Preview of The Guardians Summary:

Like many of Christopher's novels, The Guardians examines the nature of freedom and independent thought. A sobering and relatively realistic account of life in the near future, The Guardians is set in an England that has deliberately been divided into two mutually suspicious camps by a small group of "dedicated men who . . . act as guardians over the rest." Although the Guardians' professed aim is benevolent, the effect of their coercive policies is to deprive all people—both the teeming masses in the Conurb and the leisured gentry in the County—of any real freedom of thought or action.

The most important conflict in the story is not the external one between the Guardians and the rebels, but the internal one that torments thirteen-year-old Rob Randall, the novel's protagonist.

Rob is an intelligent and sensitive boy who only gradually comes to understand his potential in society. Consigned...