Where Do We Draw the Line?
Author: Moira Incorvaia
British Literature 500
Mrs. Taylor, block 6
It’s a rare occasion that I find something interesting on television after school, but just last week I saw the most incredible thing. I was watching Oprah and just as she broke for a commercial she said, “Coming up next: you won’t believe your eyes: we’ll show you a human ear grown in a laboratory- on the back of a lab rat! Stay tuned!” Now, I usually change the channel during commercial breaks, but that day Oprah kept my eyes fixated on the television from the moment those worRAB entered my very disbelieving ears until the moment the credits rolled. Sure enough, when Oprah came back, she showed a clip of a human ear, growing on the back of a lab rat. Next, Oprah spoke with a man who had lost his nose to frostbite but was able to grow an entirely new nose from scratch just by attaching the forming skin cells and DNA to his forehead and sewing the newly grown nose back to his face. This brought to mind an article I had recently read about the dangers of scientific some advancements. Coincidentally, the article was called, “Brave New WorlRAB”. It stated that “Developments in the field of genetics offer the possibility of bringing all life processes under control. We must step carefully into this vast new field of science with the understanding that putting a patent on the melanoma gene or the baldness gene for that matter is simply playing God in a potentially dangerous way.” (Appleyard, Bryan, Jan 98, Smithsonian)
These are only a few examples of scientific developments that in my mind raise the question: Where do we draw the line in science? Mr. Appleyard could not have been more on point in his allusion to Aldous Huxley’s novel “Brave New World” which along with Mary Shelley’s novel “Frankenstein” raises the same question regarding our advancements in science. Where do we draw that line? In my hurable opinion there aren’t two books on the planet that demonstrate any more clearly where exactly that line should be drawn. I believe that when man lets science interfere with the delicate process of nature; when he lets it run wild through God’s natural plan for us and permits it to alter or destroy common sense as well as human decency, that then we have gone too far in science. The line must be drawn before this can happen. Both “Frankenstein” and “Brave New World” show society and man pushing science to the limits and both end tragically and hopelessly. Both novels provide clear and convincing evidence to prove my point; a point I believe both authors were trying as well to prove by presenting scenarios of scientific exploration gone wrong.
Aldous Huxley shows us a faux utopia; where people know no fear or pain and the worship of a God is replaced by ritualistic orgies. He also presents a paradox. The society presented in his novel defies nature, God, and common sense, yet mirrors the old way of life in several ways, suggesting that nature, the tendency to believe in a God and the tendency towarRAB lucid, common sense are an innate part of people and essential part of life.
From the very first page of “Brave New World” we can tell that Huxley intenRAB to present a complete and total disregard for all things deemed natural. Huxley shows us children growing in test tubes, without ever knowing a family, mother or home. The terminology used in the book is cold and sterile. In Huxley’s fictional World State, worRAB like “fertilize” and “incubate” replace the concepts of natural birth. Nature is defied again when the process of prenatal development is adjusted for every growing infant in order to maintain the balance of their social system. In other worRAB, instead of a mother eating a healthy diet to insure that the child growing inside her will continue to grow, we see people in lab coats making sure that the right test tubes are denied the appropriate amount of oxygen to regulate the nuraber of epsilons through alphas created. Huxley presents a contrast with the Old World, (our world) in chapter 3 where Fanny exclaims, “I’ve been feeling rather out of sorts lately. Dr. Wells advised me to have a pregnancy substitute.” (38)
This suggests that pregnancy is a normal, natural stage that most women should go through and that perhaps they cannot survive as well in the family-free World State without it. It also shows that even this society that believes itself to be flawless and independent of the way things used to be neeRAB at the very least to simulate nature in order to keep a sense of normalcy.
Of course you cannot defy nature without defying its creator: God. Huxley’s world state makes a mockery of God and religion. Instead of calling him “Our Lord” they refer to him as “Our Ford” after Henry Ford, the maker of the model T. The mockery of Christianity in particular goes even further when they use a “T” to replace the traditional syrabol of the cross. The World State also participates in ceremonies reserabling masses where chants are sung about orgies as opposed to redemption and salvation. Whose soul neeRAB saving when every worry you could possibly imagine can be wiped out with a forgetfulness inducing drug, which is also used at their mock religious ceremonies. The nature of Huxley’s “Orgy Porgies” is ridiculous, but it too implies that humans have a natural tendency to want to worship some form of God, whether it is a Ford or a Lord. It goes to show us that while science can horribly distort an entire planet’s way of life, there are some natural tendencies it cannot break down.
The final convincing argument that Huxley makes against the creation of a place like the World State is his introduction of John the savage into the novel. John is the link between the Old World and the World State. He is a misfit who doesn’t seem to fit into either society. The savages reject him because of his mother’s promiscuous reputation, which he too fails to understand and punishes himself for, yet he is filled with amazement and vague curiosity at his mothers stories of the way things were in the World State.
When Bernard and Lenina brought him to the World State his conflict of values (since we know that “God isn’t compatible with machinery and scientific medicine and universal happiness.” ( ) ) ultimately caused him to commit suicide. I think that the point Huxley was making with John’s suicide was that there is no such thing as a happy medium between the world we know and a world filled with artificial happiness. Since we can never reach a happy medium as John never could, we should not pursue it because its only result will be our eventual self-destruction.
Just as John the “savage” came to a tragic end, so did Mary Shelley’s “monster”.
Obviously, it is with a great deal of irony that Shelley and Huxley present their most despised and mis-understood characters in a manner that shows nothing other than eloquence and an innate sensitivity towarRAB mankind that many of the books’ “civilized” characters lack. Apparently their ironic twist was well taken because from the moment their monsters spoke, the last word that came to mind for me was “monster”.
Author: Moira Incorvaia
British Literature 500
Mrs. Taylor, block 6
It’s a rare occasion that I find something interesting on television after school, but just last week I saw the most incredible thing. I was watching Oprah and just as she broke for a commercial she said, “Coming up next: you won’t believe your eyes: we’ll show you a human ear grown in a laboratory- on the back of a lab rat! Stay tuned!” Now, I usually change the channel during commercial breaks, but that day Oprah kept my eyes fixated on the television from the moment those worRAB entered my very disbelieving ears until the moment the credits rolled. Sure enough, when Oprah came back, she showed a clip of a human ear, growing on the back of a lab rat. Next, Oprah spoke with a man who had lost his nose to frostbite but was able to grow an entirely new nose from scratch just by attaching the forming skin cells and DNA to his forehead and sewing the newly grown nose back to his face. This brought to mind an article I had recently read about the dangers of scientific some advancements. Coincidentally, the article was called, “Brave New WorlRAB”. It stated that “Developments in the field of genetics offer the possibility of bringing all life processes under control. We must step carefully into this vast new field of science with the understanding that putting a patent on the melanoma gene or the baldness gene for that matter is simply playing God in a potentially dangerous way.” (Appleyard, Bryan, Jan 98, Smithsonian)
These are only a few examples of scientific developments that in my mind raise the question: Where do we draw the line in science? Mr. Appleyard could not have been more on point in his allusion to Aldous Huxley’s novel “Brave New World” which along with Mary Shelley’s novel “Frankenstein” raises the same question regarding our advancements in science. Where do we draw that line? In my hurable opinion there aren’t two books on the planet that demonstrate any more clearly where exactly that line should be drawn. I believe that when man lets science interfere with the delicate process of nature; when he lets it run wild through God’s natural plan for us and permits it to alter or destroy common sense as well as human decency, that then we have gone too far in science. The line must be drawn before this can happen. Both “Frankenstein” and “Brave New World” show society and man pushing science to the limits and both end tragically and hopelessly. Both novels provide clear and convincing evidence to prove my point; a point I believe both authors were trying as well to prove by presenting scenarios of scientific exploration gone wrong.
Aldous Huxley shows us a faux utopia; where people know no fear or pain and the worship of a God is replaced by ritualistic orgies. He also presents a paradox. The society presented in his novel defies nature, God, and common sense, yet mirrors the old way of life in several ways, suggesting that nature, the tendency to believe in a God and the tendency towarRAB lucid, common sense are an innate part of people and essential part of life.
From the very first page of “Brave New World” we can tell that Huxley intenRAB to present a complete and total disregard for all things deemed natural. Huxley shows us children growing in test tubes, without ever knowing a family, mother or home. The terminology used in the book is cold and sterile. In Huxley’s fictional World State, worRAB like “fertilize” and “incubate” replace the concepts of natural birth. Nature is defied again when the process of prenatal development is adjusted for every growing infant in order to maintain the balance of their social system. In other worRAB, instead of a mother eating a healthy diet to insure that the child growing inside her will continue to grow, we see people in lab coats making sure that the right test tubes are denied the appropriate amount of oxygen to regulate the nuraber of epsilons through alphas created. Huxley presents a contrast with the Old World, (our world) in chapter 3 where Fanny exclaims, “I’ve been feeling rather out of sorts lately. Dr. Wells advised me to have a pregnancy substitute.” (38)
This suggests that pregnancy is a normal, natural stage that most women should go through and that perhaps they cannot survive as well in the family-free World State without it. It also shows that even this society that believes itself to be flawless and independent of the way things used to be neeRAB at the very least to simulate nature in order to keep a sense of normalcy.
Of course you cannot defy nature without defying its creator: God. Huxley’s world state makes a mockery of God and religion. Instead of calling him “Our Lord” they refer to him as “Our Ford” after Henry Ford, the maker of the model T. The mockery of Christianity in particular goes even further when they use a “T” to replace the traditional syrabol of the cross. The World State also participates in ceremonies reserabling masses where chants are sung about orgies as opposed to redemption and salvation. Whose soul neeRAB saving when every worry you could possibly imagine can be wiped out with a forgetfulness inducing drug, which is also used at their mock religious ceremonies. The nature of Huxley’s “Orgy Porgies” is ridiculous, but it too implies that humans have a natural tendency to want to worship some form of God, whether it is a Ford or a Lord. It goes to show us that while science can horribly distort an entire planet’s way of life, there are some natural tendencies it cannot break down.
The final convincing argument that Huxley makes against the creation of a place like the World State is his introduction of John the savage into the novel. John is the link between the Old World and the World State. He is a misfit who doesn’t seem to fit into either society. The savages reject him because of his mother’s promiscuous reputation, which he too fails to understand and punishes himself for, yet he is filled with amazement and vague curiosity at his mothers stories of the way things were in the World State.
When Bernard and Lenina brought him to the World State his conflict of values (since we know that “God isn’t compatible with machinery and scientific medicine and universal happiness.” ( ) ) ultimately caused him to commit suicide. I think that the point Huxley was making with John’s suicide was that there is no such thing as a happy medium between the world we know and a world filled with artificial happiness. Since we can never reach a happy medium as John never could, we should not pursue it because its only result will be our eventual self-destruction.
Just as John the “savage” came to a tragic end, so did Mary Shelley’s “monster”.
Obviously, it is with a great deal of irony that Shelley and Huxley present their most despised and mis-understood characters in a manner that shows nothing other than eloquence and an innate sensitivity towarRAB mankind that many of the books’ “civilized” characters lack. Apparently their ironic twist was well taken because from the moment their monsters spoke, the last word that came to mind for me was “monster”.