Childhood's End

The following is a report from Inner Party member O'Brien to the other members of the Inner Party of Oceania with regard to the threat of Arthur Clarke's Childhood's End to the peace and order of Oceania and the need for the complete and total destruction of the book:

This book is a threat to Oceania because it encourages and perpetuates false and dangerous ideas about "individuality" and human "independence" that will lead to frustration and misery among our citizens and general unease in the state.

The first two parts of the book are quite misleading. The author seems to be showing how a superior external force can establish a society of conformity in which all are at peace and happy. But in the third part of the book we find the establishment of a separate colony operating according to concepts which are both illusory and dangerous to the smooth functioning of any state whose citizens are exposed to such concepts.

As we read in Clarke's insidious book:

Here on this island we're trying to save something of humanity's independence, its artistic traditions. We've no hostility toward the Overlords: we simply want to be left alone to go our own way. When they destroyed the old nations and the way of life man had known since the beginning of history, they swept away many good things with the bad. . . . People are becoming passive sponges---absorbing but never creating (Clarke 140-141).

In establishing Oceania, we have expended tremendous effort to abolish the individual h

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n the part of "Overlords" is inexcusable. The proles will read this book and believe themselves not only to be capable of individuality, independence and creativity, but they will even more dangerously come to believe they are superior to their actual rulers here in Oceania, namely us. The proles will come to equate us with the Overlords who are the self-proclaimed "midwives" of the humans in Athens. They will come to believe we are "barren" as the Overlords, destined to pass away after we have served our purpose in helping them transcend their previous limitations (Clarke 176-177). The book is so meandering in its plot and theme that the proles can only be finally drunk on its sloppy surplus of dangerous notions. They will believe, contrary to reality, that world peace is possible, when it is not only not possible but quite undesirable. Without such enemies as Oceania has, its citizens would have no target for its hatred. As we know, the best citizen "is supposed to live in a continuous frenzy of hatred of foreign enemies and internal traitors, triumph over victories, and self-abasement before the power and wisdom of the Party" (Orwell 174). By reading of a world at peace, the people will either long for such a fantasy and wreak

Category: Literature - C