The Coming Race · Chapter
The Escape explained
Zee awakens the narrator during the Silent Hours and reveals that Taë failed to sway his father, who, with the council of three sages, has decreed the narrator's death at dawn.
What happens
Zee awakens the narrator during the Silent Hours and reveals that Taë failed to sway his father, who, with the council of three sages, has decreed the narrator's death at dawn. She leads him through the deserted streets to the chasm she has reopened, then carries him aloft through the darkness using her wings and a starry circlet. They emerge in a mine gallery, where she bids him a tearful farewell, explaining that the chasm will be sealed forever. The narrator returns to the upper world, settles in his own country, and, facing a fatal illness, records his account as a warning about the Vril-ya.
Themes in this chapter
Gender Roles and Female Empowerment
Zee, a Gy, takes the active, heroic role—defying the council, engineering the escape, and physically carrying the narrator—while he is passive and dependent.
Technology and Power
Zee's starry circlet and wings, along with the reopening of the chasm, demonstrate the Vril-ya's advanced technology and its capacity to both save and destroy.
Colonialism and Extermination
The narrator's fear that the Vril-ya will eventually emerge as 'our inevitable destroyers' reflects colonial anxieties about being supplanted by a more powerful race.
Characters to notice
- The Narrator
Awakened by Zee and rescued from the death decree; escapes to the upper world and later records his story.
- Zee
Defies the council's decree, reopens the chasm, and carries the narrator aloft; bids him a sorrowful farewell, sealing the chasm forever.
- Taë
Mentioned as having tried but failed to persuade his father to spare the narrator.
- Aph-Lin
Referenced as Taë's father, who consulted with three sages and decreed the narrator's death.
Key passages
“I was awakened from the disturbed slumber into which I had not long fallen, by a hand on my shoulder. I started and beheld Zee standing beside me. 'Hush,' she said in a whisper; 'let no one hear us. Dost thou think that I have ceased to watch over thy safety because I could not win thy love?'”
Zee wakes the narrator from a restless sleep, whispering that despite his rejection of her love, she still watches over him.
Zee's loyalty and love persist even after the narrator's refusal, setting the stage for her rescue.
“I have seen Taë. He has not prevailed with his father, who had meanwhile conferred with the three sages who, in doubtful matters, he takes into council, and by their advice he has ordained thee to perish when the world reawakens to life.”
Taë failed to convince his father, who, after consulting three sages, decreed that the narrator must die at dawn.
The death sentence is formalized through the Vril-ya's council of sages, heightening the urgency of escape.
“Now, said she, put thine arms around me for the first and last time. Nay, thus; courage, and cling firm. As she spoke her form dilated, the vast wings expanded. Clinging to her, I was borne aloft through the terrible chasm.”
Zee instructs the narrator to embrace her, then expands her wings and flies upward through the chasm, carrying him to safety.
The physical and emotional climax of the escape, emphasizing Zee's superhuman abilities and self-sacrifice.
“The Gy kissed me on my forehead, passionately, but as with a mother's passion, and said, as the tears gushed from her eyes, 'Farewell forever. Thou wilt not let me go into thy world—thou canst never return to mine.'”
Zee kisses the narrator's forehead with a motherly passion, weeping as she says goodbye forever, acknowledging that he cannot enter her world nor she his.
The final parting underscores the irreversible separation between the two worlds and Zee's profound grief.
“Only, the more I think of a people calmly developing, in regions excluded from our sight and deemed uninhabitable by our sages, powers surpassing our most disciplined modes of force, and virtues to which our life, social and political, becomes antagonistic in proportion as our civilisation advances—the more devoutly I pray that ages may yet elapse before there emerge into sunlight our inevitable destroyers.”
Reflecting on the Vril-ya's hidden development of superior powers and virtues that clash with human civilization, the narrator prays that they remain hidden for ages to come.
The narrator's concluding warning encapsulates the novel's anxiety about a superior, potentially destructive race.
