Futur in a World Ending.

KONATE Awa
The road is a novel written by Conan McCarthy, published in 2006, it contains two
protagonists, a man and a little boy who evolve in an apocalyptic world where they both try to
survive, while keeping the rest of decency and humanity that is still in them.
Children of Men, written by P.D. James, was published in 1992, in this book is depicted a
dystopian world where humanity has become infertile. The protagonist, Theo, evolves in a
United Kingdom ruled by a dictator who happens to be his cousin, and will take on the task of
helping a group of rebels to save the first pregnant woman in several years.
Several themes run through both novels, raising the same central questions. The question of
religion, the place of the child, the question of hope and goodness in a dystopian world. To
observe the difference in the treatment of these themes in these two novels we will articulate
our reflection around the following question: How is the future approached in a world that no
longer has a posterity?

In these two novels, the field of possible futures is extremely limited, even annihilated.
In The Road, it is nature and the signs of civilizations that perish. McCarthy's universe is
characterized by a world that is collapsing: the presence of the sun is rare, precious, the animals
have disappeared, and the vegetation is also dying. Thus, as time goes by, we can imagine that
the end of nature will eventually take with it the remains of the human species. It is an
unrecognizable world for the reader, but also for the character of the man who has known a
prosperous world, unlike the little boy. It is clear that this is a world coming to its end with
several elements. First, because the characters are in a constant state of survival: they must
actively act to meet their needs, and when they have no more food within reach, the man knows
that they are immediately in a state of starvation.
In Children Of Men, the world comes to an end with the sterility that affects humanity. Nature is
not affected here: animals still have the possibility to procreate, the characters of P.D. James'
universe are not in difficulty to meet their basic needs. The problem lies rather in the
maintenance of the morality of humanity, and its emotional needs linked to the end of the
species inevitably to come, but also in the preparation of the death, which arrives for the whole
species as they cannot reproduce themselves anymore.

Thus, in these two worlds where the very idea of the future is uncertain, some
institutions lose their meaning in that they can no longer be a vessel of any hope. They no longer
have the same scope, and this is the case of religion.
Even if they are not completely abandoned in the two novels, the figure of God from the
monotheistic religions is clearly rejected by most of the characters who cannot conceive the
existence of a god in a world where suffering is omnipresent. Ely, (The Road), denies the
existence of God, "There is no God," and Hedges (Children of Men) does the same, claiming that
he "hopes He (God) burns in His own hell." Here a central question of theology is raised: why
believe in God and how to think about God's cohabitation with evils that affect even innocent
people ?
It is only in moments of hope that religion is revived, as when Theo is caught up in Julian's
religious rituals, once he learns that she was pregnant, and as his cynicism leaves him and he
regains faith in humanity, he enjoys reading the Burial Service after Luke's death.
Just as religion, history and the past do not have the same resonance in a dystopian world as in
the contemporary world. According to Ernest Lavisse, history is a reflection on time that
motivates the action of a generation to influence its present, but it is also a continuum that we
know will be passed from generation to generation and in which we feel a duty to participate,
while incorporating into our action the lessons learned from history to advise our future. This is
what Theo does in Children of Men. His profession as a history teacher and his knowledge allows
him to understand Xan's actions, easily detecting that his cousin is replicating the same patterns
as dictators before him in history. But if Theo is attached to history, it is not the case of the
Omegas who have always known a finished world. “[The] unspoken question [of the Omegas],
"What is the point of all this?" [...] History, which interprets the past to understand the present
and confront the future, is the least rewarding discipline for a dying species.” It is clear that the
Omegas are not driven by the same desire of previous generations to build a future for
themselves and the generations to come.
In The Road, the man also does not want to think back to the past, going so far as to reject his
memories and dreams because they are of no world that exists. He also invites his son to
emancipate himself by telling him that "When your dreams are of some world that never was or
of some world that never will be and you are happy again then you will have given up. Do you
understand? And you can't give up." For him, thinking about a world that is no longer is futile.
These two instances suffer from the disappearance of the future, because their practice is
somehow motivated by fear. History, by the fear of repeating the errors of the past, and religion,
by the fear of the lack of meaning of life. But if one does not make the intellectual effort to
imagine the future, especially the risks that are linked to it, then the scope of history and religion
is unsurprisingly annihilated.

There remains in these two dystopian configurations a sign of hope in the figure of the
child, which is central to both plots.
In The Road, the Boy is set up as the heir of a world he has not known and has the mission to
continue to "carry the fire", which can be interpreted as an invitation to preserve the qualities
proper to humanity. Thus, the child is not the vector of a new world, but he holds within him the
rest of the goodness and human decency of a world that precedes him. Here, it is not in staying
alive that his role lies, but in maintaining his qualities, his innocence, his distance from the
horrors of an apocalyptic world. On the contrary, according to his father, who bequeaths to him
the mission of carrying fire, it would be better for him to die than to remain alive in a world
where he would succumb to atrocities: he teaches him to shoot himself in case he is captured, he
promises him that they will never become “the bad guys”, even if they starve to death, and
what's more, the man only survives so that the little boy will continue to carry fire, as his wife
had predicted: "The one thing I can tell you is that you will survive for yourself. I know because I
would never have come this far." And indeed, he survives not just to survive but to ensure that
the boy either does not abandon the humanity in him.
But the figure of the child can also be a receptacle of hope, this time turned towards the future,
as is the case in Children Of Men. It is not a question of the child being the container of a past
world but on the contrary of opening a way towards a newly possible future. Here then, unlike
the little boy, Julian's child opens up a new possibility to free humanity from the end of its
destiny. It is also a vector of goodness: while Theo points out to Julian that the only thing people
are interested in in a dying world is " security, comfort, pleasure", and that there is no point in
trying to make them care, we understand that it is because of her child that she attaches so much
importance to it.

In conclusion, in these two works where the characters face a world that is coming to an
end, several symbols see their meaning shaken by the disappearance of the future: religion,
history, children, and this reveals to us the importance of our capacity to perceive a future in
order to apprehend it correctly. We can easily make the parallel with the fatalism felt for certain
contemporary causes and realize through these two works that one of the levers of action to act
for a better future, it is perhaps to promise this said better future.

Bibliography
James, Phyllis. The Children of Men. United Kingdom: Faber & Faber, 1992.
McCarthy, Cormac. The Road. United State: Alfred A Knopf, 2006.
Leduc, Jean. “Pourquoi enseigner l’histoire : La réponse d’Ernest Lavisse” Histoire@Politique.
March, 2013.