Throughout history, texts have been utilized as a medium to critique the potential dangers of scientific research when incentivised by personal profits. Caswell’s 1992 novel, ‘A Cage of Butterflies’ explores this through the thematic concern of science as a double edged sword, reflecting his own context where issues of air pollution and animal cruelty were coming to be understood as the ramifications of scientific research. Whilst science can be connoted to efficiency and benefiting to the human race, human selfishness can corrupt the research process and in turn can cause harm to the oppressed. Research labs testing for new miracle remedies and more incipient technologies will do everything in their potency to get the impeccable solution,
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The author exhibits this through the utilization of first person narration and interior monologue of the subjects of Larsen’s experiment, the Babies, where the readers may then realise what it feels like in the shoes of the oppressed. For example, in paragraph XXX, Myriam has expressed that “We would rather be dead”, a malevolent and shocking thought that only someone who have had suffered serious mistreatment and dehumanisation can have. Through this, the author establishes the amount of pain felt by those who are dehumanised through corrupted scientific research. Caswell additionally highlights that when people pursue personal gains, there is the potential of the growth of stratification between the capital and labour, and harm done to others, especially to minority groups through parallelism. Through the novel, the author uses parallelism where Larsen and the Babies reflect the today’s scientists and their test subjects, and where it shows how test subjects, especially lab-animals, have no voice and denied of independent choices like in the case of Larsen and the Babies. This can show how the humans in control are abusing their authority as they become swallowed up by their personal intrigues to gain prosperity and prominence. From this, Caswell conveys how the loss of human value can occur in the scientific investigation.
Through a close study of the text, “A Cage of Butterflies” it is pellucid that Caswell predominantly explores how scientific research can become corrupted through the profit motive in his characterisation of the capital and labour, Larsen and the Babies. This text efficaciously stands as a moral tale to admonish readers of the hazards of selfish pursuits in
The author exhibits this through the utilization of first person narration and interior monologue of the subjects of Larsen’s experiment, the Babies, where the readers may then realise what it feels like in the shoes of the oppressed. For example, in paragraph XXX, Myriam has expressed that “We would rather be dead”, a malevolent and shocking thought that only someone who have had suffered serious mistreatment and dehumanisation can have. Through this, the author establishes the amount of pain felt by those who are dehumanised through corrupted scientific research. Caswell additionally highlights that when people pursue personal gains, there is the potential of the growth of stratification between the capital and labour, and harm done to others, especially to minority groups through parallelism. Through the novel, the author uses parallelism where Larsen and the Babies reflect the today’s scientists and their test subjects, and where it shows how test subjects, especially lab-animals, have no voice and denied of independent choices like in the case of Larsen and the Babies. This can show how the humans in control are abusing their authority as they become swallowed up by their personal intrigues to gain prosperity and prominence. From this, Caswell conveys how the loss of human value can occur in the scientific investigation.
Through a close study of the text, “A Cage of Butterflies” it is pellucid that Caswell predominantly explores how scientific research can become corrupted through the profit motive in his characterisation of the capital and labour, Larsen and the Babies. This text efficaciously stands as a moral tale to admonish readers of the hazards of selfish pursuits in