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A Cage Of Butterflies Chapter Summary

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Texts critique the moral concerns of their time. Caswell’s novel ‘A Cage of Butterflies’ (Published in 1992) illustrates this through the thematic concern of science as a double-edged sword. Caswell emphasises the moral break-down of humankind through the characterisation of mad scientists, who through their greed and desire for scientific advancement fail to remember basic human values and respect for others. Through this, Caswell highlights the danger of humans usurping the role of God, and the importance of morality for the future of humankind.
The first issue of human morality has been stated above, ‘Science can be a double-edged sword’. Caswell demonstrates that there are two meanings to this issue, that because science is trying to achieve great efficiency for the human race and because of this, dehumanisation to the extent of sacrificing other lives will occur. This in the story is respectively characterised by Larsen and the Babies. Larsen in this novel is the stereotypical scientist who willingly sacrifice everything for their research and on the other hand, there are the Babies who fall victim to Larsen’s research. “He smiled. They would name the discovery after the discoverer. Larsen’s Syndrome. It had a nice ring to it.” Evident to this quote from chapter VIII, Breakthrough (page …show more content…

These thematic concerns were employed throughout the entire text demonstrating us that they were what destroyed the sense of human morality and what it should be built upon. Caswell suggests in his novel that everyone has something to offer and that science can be a double-edged sword through characterisation of characters such as Myriam, Ricardo and Larson. Through this Caswell achieves the one big picture, the main moral he would want us to take home. That ‘Humans should not usurp the role of

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