Children of Men and the Parable of the Sower both explore dystopian futures where lawlessness, chaos and poverty reign, but for very different reasons.
In Parable of the Sower, climate change and the wastage of fossil fuels has led to tangible problems like scarcity of freshwater and collapse of transport infrastructure respectively. In this hellish world, poverty and unemployment reigns, with desperate people driven to steal or kill in order to stay alive.
In Children of Men, poverty and unemployment are also huge problems, but they have not been the result of such obvious, tangible problems. When I say tangible, I mean there is an obvious link between these problems and the dystopian future they have created. For example, if water has become so scarce and thus expensive that many people can’t afford to buy enough to live, naturally it would drive some to lives of crime.
However, the particular dystopia in Children of Men was caused by the lack of hope, the lack of a future that comes with infertility.
It was not an actual lack of resources, or lack of jobs, or a future that caused this dystopia. If you examine the age range of the population at that point in time, the youngest person was 18 years old. This meant that the entire world was made up of adults. Adults who could, should they be so inclined, marshall the resources that they had to enjoy their years left on the planet. In the short term, there would be enough resources and jobs for everyone.
In fact, as the population aged and dropped, there would actually be more resources for the people left behind. A counterpoint is that the working population would decrease, but it isn’t too much of a stretch to imagine that resources could be husbanded and saved to take care of the aging population once resources like food and water could not be replenished by a fully working population.
My point is, in Children of Men, people were losing hope even though technically, they were looking at a resource surplus.
It leads one to a conclusion that most of us could come to intuitively. We don’t simply live to consume and survive. We need to know that what we are doing matters to someone. Teachers need children to teach. Doctors need babies to deliver. Idealistic teenaged volunteers need causes to fight for.
The similar dystopian futures in these two stories make the point that taking away our ability to have children is just as damaging as taking away our water.
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