The one thing that I instantly wrote down after class last Wednesday was the dialogue near the end of the book in which Ms. Emily describes the Morningdale scandal in more detail and we begin to find out what it was that even Ms. Emily didn't agree with. I found this section particularly disturbing because of the fact that Ms. Emily and, from how she says it, most of the population of England were afraid of a super-generation of kids, but completely okay with the killing of people for the donor programme. Its on page 264, and for some context, the quote ends like this: "It's one thing to create students, such as yourselves, for the donation programme. But a generation of created children who'd take their place in society? Children demonstrably superior to the rest of us? Oh no. That frightened people. They recoiled from it."
For me, this is ridiculously, plainly wrong. It's saying that they are completely fine with killing off "donors" for organs, but they would never have wanted a group of children that would live, but be better than the them, not to mention live in the same society and same "group". It seems incredibly perverse, but this novel has yet to show me some sane way of thinking. Maybe I am interpreting it wrong, but that's something I just thought was extremely disturbing, especially in the calm and remote manner in which Ms. Emily describes it, like it was no big deal, something completely offhand.
This part also explains more in depth that the reason Hailsham shut down was because of this scandal, because people were afraid to see the "donors" as people. The public at large didn't want to think about the programme anymore, and wanted it swept under the rug like it always used to be. This entire excerpt, for me, was something I wanted to hear everyone's opinions about, or maybe it was just me that found it particularly horrifying amidst the rest of the novel.
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I too found this part of the book to be disturbing. It made me think REALY. How can it be acceptable to make people for their organs but not to make enhanced kids? Maybe with the super generation of kids they would be able to come up with cures so kids would not be created with the sole purpose of donating their organs. Ms. Emily’s reaction to the Morningdale scandal just makes me think she is a strange woman. She is fine with killing people for their organs but to create a super-generation of kids is too much. How does this society deiced when their actions have gone too far. I would think that the creation of the donors would be too far.
ReplyDeleteI hadn't considered this interpretation before, but I think it's missing something. The reason people were comfortable with killing 'donors' for their organs is that they were able to maintain the illusion that clones are inferior. They were able to ignore the whole process. By suggesting that superior clones could be created, Morningdale's research implies that Kathy H, Ruth and Tommy may not be inferior after all.
ReplyDeleteThink of how animals are reared for food. People generally prefer not to think about their living conditions. There is a 'free range' lobby (akin to Hailsham), but it is very much dependent on fashion, with free range eggs far more popular than say free range milk. Imagine if a scientist created an animal as intelligent and sentient as humans. I suspect that meat-eaters might well be frightened and recoil. It's a bit of a stretch, but you could imagine that animal welfare would suddenly become a very uncomfortable issue. People, unwilling to be vegetarian, would abandon animal rights in an effort to avoid the question.