Boys From Brazil, The (1976)
By Ira Levin
Biological determinism; Cloning; Genetic engineering; Nature/nurture
Dr. Mengele creates a horde of Hitler clones in hopes of recreating the Third Reich.
In September 1974, Dr. Josef Mengele, the Nazi “Angel of Death” infamous for his experimentation on twins at Auschwitz, gathers six SS assassins and orders them on a “holy” mission to murder ninety-six men. Though the targets live in various countries, each is a civil servant around the age of sixty-five. Unbeknownst to the secret council, Mengele’s entire discussion is taped by an intrepid German boy, who immediately contacts the famed Nazi-hunter Yosef Liebermann. He tells Liebermann about the Nazis’ conversation, but before he can play the tape, he is brutally murdered by Mengele’s henchmen. Liebermann is confused and intrigued by the fragments of information passed to him, and begins to investigate the “accidental” deaths of sixty-five year old men occurring shortly after the Nazis’ conference. At first, he notices no obvious reason for Nazis’ assassination of these apparently innocuous public servants. Just as he is about to abandon his investigation, Liebermann is shocked to come upon the teenage son of one the American victims – because the boy looks exactly like the son of a German victim. As the Nazis continue to carry out Mengele’s mysterious mission, Liebermann begins to uncover the secret purpose of the assassinations: Mengele has cloned Hitler through mononuclear reproduction, or the substitution of a body cell nucleus for the nucleus of a fertilized egg cell shortly after conception. Mengele has attempted to mimic the environmental factors which shaped Hitler’s psyche by placing the clones with families similar to Hitler’s own, and killing the clones’ fathers at the same age Hitler’s father died. Now, Liebermann must halt the assassinations of the clones’ fathers, which could trigger the boys’ transformations into a new generation of Nazi dictators.
Levin addresses the issue of environmental influence on the development of character, the so-called “nature versus nurture” debate that first arose during the initial stages of genetic research. Here, Mengele assumes that the Hitler clones cannot develop into influential dictators unless the original environmental conditions which shaped Hitler are reproduced. Thus, nurture becomes paramount in triggering traits, and genetic composition alone is insufficient to determine the traits’ expression. Liebermann does not consider it moral to destroy the Hitler clones merely because they share the dictator’s DNA; he opposes the plan to murder the boys because the indiscriminate assassination of children would be as immoral as the Nazis’ actions. Genetic cloning is offered here as a given rather than a theoretical science, thus foregrounding the ethical considerations surrounding genetic research. Levin selects the most reviled man of the century to be the subject of the fictional cloning, thereby illustrating the “worst case scenario” of mononuclear reproduction; would the cloning of Mahatma Gandhi or Martin Luther King provoke such vitriolic opposition? As Professor Nurnberger tells Liebermann, the cloning process itself is neither good nor evil, but is shaped by its practical application.
Evaluation: Levin takes the “nightmare scenario” argument against cloning to the extreme here, articulating precisely the fears many express in contemporary debates about genetic engineering. This is an accessible novel with clear prose, and would be appropriate for students looking to explore the ethical aspects of genetic technologies.
– Natalie Champ