruption of a general election but, if he called one, his power would be confirmed by an overwhelming majority whether or not anyone had the temerity to stand against him. Theo asked himself how many of the other reforms he might have achieved had he stayed as Xan’s adviser. But he knew the answer. He had been powerless then and the Five Fishes were powerless now.

What a major hang up for this book. Powerlessness is its own space. People live and die in powerlessness in a wide variety of ways. Folks can be fluent in powerlessness as agents and as creators. This book, quite simply, is not. I think it is due to the essential British-ness of the text; that it doesn't live and breath its powerlessness. The movie is a significant improvement on this. On powerlessness, in particular, Cuarón has a great deal to say, and he gives it breadth and width -- it covers his whole canvas. Children of Men (the film) does its work so well largely because it takes place entirely within the belly of the wale Powerlessness.

“The Five Fishes. Ingenious but not very clever. I suppose we look for a little group of five. Five friends, five family members, five fellow-workers, five fellow-conspirators. Perhaps they got the idea from the Council of England. It’s a useful number, wouldn’t you say, sir? In any discussion it ensures that there can always be a majority.”

I didn't think of the Five Fishes being a structural mirror to the Council until this jerk just pointed it out just now. 😬😤

A population of fifty-eight million in 1996, fallen to thirty-six million this year, 20 per cent of them over seventy. We’re a doomed race, Chief Inspector. With maturity, with old age, all enthusiasm fades, even for the seductive thrill of conspiracy. There’s no real opposition to the Warden of England. There never has been since he took power.

She held out her hand, and in defiance of risk I took it. I said: “I don’t know your surname. I don’t know where you live or where to find you. But you know where to find me. If you ever need me send for me at St. John Street and I’ll come.” Then I turned and walked away so that I need not watch her walking away from me.

And now the turn has fully happened. End Part I.

BOOK TWO ALPHA

Haha. I see what she did here. Omega /then/ Alpha. Somewhat disconcertingly in real life the newest young kids, atm, are starting to be billed 'Gen Alpha.' I hope that doesn't stick. Here I am writing as a gen 'y' or Millennial. And with a sibling who is gen 'z.' These kids are alright.

Here he sat and listlessly turned over the pages of his diary where he had recorded each day of his travels, joylessly, meticulously, mentally ticking off each of the cities and sights he had planned to revisit as if he were a schoolboy fulfilling some holiday task. The Auvergne, Fontainebleau, Carcassonne, Florence, Venice, Perugia, the cathedral at Orvieto, the mosaics in San Vitale, Ravenna, the Temple of Hera at Paestum. He had set out in no mood of excited anticipation, had invited no adventures, sought no unfamiliar primitive places where novelty and discovery could more than compensate for monotonous food or hard beds. He had moved in organized and expensive comfort from capital to capital: Paris, Madrid, Berlin, Rome. He hadn’t even been consciously saying farewell to the beauty and splendours he had first known in youth. He could hope to come again; this needn’t be a final visit. This was a journey of escape, not a pilgrimage in search of forgotten sensations. But he knew now that the part of him from which he most needed to escape had remained in Oxford.

Dude took a many months tour of the continent. Wasn't expecting this to be part of the story.

His keenest memory was of Rome, standing before the Michelangelo Pietà in St. Peter’s, of the rows of spluttering candles, the kneeling women, rich and poor, young and old, fixing their eyes on the Virgin’s face with an intensity of longing almost too painful to witness.

He doesn’t want martyrs. What he does want is the pretence of an internal threat to good public order. It helps buttress his authority. All tyrants have needed that from time to time. All he has to do is tell the people that there’s a secret society operating whose published manifesto may be beguilingly liberal but whose real aim is to close down the Isle of Man Colony, let loose ten thousand criminal psychopaths on an ageing society, send home all the Sojourners so that the rubbish isn’t collected and the streets are unswept, and ultimately overthrow the Council and the Warden himself.

“You said I wasn’t to argue. I’m not arguing. I’m only asking one question.” “Since the baby quickened. Julian didn’t know until then. How could she? Then she spoke to me and I confirmed the pregnancy. I’m a midwife, remember? We’d thought it wise not to be together more than necessary during the last four months. If I’d seen her more often I should have known earlier. Even after twenty-five years, I should have known.” He said: “If you believe it—the unbelievable—then you’re taking it very calmly.” “I’ve had time to get used to the glory of it. Now I’m more concerned with the practicalities.”

“I was twenty-seven at Omega and working in the maternity department of the John Radcliffe. I was doing a stint in the antenatal clinic at the time. I remember booking a patient for her next appointment and suddenly noticing that the page seven months ahead was blank. Not a single name. Women usually booked in by the time they’d missed their second period, some as soon as they’d missed one. Not a single name. I thought, what’s happening to the men in this city? Then I rang a friend who was working at Queen Charlotte’s. She said the same. She said she’d telephone someone she knew at the Rosie Maternity Hospital in Cambridge. She rang me back twenty minutes later. It was the same there. It was then I knew, I must have been one of the first to know. I was there at the end. Now I shall be there at the beginning.”

“Listen,” she said, “listen to her heartbeat.” It was easier for him to kneel, so he knelt, unselfconsciously, not thinking of it as a gesture of homage but knowing that it was right that he should be on his knees. He placed his right arm round her waist and pressed his ear against her stomach. He couldn’t hear the beating heart, but he could hear and feel the movements of the child, feel its life. He was swept by a tide of emotion which rose, buffeted and engulfed him in a turbulent surge of awe, excitement and terror, then receded, leaving him spent and weak. For a moment he knelt there, unable to move, half-supported by Julian’s body, letting the smell of her, the warmth of her, the very essence of her seep into him.

Here we have the liberal, white, ideologue, revolutionary becoming Mary. 😕🙍 In the film a young, immigrant, woman of color takes that spot. And is by far the more suitable translation of the Mary figure from Her time and place. 🙏🙏🙏

“He will be there. You know he will be. He’ll be there at the birth and he’ll be there always. He killed Miriam’s brother; he’s killing Gascoigne now. If I fall into his hands I’ll never be free of him. My baby will never be free.”

This has unfortunate parallels to real life. I am reminded of the (retired, for now) Wisconsin Congressmen who said that 'we' (in this case meaning European descended Americans) weren't reproducing fast enough to keep 'our' (switching to Americans in general -- but still, really, meaning white folks) population/country stable. When you expand the frame to consider the congressman's party's platform -- of which our Wisconsin Congressman was largely seen as a visionary, thoughtful leader of --, you get the disturbing impression that, to this august political body of old white men, a woman's body isn't much more than a portable baby farm -- one that needs to be regulated; and conditioned for optimal reproductive efficiency. Gross. 😷

Theo turned to her. “Speak to her, Miriam. You’re the professional. You know she ought to be in hospital. Or are you thinking of yourself? Is that all any of you are thinking of, yourselves? Your own glory? It would be quite a thing, wouldn’t it? Midwife to the first of a new race, if that is what this child is destined to be. You don’t want to share the glory; you’re afraid you might not be allowed even a share. You want to be the only one to see this miracle child into the world.” Miriam said calmly: “I’ve delivered two hundred and eighty babies. They all seemed like miracles, at least at the time of birth. All I want is for the mother and child to be safe and well. I wouldn’t hand over a pregnant bitch to the mercies of the Warden of England. Yes, I’d prefer to deliver the child in hospital, but Julian has a right to her choice.”

This is a great exchange. In what way these characters are 'right' and 'on point' really depends on the person trying to read them. It is really complicated.

“What does the father think?” Rolf was impatient. “If we stand here talking about it much longer we won’t have a choice. Julian’s right. Once she’s in the Warden’s hands he’ll take over. He’ll be there at the birth. He’ll announce it to the world. He’ll be the one on television showing my child to the nation. That’s for me to do, not him.” Theo thought: He thinks he’s supporting his wife. But all he really cares about is getting the child safely born before Xan and the Council find out about the pregnancy. Anger and frustration made his voice harsh: “This is crazy. You aren’t children with a new toy which you can keep to yourselves, play with by yourselves, prevent the other children from sharing. This birth is the concern of the whole world, not just England. The child belongs to mankind.” Luke said: “The child belongs to God.”

It was Miriam who spoke. She said: “The child belongs to herself, but her mother is Julian. Until she’s born and for a time after the birth, the baby and her mother are one. Julian has the right to say where she will give birth.”

Luke’s voice sounded calm and patient. He could have been explaining the reading of the situation to a not very intelligent child. “We know they’ll come. They’ve been looking for us and they want us destroyed. But they may not come quickly, may not bother too much at first. You see, they don’t know about the baby. We never told Gascoigne.” “But he was part of you, part of the group. Didn’t he guess? He had eyes, couldn’t he see?” Julian said: “He was thirty-one and I doubt whether he ever saw a pregnant woman. No one has given birth for twenty-five years. It wasn’t a possibility his mind was open to. And the Sojourners I worked with in the camp, their minds weren’t open to it either. No one knows but we five.”

Hahaha.

Miriam said: “And Julian is wide-hipped, carrying high. It wouldn’t have been obvious to you if you hadn’t felt the foetus move.”

Oh. This is perfect.

Rolf said: “It was for his own protection, and ours. The fewer people who knew, the better. I had to tell Miriam, of course. We needed her skills. Then I told Luke, because Julian wanted him to know. It was something to do with his being a priest, some superstition or other. He’s supposed to bring us good luck. It was against my advice, but I told him.” Julian said: “I was the one who told Luke.” Theo thought that it was probably also against Rolf’s advice that he had been sent for. Julian had wanted him, and what she wanted they were trying to give. But the secret, once revealed, could never be unlearned. He might still try to escape commitment but he couldn’t now escape knowledge.

Theo looked at Julian. He wanted to ask: “Is this the man you and your God between you have chosen to repopulate the world?” He said coldly: “For God’s sake, don’t start threatening. You can reduce everything, even this, to the level of a cheap feature film. If I come with you it will be because I choose to.”

My favourite thing about the self-consciousness of this is that the film actually met the material where it was at -- in good faith, one might say -- and transcended it in a lot of ways. This doesn't happen very often. But you can read through the weightier, headier, most thoughtful passages of this book and see where the inspiration came to the filmmaker. The love and earnestness at the heart of this world-hardened genre piece are very much present in both texts.