Limitations of solidarity in P. D. James’ 'The Children of Men'

Abstract

The Children of Men, the 1992 novel of English crime writer P. D. James, combines dystopia with the apocalyptic narrative. In 2021, England, like the rest of the world, faces extinction, as, mysteriously, global infertility has struck. The prevailing ‘sense of an ending’ has drained the energy of the people, who allow themselves to be ruled by the Warden of England, whom most regard as a benevolent dictator. In the secondary sources the conversion of Theo Faron, the stoic, self-regarding protagonist, is primarily read as a gradual awakening to love and faith, attesting the book a touch of the utopian and of the Christian parable. In contrast, this deconstructive reading of the novel explores the mechanisms accountable for a desolidarisation in the doomed society, which, eventually, appears to be irreversible, something glossed over in the text and in the available literature.