The Humbling of Humanity Through Extraterrestrial Intervention: An Unlikely Utopia in Childhood's End Amy L Aris College

When the Overlords in Arthur C. Clarke’s novel Childhood’s End descend over mankind, humanity is immediately awestruck and completely humbled by their scientific and technological prowess. As the Overlords become more active in human society and affairs, their intelligence and pure ability to easily accomplish every human goal completely humbles humanity. Humans no longer consider themselves the most capable beings on Earth as the Overlords appear to exceed humankind in nearly every capacity. By encountering the Overlords, humankind is forced to recognize not only that they are not the only force in the universe, but that they are inferior in almost every possible way. This recognition of humanity’s own inferiority allows society to evolve and become the utopia it does.

The first arrival of the Overlords puts a halt to the space race as humans realize they can never achieve the superior space-travel the Overlords have. The Overlord’s first arrive when the Americans and the Germans are trying to both make it space first, but their arrival with their large and amazing ships cause both sides of the race to give up, “…he had lost the race…not by the few weeks or months that he had feared, but by millennia” (Clarke 7). The character...