INGLESE

Anxiety and Rebellion

A deep cultural crisis

The first half of the twentieth century was an age of extraordinary transformations. Il was marked by two World Wars, witnessed the launch of the atomic bomb, new and faster means of transport an communication were discovered, and psychology gained a scientific status.
A deep cultural crisis had been growing since the last two decades of the 19th century and led to the end of the system of Victorian values. The private morality of the Victorians had been strict and taboo-ridden, decency had to be maintained, whatever was going on under the surface; the positivistic faith in progress and science had led people to believe that all human misery would be swept away. Yet the First World War, in which almost a million British soldiers died, left the country in a disillusioned and cynical mood: stability and prosperity proved to belong only to a privileged class, consciences were haunted by the atrocities of the war. The generation gap between the young and the old, regarded as responsible for the lives wasted during the war, grew wider and wider. An increasing feeling of frustration led to a remarkable transformation of the notions of Imperial hegemony and white superiority as a result of the slow dissolution of the Empire into a free association of states, the Commonwealth.
Nothing seemed to be right or certain; even science and religion seemed to offer little comfort or security. Scientists and philosophers destroyed the old, predictable universe which had sustained the Victorians in their optimistic outlook, and new views of man and the universe emerged.

Freud’s influence

The first set of new ideas was introduced by Sigmund Freud (1856-1939) in his essay The Interpretation of Dreams (1900). Freud explained that the development of the human psyche is deeply affected by the subconscious; the discovery that man's action could be motivated by irrational forces of which he might know nothing was very disturbing. Freud's theory also maintained that the super-ego, that is to say the constraints imposed on the individual by society, education, and moral laws, can profoundly distort man's behaviour. The effects in the sphere of family life were deep: the relationship between parents and children was altered; the Freudian concept of infantile sexuality focused attention on the importance of early development and childhood regained a status it had previously had only in the pages of Jean -Jacques Rousseau the conventional models of relationship between the sexes were readjusted, also thanks to the struggles of the movement far women's suffrage. Freud's new method of investigation of the human mind through the analysis of dreams and the concept of free association influenced the writers of the modern age.

The theory of relativity

In the field of science the old certainties were discarded by the introduction of the concept of relativity by Albert Einstein (1879-1955), whose theory conceived lime and space as subjective dimensions. Even Quantum Mechanics and the new theories of language postulated by the Austrian philosopher Ludwig Wittgenstein (1889-1951) shook the old stable foundations of scientific thoughts. As a consequence the world view lost its solidity and the scientific revolution was complemented by the verbal experimentation and the exploration of memory in literature, the rebellion against perspective and against phenomenal representation in art, or the revolution of tone, rhythm and harmony in music.

External lime vs internal time

The idea of lime was questioned also by the American associationist philosopher William James (1842-1910) and the French philosopher Henri Bergson (1859-1941). James, in his Principles of Psychology (1890), held that our mind records every single experience as a continuous flow of 'the already' into 'the not yet'. Bergson made a distinction between historical lime, which is external, linear, and measured in terms of the spatial distance travelled by a pendulum or the hands of a clock, and psychological lime, which is internal, subjective, and measured by the relative emotional intensity of a moment. Bergson also gave guidance to writers seeking to capture the effects of emotional relativity, since he suggested that a thought or feeling could be measured in terms of the number of perceptions, memories, and associations attached to it. In the cultural crisis that affected society, the creative writer and the literary critic reasserted the centrality of literature as a guide to the perplexities of an age whose keywords were isolation, alienation, and, to quote the title of a poem by W.H. Auden, anxiety.

Lit and Lab - Zanichelli

Freud

Freud's theory of the unconscious

Freud's Interpretation of Dreams (1899) proposed a theory of human consciousness as multi-layered, involving different levels of experience and memory, Of these levels the most radically significant was the unconscious, which could not be accessed except through dreams, Freud argued that much of man's conscious behaviour was governed by irrational unconscious drives (motivations) which were established very early in life.

Man's childhood experience therefore had a great influence on his behaviour as an adult, because the memory of it was preserved in his unconscious and thus continued to influence his adult self. This represented a considerable challenge to the idea that the world was rationally ordered and progressive in nature, Freud's theories, suggested that man organised the information he received from the outside world according to his own interior experience and desires, and that his perception of reality was thus fundamentally subjective.

BERGSON AND LA DURÉE

Henri Bergson argued that to understand real human experience it was necessary to consider the way rime was perceived intuitively as a 'real duration', rather than according to its units of measure i.e. hours, minutes, seconds. Time, Bergson says, cannot be measured according to units far it is a flow and not a series of points. Instead of perceiving rime as linear, we experience the uniting of past, present and future in the same moment. As Bergson says in Matter and Memory:
 
'The duration wherein we see ourselves acting, and in which it is useful that we should see ourselves, is a duration whose elements are dissociated and juxtaposed. The duration wherein we act is a duration wherein our states melt into each other. It is within this that we should try to replace ourselves by thought, in the exceptional and unique case, when we speculate on the intimate nature of action, that is to say, when we are discussing human freedom.'
 
In many ways Bergson's durée is a concept closely bound up with the invention of cinema. For it was cinema which first indicated an idea of movement that could not be reduced to instants, a movement image, which showed that experience had a real duration in the moment it took place, and that this duration could be made to appear. Crucial to this idea of duration was memory, far, as Bergson says, 'our consciousness of the present is already memory,' that is to say, as soon as we know we have experienced something, it has already passed. But the persistence of the past in the present shows that in a vital sense the moment is never aver:
 
'But how can the past, which, by hypothesis, has ceased to be, preserve itself? Have we not here a real contradiction? We reply that the question is just whether the past has ceased to exist or whether it has simply ceased to be useful. You define the present in an arbitrary manner as that which is, whereas the present is simply what is being made. Nothing is less than the present moment, if you understand by that the indivisible limit which divides the past from the future. When we think this present is going to be, it exists not yet, and when we think it as existing, it is already past. If, on the other hand, what you are considering is the concrete present such as it is already lived by consciousness, we may say that this present consists in large measure, in the immediate past. In the fraction of a second which covers the briefest possible perception of light, billions of vibrations have taken place, of which the first is separated from the last by an interval which is enormously divided. Your perception, however instantaneous, consists then in an incalculable multitude of remembered elements; in truth, every perception is already memory. Practically we perceive only the past...'
 
It is Bergson's theories that partly lie behind the two great 'time-works' of modern literature, Proust’t A la récherche du temps perdu and Joyce's Ulysses, the first which attempts to seize the real experience of the elusive past, the second which attempts to freeze the present moment in all its complexity and multiplicity. What these two works have in common is the unbelievable concentration with which they focus on and magnify microcosmic interior worlds such that they each become a veritable cosmos - an infinite territory of experience.

Literary Links - Cideb

The Modern Novel and the Stream of Consciousness

The American psychologist William James (1842-1910) coined the phrase "stream of consciousness" to define the continuous flow of thoughts and sensations that characterize the human mind. This definition was applied by literary critics to a kind of 20th-century fiction which focused on this inner process. Introspection was already present in 18th-century novels, especially Defoe 's and Richardson 's; the 19th-century novel presented its characters as social beings but also as individuals with a moral and emotional inner life. At the beginning of the 20th century, writers gave more and more importance to subjective consciousness and understood it was impossible to re produce the complexity of the human mind using traditional techniques; so they looked for more suitable means of expression. They adopted the interior monologue to represent, in a novel, the unspoken activity of the mind before it is ordered in speech.
Interior monologue is often confused with the stream of consciousness, although they are quite different. In fact the former is the verbal expression of a psychic phenomenon, while the latter is the psychic phenomenon itself.

The Interior Monologue

The main features of the interior monologue can be summarized as follows.

• It is a verbal expression of a psychic phenomenon.
• It is immediate; this distinguishes it from both the soliloquy and the dramatic monologue, where conventional syntax is respected.
• It is free from introductory expressions like "he thought, he remembered, he said".
• There are two levels of narration: one external to the character's mind, the other internal.
• It lacks chronological order and the presence of subjective time.
• It disregards the rules of punctuation.
• It lacks formal logical order.

It is necessary to distinguish three kinds of interior monologue:

• the indirect interior monologue, where the narrator never lets the character's thoughts flow without control, and maintains logical and grammatical organisation; the character stays fixed in space while his/her consciousness moves freely in time;
• the interior monologue, characterised by two levels of narration: one external to the character's mind, the other internal;
• the interior monologue where the character's thoughts flow freely, not interrupted by external events.

Indirect interior monologue

This passage is taken from To the Lighthouse by Virginia Woolf; the action takes place within the mind of the protagonist, Mrs Ramsay, as a series of memories, associations, reflections and feelings stimulated by apparently unimportant things.

Text: My Dear stand Still

Virginia Woolf (1882-1941) To the Lighthouse (1927)

“She looked up - what demon possessed him, her youngest, her cherished? and saw the room, saw the chairs, thought them fearfully shabby. Their entrails, as Andrew said the other day, were all aver the floor; but then what was the point, she asked herself of buying good chairs to let them
spoil up here all through the winter when the house, with only one old woman to see to it, positively dripped with wet? Never mind: the rent was precisely two-pence halfpenny; the children loved it; it did her husband good to be three thousand, or if she must be accurate, three hundred miles from his library and his lectures and his disciples; and there was room for visitors. Mats, camp beds, crazy ghosts of chairs and tables whose London life of service was done - they did well enough here: and a photograph or two, and books. Books, she thought grew of themselves. She never had rime to read them. Alas! even the books that had been given her, and inscribed by the hand of the poet himself: "For her whose wishes must be obeyed...", "The happier Helen of our days..." disgraceful to say, she had never read them. And Croom on the Mind and Bates on the Savage Customs of Polynesia - My dear stand still, - she said - neither of those could one send to the Lighthouse.”

Test your self

1. Is external reality excluded from the narration?
2. Does the narrator ever intervene?
3. How much action can you find in the passage? Try to trace Mrs Ramsay’s train of thoughts

Interior monologue with two levels of narration

What follows is an example of interior monologue with the mind level of narration. The extract is tram the final chapter of James Joyce's Ulysses.

Text: Molly’s Monologue

James Joyce (1882-1941) Ulysses (1922) Chapter 28: Penelope

Molly Bloom lies in bed thinking aver her day; various scenes from her past life crowd into her mind. She thinks of her husband, Leopold Bloom, in particular.

“I was thinking of so many things he didnt know of Mulvey and Mr Stanhope and Hester and father and old captain Groves and the sailors playing all birds fly and I say stoop and washing up dishes they called it on the pier and the sentry in front of the governors house with the thing round his white helmet poor devil half roasted and the Spanish girls laughing in their shawls and their tall combs and the auctions in the morning the Greeks and the Jews and the Arabs and the devil knows who else from all the ends of Europe and Duke street and the fowl market all clucking outside Larby Sharons and the poor donkeys slipping half asleep and the vague fellows in the cloaks asleep in the shade on the steps and the big wheels of the carts of the bulls and the old castle thousands of years old yes and those handsome Moors all in white and turbans like kings asking you to sit down in their little bit of a shop and Ronda with the old windows of the posadas glancing eyes a lattice hid far her lover to kiss the iron and the wineshops half open at night and the castanets and the night we missed the boat at Algeciras the watchman going about serene with his lamp and O that awful deep-down torrent O and the sea the sea crimson sometimes like fife and the glorious sunsets and the figtrees in the Alameda gardens yes and all the queer little streets and pink and blue and yellow houses and the rosegardens and the jessamine and geraniums and cactuses and Gibraltar as a girl where I was a Flower of the mountain yes when I put the rose in my hair like the Andalusian girls used or shall I wear a red yes and how he kissed me under the Moorish wall and I thought well as well him as another and then he asked me would I yes to say yes my mountain flower and first I put my arms around him yes and drew him down to me so he could feel my breasts all perfume yes and his heart was going like mad and yes I said yes I will Yes.”

The Italian version of the same passage from Ulysses, translated into Italian by Giulio De Angelis (Mondadori, Milano, 1960), may be useful.

“il cielo e il mare pensavo a tante cose che lui non sapeva di Mulvey e Mr Stanhope e Hester e papà e il vecchio capitano Groves e i marinai che giocavano al piattello e alla cavallina come dicevan loro sul molo e la sentinella davanti alla casa del governatore con quella cosa attorno all'elmetto bianco povero diavolo mezzo arrostito e le ragazze spagnole che ridevano nei loro scialli e quei pettini alti e le aste la mattina i Greci e gli ebrei e gli Arabi e il diavolo chi sa altro da tutte le parti d'Europa e Duke street e il mercato del pollame un gran pigolio davanti a Larby Sharons e i poveri ciuchini che inciampavano mezzo addormentati e gli uomini avvolti nei loro mantelli addormentati all'ombra sugli scalini e le grandi ruote dei carri dei tori e il vecchio castello vecchio di mill'anni sì e quei bei Mori tutti in bianco e turbanti come re che ti chiedevano di metterti a sedere in quei loro buchi di botteghe e Ronda con le vecchie finestre delle posadas fulgidi occhi celava l'inferriata perché il suo amante baciasse le sbarre e le gargotte mezzo aperte la notte e le nacchere e la notte che perdemmo il battello ad Algeciras il sereno che faceva il suo giro con la sua lampada e Oh quel pauroso torrente laggiù in fondo Oh e il mare il mare qualche volta cremisi come il fuoco e gli splendidi tramonti e i fichi nei giardini dell'Alameda sì e tutte quelle stradine curiose e le case rosa e azzurre e gialle e i roseti e i gelsomini e i gerani e i cactus e Gibilterra da ragazza dov'ero un Fior di montagna sì quando mi misi la rosa nei capelli come facevano le ragazze andaluse o ne porterò una rossa sì e come mi baciò sotto il muro moresco e io pensavo be' lui ne vale un altro e poi gli chiesi con gli occhi di chiedere ancora sì e allora mi chiese se io volevo sì dire di sì mio fior di montagna e per prima cosa gli misi le braccia intorno sì e me lo tirai addosso in modo che mi potesse sentire il petto tutto profumato sì e il suo cuore batteva come impazzito e sì dissi sì voglio Sì.”

Lit and Lab - Zanichelli

Valutation

• Do you think it is possible to effectively reproduce the flow of thought? Discuss with other students.
• What do you notice about punctuation in this passage ? What effect does this have ?
• Do you think that Molly’s interior monologue is an accurate representation of the way people think in real life? Why? Why not?
• Now try writing your own interior monologue. Don’t worry about grammar or syntax, just write what comes into your head. Read what you have written to other students and listen to theirs. Comment on differences and similarities.

Einstein: “This topic brings me to that worst outcrop of herd life, the military system, which I abhor
This prologue-spot of civilization ought to be abolished with all possible speed. Heroism on command, senseless violence, and all the loathsome non sense that goes by the name of patriotism how passionately I hate them”

The War Poets

Different attitudes to war

The First World War was welcomed with enthusiasm. Thousands of young men volunteered far military ser- vice in the early months of the war; most of them regarded the conflict, if not as a crusade, at least as an adventure undertaken far noble ends. It was not until the slaughter on the Somme in 1916 that this sense of pride and exhilaration was replaced by ever-growing and disillusionment.
The toll in human lives on the so-called "Western Front", the line of trenches running from North-west France to Switzerland, was terrible. For the soldiers, life in the trenches was hel1 because of the rain and mud, the decaying bodies the rats fed on, the repeated bombings and the use of poison gas in warfare. The common soldiers were the first to apprehend the horror and suffering of the war in their ful1 array, whereas the officers, thanks to their position of privilege and responsibility, saw the conflict in a more heroic light. Almost from the beginning the "Tommies" improvised verses which, precisely because they were the rough, genuine obscene songs of the trenches, did not reach the ears of the literate people living cornfortably at home. However, there was a group of poets who actually experienced the fighting, and in most cases lost their lives in the conflict, who managed to represent modern warfare in a realistic and unconventional way, and to awaken the conscience of the readers to the horrors of the war. These poets are known as "the War Poets". Theirs can be considered modern poetry because its subject-matter could not be conveyed in the 19th-century poetic conventions, and forced them to find another mode of expression.

Rupert Brooke

The first War Poet to die was Rupert Brook (1887-1915), who had contributed to the Georgian anthologies with his poems. After his enlistment in the Navy and brief service in Belgium, he wrote his war sonnets, in which he advanced the idea that war is clean and cleansing, rather like a good swim. He tried to testify the safeness of war, in which the only thing that can suffer is the body, and even death is seen as the safest shelter of ll against the dangers of life. Traditional not only in form, his poems were the last to express idealistic patriotism also because, unlike the other War Poets, who lived to witness the horrors of trench warfare, Brooke died in 1915 at the age of 28, of blood poisoning on the Greek island of Skyros. His early death and the publication of his Collected Poems in 1918, made him immensely popular, turning him into a new symbol of the "young romantic hero".

Isaac Rosenberg

Isaac Rosenberg (1890-1918) was another victim of war. The son of a Lithuanian Jew, he struggled throughout his life against poverty and neglect. Some benefactors paid for him to complete his training as a painter and encouraged him to pursue his vocation as a poet. Rosenberg differs from the other War Poets not only for his poor background. His poems may be regarded as modernist in technique, since he was a friend of Ezra Pound and read many of T.E. Hulme's writings. His vision of the war was apocalyptic and less concerned with the pity of things; his use of language was "scriptural and elemental" as Sassoon described it. His finest poems were published in Collected Works in 1937.

THE SOLDIER

This poem is noted for its gentle lyricism which, together with his handsome appearance and untime/y death, made Brooke a favourite poet among the young people of his generation.

R. Brooke - 1914 and Other Poems Genre Poetry

If I should die, think only this of me:
That there's some corner of a foreign field
That is for ever England. There shall be
In that rich earth a richer dust concealed (1);
A dust whom England bore (2), shaped, made aware,
Cave, once, her flowers to love, her ways to roam (3),
A body of England's, breathing English air,
Washed by the rivers, blest (4) by suns of home.
And think, this heart, all evil shed away (5),
A pulse in the eternal mind (6), no less
Gives somewhere back the thoughts by England given;
Her sights and sounds; dreams happy as her day;
And laughter, learnt of (7) friends; and gentleness,
In hearts at peace, under an English heaven.

1. concealed. Nascosta.
2. bore. Generò.
3. to roam. Da esplorare, da percorrere.
4. blest. Benedetto.
5. shed away. Liberatosi da.
6. rnind. Spirito.
7. learnt or. Learnt from.

Text analysis

Comprehension

Read the poem and say:
1. who is speaking;
2. if he is afraid of death;
3. where his grave will be;
4. how his dead body will enrich the soil;
5. if there is emphasis on war;
6. who you think the poet is speaking to.

Sound Patterns

1. Work out the rhyme scheme and say what kind of poem this is.
 
2. Find examples of alliteration. What is the effect of the choice of a smooth, classical form in this poem? Tick.
 
□ It helps convey the reality of war.
□ It helps convey the sense of human pity linked to war.
□ It helps convey the sense of pathos and romantic idealisation of the soldier's words.

Language and Meaning

1. Find the images referring to death. What idea do they suggest? Choose tram among the following.
 
 □ Waste □ safety
 □ immortality □ violence
 □ glory □ peace
 
 
 
2. Focus on the images connected with England present in the poem.
 1. List them under the following headings.
 Landscape ...
 Inner growth and private feelings ...
 
 2. What is the poetic device the poet uses to describe
 his country?
 
 3. How does the poet view England? What traditional
 qualities does he stress?
 
 3. Define the tone of the poem. Tick as appropriate.
 □ consoling □ patriotic
 □ sentimental □ nostalgic
 □ detached □ realistic
 □ ironical □ meditative
 □ sad
 
 
 4. Summarise the theme of the poem in your own words.

Contextualization

Three days after Brooke's death Winston Churchill wrote an obituary.
 
 "He was all that one would wish England's noblest sons to be in days when no sacrifice but the most precious is acceptable, and the most precious is that which is mostly freely proffered".
 
What aspect of the historical period do Churchill's words and Brooke's poem reflect? You mal refer- to 10.2 far further information on the subject.

AUGUST 1914

This brief poem which ends the sequence devoted to war poems is characterized by a more experimental style.
Rosenberg Collected Works

What in our lives is burnt
In the fire of this?
The heart's dear granary (1)?
The much we shall miss?
 
Three lives hath one life-
 Iran, honey, gold.
The gold, the honey gone-
 Left is(2) the hard and cold
 
Iron are our lives
Molten(3) right through our youth.
A burnt space through ripe(4) fields
A fair mouth's broken tooth.

1. granary. Granaio.
2. Left is. Rimane.
3. Molten. Fuse.
4. ripe. Maturi.

Comprehension

Read the poem and say if it is:
□ a documentary description of war;
□ a reflection on the great waste caused by war;
□ a patriotic celebration at the outbreak of war.

Sound Patterns:

 1. Find examples for each of the following features.

 1. tortured syntax 4. assonance
 2. use of alliteration 5. archaisms
 3. repetition of words
 
 
2. What effect is created by these devices? Tick.
□ They draw the attention to the sound texture of the
poem rather than to its meaning,
□ They create a difficult poetic pattern because they
deal with emotional complexities,
□ They help to create precise, dry images,

Language and Meaning

1. Consider the language used in the poem. Underline the correct option in each of the following statements.
1. The language is poetic / ordinary.
2. The images are concrete / abstract.
3. The sentences are short / long.
4. The verbs are mainly in the present / in the past.
5. The tone is sentimental / hard.
 
2. The poem contains many metaphors. Read the poem again, pick them out and decide what their connotation may be.
 
3. Focus on the last verse, which reminds us of Imagist poetry. Explain how, without any direct comment by the poet, the image succeeds in achieving "the exact curve of things".

Connection

Trace similarities and differences between Giuseppe Ungaretti's poem "Veglia" and Rosenberg's.

Un'intera nottata delle sue mani
buttato vicino penetrata
a un compagno nel mio silenzio
massacrato ho scritto
con la sua bocca lettere piene d'amore,
digrignata Non sono mai stato
volta al plenilunio tanto
con la congestione attaccato alla vita

Cima Quattro il 25 dicembre 1915

Then draw a table of comparison between the war poems you have read and Ungaretti's as regards:
· Imagery
· style
· the poet's mood

Only Connect - Zanichelli

George Orwell (1903- 1950)

"But it isn't the war that matters, it's the alter-war. The world we're going down into, the kind of hate-world, slogan-world."
 from Coming up for Air

An independent-minded personality

Born Eric Blair in India in 1903, Orwell was the san of a minor colonial official. As a small child, he was taken to England by his mother, and was educated first at a preparatory school, St Cyprian's, in Eastbourne, then at Eton. He could not stand the lack of privacy, the
humiliating punishments, the pressure to conform to the values of the English public school tradition, such as the development of 'character', a spirit of competition and a rigid adherence to discipline, and to the prevailing moral code. At Eton he began to develop an independent-minded personality, indifference to accepted values, and professed atheism and socialism.
On leaving school he passed the India Office examinations far the Indian Imperial Police, opting to serve in Burma, where he remained from 1922 to 1927. In 1927 he went on leave and decided not to return; it was not simply that he wished to break away from British Imperialism in India: he wished to "escape from ... every form of man's dominion aver man", as he said in The Road to Wigan Pier, and the social structure from which he carne, depended just on that "dominion aver others" - not only aver the Burmese, but also aver the English working class.

First-hand experiences

Back in London, he started a social experiment: wearing second-hand clothes, he spent short periods living in common lodging-houses in the East End, seeking the company of down-and-outs. In this way he directly experienced poverty and learned how institutions for the poor, such as hostels, prisons, lodging-houses and hospitals, worked. After a period in Paris where he worked as a dishwasher in a hotel, he decided to begin publishing his works with the pseudonym of George Orwell. He chose George because it had an Englishness about it, suggesting plain speaking and common sense, and Orwell because it was the Dame of a river he was fond of. Down and Out in Paris and London (1933) was his first non-fiction narrative in which he described his experience among the poor; it was followed by Burmese Days (1934), a book based on his experiences in the colonial service. In 1936 he married Eileen O'Shaughnessy, an Oxford graduate who shared his interests in literature and socialism. In the same year Orwell was commissioned by a left-wing publisher to investigate conditions among the miners, factory workers and unemployed in the industrial North, where he stayed far two months. His report, The Road to Wigan Pier, was published in 1937.
 In December 1936 Orwell went to Catalonia with his wife to report on the Spanish Civil War. In Barcelona he joined the militia of the POUM (Workers' Party of Marxist Unification) and fought in the trenches of the Aragon front. In Homage to Catalonia (1938) he was to recall this experience as the lime of his true conversion to socialism and the ideals of brotherhood and equality. Back to England the Orwells adopted an infant child and called him Richard. They both suffered from a poor health: George suffered from bronchitis and pneumonia and Eileen was to die during an operation in 1945.

An influential voice of the 20th century

When the Second World War broke out, Orwell moved to London and, in 1941, he joined the BBC, broadcasting cultural and political programmes to India. In 1943 he resigned and became literary editor of "Tribune", an influential socialist weekly. He also began writing Animal Farm, which was published in 1945, just when the Iron Curtain was beginning to fall on Eastern Europe, and it made Orwell internationally famous and financially secure. Orwell's last book, Nineteen Eighty-Four, was his most original novel; it was published in 1949 and soon became a best-seller. Orwell died of tuberculosis the following year.

1. Use these pictures to revise the most important events of George Orwell's life and works.

1. Burma Provincial Police Training School, Mandalay, 1923. Eric Blair is the third standing tram the left.

 
  
2. Orwell (holding cigarette) at the Aragon front. 1937.

3. George Orwell speaker at the BBC Studioso

4. Orwell and his san Richard in Canonbury.

5. Orwell with a native sword. a souvenir of his Burmese days.

The artist's development

Orwell had a deep understanding of the English character, of its tolerance, its dislike of abstract theories and insistence on common sense and fair play. On the other hand, his various experiences abroad contributed lo his unusual ability to see his country from the outside and to judge its strengths and weaknesses. Closely linked to this quality, was the fact that he chose to reject his background and to establish a separate identity of his own. As a consequence, he was receptive to new ideas and impressions. Orwell's life and work were marked by the unresolved conflict between his middle-class background and education and his emotional identification with the working class.
 In his essay Inside the Whale (1940), Orwell tried to define the role of the writer considering the literature of the 1920s and 1930s. Whereas the writers of the Twenties had concerned themselves with language and form to express a tragic, post-war pessimism, those of the Thirties had valued social purpose and content aver form, and had left-wing sympathies. His desire to inform, to reveal facts and draw conclusions from them, led him to believe that writing interpreted reality and therefore served a useful social function. This explains why his most successful novels express political themes. However, Orwell believed that the writer should be independent, that no good writing could come of following a party line.

Social themes

Orwell was a prolific book-reviewer, critic, political journalist and pamphleteer in the tradition of Swift and Defoe. Indebted to Dickens in the choice of social themes and the use of realistic and factual language, he conveyed a vision of human fraternity and of the misery caused by poverty and deprivation. He insisted on tolerance, justice and decency in human relationships, and warned against the increasing artificiality of urban civilisation. Above all he presented a devastating critique of totalitarianism, warning against the violation of liberty and helping his readers to recognise tyranny in all its forms.

TEST Your self

Use the information you have read to organise your knowledge about the work of George Orwell under the following headings.
• How he viewed his country
• The conflict he experienced
• The role of the artist
• His themes

ANIMAL FARM (1945) - "Whatever goes upon two legs is an enemy. "

The historical background to the book

In the late 1930s news reached the West of Stalin's Purge Trials which led to the death of three million people and sent many others to forced labour camps. In 1939 Stalin signed a non-aggression pact with Hitler, which enabled the Germans to take aver Poland and Czechoslovakia. Orwell's indignant reaction to these events caused him to write Anima! Farm. He expressed his disillusionment with Stalinism and totalitarianism in general in the form of an animal fable, an anti-utopia much influenced by Swift's Gulliver's Travels, especially in the comparison between men and animals.

The plot

The book is a short narrative set on a farm where a group of oppressed animals, capable of speech and reason and inspired by the teachings of an old boar, overcome their cruel master and set up a revolutionary government. The pigs le ad and supervise the enterprise under Napoleon's leadership. At first the animals' life is guided by Seven Commandments based on equality; however, these are gradually altered by the pigs who become increasingly dictatorial and arrogate to themselves the privileges previously exercised by humans. At the end all the Seven Commandments are abandoned and only one remains: "All animals are equal but some animals are more equal than others". The parallels between the plot of the book and the history of the USSR between 1917 and 1943 are clear: each animal symbolises a precise figure or representative type. Yet Animal Farm cannot be interpreted only as a satire on the Soviet Union. OrwelI had a wider aim in mind: he wanted to write a satire on dictatorship in general as the fact he named the ruling pig "Napoleon" clearly shows.

The animals

Orwell wrote Animal Farm primarily as an allegory of the Russian Revolution disguised as an animal fable. The way in which animal characteristics are portrayed is remarkable; besides being a symbol, each animal possesses the traits of its species and Orwell has the ability to view it as if from the inside of its mind and thoughts.
Old Major stands far a mixture of Marx and Lenin: the doctrine he preaches provides the basic beliefs which later become the Seven Commandments. Farmer Jones is Czar Nicolas II: Orwell describes him as a drunk farmer who does not care about his animals and neglects his farm. Snowball represents Trotsky and his bravery is an example to the other animals through his inspiring speeches. Orwell also describes his darker side by showing that he is also susceptible to greed.
 
Napoleon is obviously Stalin Who used terror and force in order to assert and maintain his power over the animals. The character of Boxer stands for the loyal, hard-working man who follows Animalism faithful1y without understanding its more intricate details completely. His Dame derives from the Boxer Rebellion in China which is linked to the rise of Communism in China. Finally, the dogs are a metaphor for the Terror State which Stalin created in Russia as a means of keeping order and crushing political opposition.
The tone of the book blends humour and sarcasm with horrifying scenes and a painful atmosphere. The main theme is that all revolutions fail to achieve the expectations of their promoters, and, in the end, the ideals that inspired them are diluted by the ruling elite which concentrates power into its own hands. Tyranny is by definition evil, regardless of its political nature.

TEST YOUR SELF

Revise your knowledge about Animal Farm by answering the following questions.
 1. What caused Orwell to write Animal Farm. 4. What is the tone of the book?
 2. What kind of book is it? 5. What is its main theme?
 3. How did Orwell portray the animals?

SPEAKING

1. Did you read any stories when you were a child in which animals were protagonists? What did these animals stand for? Discuss in pairs, then draw a chart of the most common types.

The Execution

The following passage shows the animals of the farm while they experience Napoleon's brutal methods and see the disillusionment of their revolutionary ideals.

George Orwell (1903-1950) - Animal Farm (1945) Chapter 7

“Napoleon stood sternly surveying his audience; then he uttered a high-pitched whimper. Immediately the dogs bounded forward, seized four of the pigs by the ear and dragged them, squealing with pain and terror, to Napoleon's feet. The pigs' ears were bleeding, the dogs had tasted blood, and far a few moments they appeared to go quite mad. To the amazement of everybody, three of them flung themselves upon Boxer. Boxer saw them coming and put out his great hoof, caught a dog in mid-air, and pinned him to the ground. The dog shrieked for mercy and the other two fled with their tails between their legs. Boxer looked at Napoleon to know whether he should crush the dog to death or lei it go. Napoleon appeared to change countenance, and sharply ordered Boxer to lei the dog go, whereat Boxer lifted his hoof, and the dog slunk away, bruised and howling.
Presently the tumult died down. The four pigs waited, trembling, with guilt written on every line of their countenances. Napoleon now called upon them to confess their crimes. They were the same four pigs as had protested when Napoleon abolished the Sunday Meetings. Without any further prompting they confessed that they had been secretly in touch with Snowball ever since his expulsion, that they had collaborated with him in destroying the windmill, and that they had entered into an agreement with him to hand aver Animal Farm to Mr Frederick. They added that Snowball had privately admitted to them that he had been Jones's secret agent far years past. When they had finished their confession, the dogs promptly rare their throats out, and in a terrible voice Napoleon demanded whether any other animal had anything to confess.
The three hens who had been the ringleaders in the attempted rebellion aver the eggs now carne forward and stated that Snowball had appeared to them in a dream and incited them to disobey Napoleon's orders. They, too, were slaughtered. Then a goose carne forward and confessed to having secreted six ears of corn during the last year's harvest and eaten them in the night. Then a sheep confessed to having urinated in the drinking pool- urged to do this, so she said, by Snowball - and two other sheep confessed to having murdered an old ram, an especially devoted follower of Napoleon, by chasing him round and round a bonfire when he was suffering from a cough. They were all slain on the spot. And so the tale of confessions and executions went on, until there was a pile of corpses lying before Napoleon's feet and the air was heavy with the smell of blood, which had been unknown there since the expulsion of Jones.
When it was all aver, the remaining animals, except far the pigs and dogs, crept away in a body. They were shaken and miserable. They did not know which was more shocking - the treachery of the animals who had leagued themselves with Snowball, or the cruel retribution they had just witnessed. [...] They had made their way on to the little knoll where the half-finished windmill stood, and with one accord they all lay down as though huddling together for warmth - Clover, Muriel, Benjamin, the cows, the sheep, and a whole flock of geese and hens - everyone, indeed, except the cat, who had suddenly disappeared just before Napoleon ordered the animals to assemble. For some rime nobody spoke. Only Boxer remained on his feet. He fidgeted to and fro, swishing his long black tail against his sides, and occasionally uttering a little whinny of surprise. Finally he said:
"I do not understand it. 1 would not have believed that such things could happen on our farm. It must be due to some fault in ourselves. The solution, as I see it, is to work harder. From now onwards I shall get up a full hour earlier in the mornings. "
And he moved off at his lumbering trot and made far the quarry. Having got there, he collected two successive loads of stone and dragged them down to the windmill before retiring far the night.
The animals huddled about Clover, not speaking. The knoll where they were lying gave them a wide prospect across the countryside. Most of Animal Farm was within their view - the long pasture stretching down to the main road, the hayfield, the spinney, the drinking pool, the ploughed fields where the young wheat was thick and green, and the red roofs of the farm buildings with the I smoke curling from the chimneys. It was a clear spring evening. The grass and the bursting hedges were gilded by the level rays of the sun. Never had the farm and with a kind of surprise they remembered that it was their own farm, every inch of it their own property - appeared to the animals so desiderable a place. As Clover looked down the hillside her eyes filled with tears. If she could have I spoken her thoughts, it would have been to say that this was not what they had aimed at when they had set themselves years ago to work far the overthrow of the human race. These scenes of terror and slaughter were not what they had looked forward to on that night when old Major first stirred them to rebellion. If she I herself had had any picture of the future, it had been of a society of animals set free from hunger and the whip, all equal, each working according to his capacity, the strong protecting the weak, as she had protected the last brood of ducklings with her foreleg on the night of Major's speech. Instead - she did not know why - they had come to a rime when no one dared speak his mind, when fierce, growling dogs roamed everywhere, and when you had to watch your comrades torn to pieces after confessing to shocking crimes. [...] Such were her thoughts, though she lacked the words to express them.
At last, feeling this to be in some way a substitute far the words she was unable to find, she began to sing Beasts of England. The other animals sitting round her took it up, and they sang it three times aver - very tunefully, but slowly and mournfully, in a way they had never sung it before.
They had just finished singing it for the third rime when Squealer, attended by two dogs, approached them with the air of having something important to say. He announced that, by a special decree of Comrade Napoleon, Beasts of England had been abolished. From now onwards it was forbidden to sing it.
The animals were taken aback. "Why?" cried Muriel.
"It is no longer needed, comrade," said Squealer stiffly. Beasts of England was
the song of the Rebellion. But the Rebellion is now completed. "The execution of the traitors this afternoon was the final act. The enemy both external and internal has been defeated. In Beasts of England we expressed our longing far a better society in days to come. But that society has now been established. Clearly this song has no longer any purpose."

WORK on the text

CONTENTS

2. Read the passage and define the setting, the characters involved and the situation.
 
3. Below are some references to the history of USSR between 1917 and 1943. Now that you have read the passage, match them with their corresponding symbols in the text. Some have been provided far you.
 
1. Stalin
2. The Kremlin
3. Stalin's secret police
4. The representatives of the proletariat
5. Trotsky Snowball
6. Hitler
7. Tsar Nicholas II
8. The Five-Year Plans The wind mill
9. Stalin Purge Trials in the 1930s
10. Marx Major
11. L’Internationale
12. The propagandist of the regime

STRUCTURE AND STYLE

4. Animal Farm is a 'beast-fable'. Can you think of any advantage of this form?
5. Focus on the way the animals are portrayed.
 1. Analyse the figure of Napoleon.
 a. Write down his actions.
 b. How is his personality connoted?
 c. Does his name suit his role?
2. Now concentrate on Boxer.
 a. What does the choice of his name suggest?
 b. Fill in the table below with the words and phrases referring to the traits of his species and those conveying his symbolical role.
Traits of his species Symbolical role

6. Also Clover is presented as an individual with a personality of her own.
1. Go through Clover's reflections after the execution and underline the words and phrases denoting her character. Then say what she is like.
2. Indeed, Clover can be regarded as Orwell's spokesman. What subject do her reflections bring about?

7. The confession and execution of the animals marks a crucial point in the book. What themes does it introduce? What I do they suggest about Orwell's political views?

Lit and Lab - Zanichelli

Einstein: “ How strong is the lot of us mortals! Each of us is here for a brief sojourn, for what purpose he knows not, though he sometimes thinks he senses it. But without deeper reflection one knows from doily life that one exist for other people..”
 “ The individual feels the futility of human desires, and aims at the sublimity and morvelous order which reveal themselves both in mature and in the world of thought.”

What a Wonderful World is a beautiful song about love in general: love for nature, love for other people, love for our world.

Louis Armstrong - What A Wonderful World
by G.D. Weiss - B. Thiele

I see trees of green, red roses too
I see 'em bloom for me and you
And I think to myself: what a wonderful world
I see skies of blue, clouds of white
The bright blessed days, and dark sacred nights
And I think to myself: what a wonderful world!

The colors of the rainbow, so pretty in the sky,
Are also on the faces of people goin' by,
I see friends shakin' hands, sayin', "How do you do!"
They’ll really sayn’ "I love you."
I hear babies cry, and I watch them grow,
They'll learn much more than I'll ever know
And I think to myself: what a wonderful world!
Yes, I think to myself: what a wonderful world!

Pair Work

 Can you answer these question?
  
What does the author of the song see of the nature around him?
What does he think?
What can he see on the faces of people goin’ by?
What do friends say when they shake hands?
What do they mean?

JUST TAKE TURN - Zanichelli

Einstein: “I maintain that the cosmic religious feeling is the strongest and noblest motive for scientific research . . . . A contemporary has said not unjustly that in this materialistic age of ours the serious scientific workers are the only profoundly religious people.”
 
 
 

Cloning

Introduction

The possibility of human cloning, raised when Scottish scientists at Roslin Institute created the much-celebrated sheep "Dolly" (Nature 385, 810-13, 1997), aroused worldwide interest and concern because of its scientific and ethical implications. The feat, cited by Science magazine as the breakthrough of 1997, also generated uncertainty over the meaning of "cloning" --an umbrella term traditionally used by scientists to describe different processes for duplicating biological material.
What is cloning? Are there different types of cloning?
When the media report on cloning in the news, they are usually talking about only one type called reproductive cloning. There are different types of cloning however, and cloning technologies can be used for other purposes besides producing the genetic twin of another organism. A basic understanding of the different types of cloning is key to taking an informed stance on current public policy issues and making the best possible personal decisions. The following three types of cloning technologies will be discussed: recombinant DNA technology or DNA cloning, reproductive cloning, and therapeutic cloning.

Recombinant DNA Technology or DNA Cloning

The terms "recombinant DNA technology," "DNA cloning," "molecular cloning, "or "gene cloning" all refer to the same process: the transfer of a DNA fragment of interest from one organism to a self-replicating genetic element such as a bacterial plasmid. The DNA of interest can then be propagated in a foreign host cell. This technology has been around since the 1970s, and it has become a common practice in molecular biology labs today.
Scientists studying a particular gene often use bacterial plasmids to generate multiple copies of the same gene. Plasmids are self-replicating extra-chromosomal circular DNA molecules, distinct from the normal bacterial genome (see image to the right). Plasmids and other types of cloning vectors are used by Human Genome Project researchers to copy genes and other pieces of chromosomes to generate enough identical material for further study.
To "clone a gene," a DNA fragment containing the gene of interest is isolated from chromosomal DNA using restriction enzymes and then united with a plasmid that has been cut with the same restriction enzymes. When the fragment of chromosomal DNA is joined with its cloning vector in the lab, it is called a "recombinant DNA molecule." Following introduction into suitable host cells, the recombinant DNA can then be reproduced along with the host cell DNA. See a diagram depicting this process.

Celebrity Sheep Has Died at Age 6

Dolly, the first mammal to be cloned from adult DNA, was put down by lethal injection Feb. 14, 2003. Prior to her death, Dolly had been suffering from lung cancer and crippling arthritis. Although most Finn Dorset sheep live to be 11 to 12 years of age, postmortem examination of Dolly seemed to indicate that, other than her cancer and arthritis, she appeared to be quite normal. The unnamed sheep from which Dolly was cloned had died several years prior to her creation. Dolly was a mother to six lambs, bred the old-fashioned way.

Plasmids can carry up to 20,000 bp of foreign DNA. Besides bacterial plasmids, some other cloning vectors include viruses, bacteria artificial chromosomes (BACs), and yeast artificial chromosomes (YACs). Cosmids are artificially constructed cloning vectors that carry up to 45 kb of foreign DNA and can be packaged in lambda phage particles for infection into E. coli cells. BACs utilize the naturally occurring F-factor plasmid found in E. coli to carry 100 to 300 kb DNA inserts. A YAC is a functional chromosome derived from yeast that can carry up to 1 MB of foreign DNA. Bacteria are most often used as the host cells for recombinant DNA molecules, but yeast and mammalian cells also are used.

Reproductive Cloning

Reproductive cloning is a technology used to generate an animal that has the same nuclear DNA as another currently or previously existing animal. Dolly was created by reproductive cloning technology. In a process called "somatic cell nuclear transfer" (SCNT), scientists transfer genetic material from the nucleus of a donor adult cell to an egg whose nucleus, and thus its genetic material, has been removed. The reconstructed egg containing the DNA from a donor cell must be treated with chemicals or electric current in order to stimulate cell division. Once the cloned embryo reaches a suitable stage, it is transferred to the uterus of a female host where it continues to develop until birth.
Dolly or any other animal created using nuclear transfer technology is not truly an identical clone of the donor animal. Only the clone's chromosomal or nuclear DNA is the same as the donor. Some of the clone's genetic materials come from the mitochondria in the cytoplasm of the enucleated egg. Mitochondria, which are organelles that serve as power sources to the cell, contain their own short segments of DNA. Acquired mutations in mitochondrial DNA are believed to play an important role in the aging process.
Dolly's success is truly remarkable because it proved that the genetic material from a specialized adult cell, such as an udder cell programmed to express only those genes needed by udder cells, could be reprogrammed to generate an entire new organism. Before this demonstration, scientists believed that once a cell became specialized as a liver, heart, udder, bone, or any other type of cell, the change was permanent and other unneeded genes in the cell would become inactive. Some scientists believe that errors or incompleteness in the reprogramming process cause the high rates of death, deformity, and disability observed among animal clones.

Therapeutic Cloning

Therapeutic cloning, also called "embryo cloning," is the production of human embryos for use in research. The goal of this process is not to create cloned human beings, but rather to harvest stem cells that can be used to study human development and to treat disease. Stem cells are important to biomedical researchers because they can be used to generate virtually any type of specialized cell in the human body. Stem cells are extracted from the egg after it has divided for 5 days. The egg at this stage of development is called a blastocyst. The extraction process destroys the embryo, which raises a variety of ethical concerns. Many researchers hope that one day stem cells can be used to serve as replacement cells to treat heart disease, Alzheimer's, cancer, and other diseases. See more on the potential use of cloning in organ transplants.

In November 2001, scientists from Advanced Cell Technologies (ACT), a biotechnology company in Massachusetts, announced that they had cloned the first human embryos for the purpose of advancing therapeutic research. To do this, they collected eggs from women's ovaries and then removed the genetic material from these eggs with a needle less than 2/10,000th of an inch wide. A skin cell was inserted inside the enucleated egg to serve as a new nucleus. The egg began to divide after it was stimulated with a chemical called ionomycin. The results were limited in success. Although this process was carried out with eight eggs, only three began dividing, and only one was able to divide into six cells before stopping.

How can cloning technologies be used?

Recombinant DNA technology is important for learning about other related technologies, such as gene therapy, genetic engineering of organisms, and sequencing genomes. Gene therapy can be used to treat certain genetic conditions by introducing virus vectors that carry corrected copies of faulty genes into the cells of a host organism. Genes from different organisms that improve taste and nutritional value or provide resistance to particular types of disease can be used to genetically engineer food crops. See Genetically Modified Foods and Organisms for more information. With genome sequencing, fragments of chromosomal DNA must be inserted into different cloning vectors to generate fragments of an appropriate size for sequencing. See a diagram on constructing clones for sequencing.
If the low success rates can be improved (Dolly was only one success out of 276 tries), reproductive cloning can be used to develop efficient ways to reliably reproduce animals with special qualities. For example, drug-producing animals or animals that have been genetically altered to serve as models for studying human disease could be mass-produced.
Reproductive cloning also could be used to repopulate endangered animals or animals that are difficult to breed. In 2001, the first clone of an endangered wild animal was born, a wild ox called a gaur. The young gaur died from an infection about 48 hours after its birth. In 2001, scientists in Italy reported the successful cloning of a healthy baby mouflon, an endangered wild sheep. The cloned mouflon is living at a wildlife center in Sardinia. Other endangered species that are potential candidates for cloning include the African bongo antelope, the Sumatran tiger, and the giant panda. Cloning extinct animals presents a much greater challenge to scientists because the egg and the surrogate needed to create the cloned embryo would be of a species different from the clone.
Therapeutic cloning technology may some day be used in humans to produce whole organs from single cells or to produce healthy cells that can replace damaged cells in degenerative diseases such as Alzheimer's or Parkinson's. Much work still needs to be done before therapeutic cloning can become a realistic option for the treatment of disorders.

What animals have been cloned?

Scientists have been cloning animals for many years. In 1952, the first animal, a tadpole, was cloned. Before the creation of Dolly, the first mammal cloned from the cell of an adult animal, clones were created from embryonic cells. Since Dolly, researchers have cloned a number of large and small animals including sheep, goats, cows, mice, pigs, cats, rabbits, and a gaur. See Cloned Animals below. All these clones were created using nuclear transfer technology.
Hundreds of cloned animals exist today, but the number of different species is limited. Attempts at cloning certain species such as monkeys, chickens, horses, and dogs, have been unsuccessful. Some species may be more resistant to somatic cell nuclear transfer than others. The process of stripping the nucleus from an egg cell and replacing it with the nucleus of a donor cell is a traumatic one, and improvements in cloning technologies may be needed before many species can be cloned successfully.

Can organs be cloned for use in transplants?

Scientists hope that one day therapeutic cloning can be used to generate tissues and organs for transplants. To do this, DNA would be extracted from the person in need of a transplant and inserted into an enucleated egg. After the egg containing the patient's DNA starts to divide, embryonic stem cells that can be transformed into any type of tissue would be harvested. The stem cells would be used to generate an organ or tissue that is a genetic match to the recipient. In theory, the cloned organ could then be transplanted into the patient without the risk of tissue rejection. If organs could be generated from cloned human embryos, the need for organ donation could be significantly reduced.
Many challenges must be overcome before "cloned organ" transplants become reality. More effective technologies for creating human embryos, harvesting stem cells, and producing organs from stem cells would have to be developed. In 2001, scientists with the biotechnology company Advanced Cell Technology (ACT) reported that they had cloned the first human embryos; however, the only embryo to survive the cloning process stopped developing after dividing into six cells. In February 2002, scientists with the same biotech company reported that they had successfully transplanted kidney-like organs into cows. The team of researchers created a cloned cow embryo by removing the DNA from an egg cell and then injecting the DNA from the skin cell of the donor cow's ear. Since little is known about manipulating embryonic stem cells from cows, the scientists let the cloned embryos develop into fetuses. The scientists then harvested fetal tissue from the clones and transplanted it into the donor cow. In the three months of observation following the transplant, no sign of immune rejection was observed in the transplant recipient.
Another potential application of cloning to organ transplants is the creation of genetically modified pigs from which organs suitable for human transplants could be harvested . The transplant of organs and tissues from animals to humans is called xenotransplantation.
Why pigs? Primates would be a closer match genetically to humans, but they are more difficult to clone and have a much lower rate of reproduction. Of the animal species that have been cloned successfully, pig tissues and organs are more similar to those of humans. To create a "knock-out" pig, scientists must inactivate the genes that cause the human immune system to reject an implanted pig organ. The genes are knocked out in individual cells, which are then used to create clones from which organs can be harvested. In 2002, a British biotechnology company reported that it was the first to produce "double knock-out" pigs that have been genetically engineered to lack both copies of a gene involved in transplant rejection. More research is needed to study the transplantation of organs from "knock-out" pigs to other animals.

What are the risks of cloning?

Reproductive cloning is expensive and highly inefficient. More than 90% of cloning attempts fail to produce viable offspring. More than 100 nuclear transfer procedures could be required to produce one viable clone. In addition to low success rates, cloned animals tend to have more compromised immune function and higher rates of infection, tumor growth, and other disorders. Japanese studies have shown that cloned mice live in poor health and die early. About a third of the cloned calves born alive have died young, and many of them were abnormally large. Many cloned animals have not lived long enough to generate good data about how clones age. Appearing healthy at a young age unfortunately is not a good indicator of long term survival. Clones have been known to die mysteriously. For example, Australia's first cloned sheep appeared healthy and energetic on the day she died, and the results from her autopsy failed to determine a cause of death.
In 2002, researchers at the Whitehead Institute for Biomedical Research in Cambridge, Massachusetts, reported that the genomes of cloned mice are compromised. In analyzing more than 10,000 liver and placenta cells of cloned mice, they discovered that about 4% of genes function abnormally. The abnormalities do not arise from mutations in the genes but from changes in the normal activation or expression of certain genes.
Problems also may result from programming errors in the genetic material from a donor cell. When an embryo is created from the union of a sperm and an egg, the embryo receives copies of most genes from both parents. A process called "imprinting" chemically marks the DNA from the mother and father so that only one copy of a gene (either the maternal or paternal gene) is turned on. Defects in the genetic imprint of DNA from a single donor cell may lead to some of the developmental abnormalities of cloned embryos.
For more details on the risks associated with cloning, see the Cloning Problems links below.

Should humans be cloned?

Physicians from the American Medical Association and scientists with the American Association for the Advancement of Science have issued formal public statements advising against human reproductive cloning. Currently, the U.S. Congress is considering the passage of legislation that could ban human cloning. See the Policy and Legislation links below.
Due to the inefficiency of animal cloning (only about 1 or 2 viable offspring for every 100 experiments) and the lack of understanding about reproductive cloning, many scientists and physicians strongly believe that it would be unethical to attempt to clone humans. Not only do most attempts to clone mammals fail, about 30% of clones born alive are affected with "large offspring syndrome" and other debilitating conditions. Several cloned animals have died prematurely from infections and other complications. The same problems would be expected in human cloning. In addition, scientists do not know how cloning could impact mental development. While factors such as intellect and mood may not be as important for a cow or a mouse, they are crucial for the development of healthy humans. With so many unknowns concerning reproductive cloning, the attempt to clone humans at this time is considered potentially dangerous and ethically irresponsible. See the Cloning Ethics links below for more information about the human cloning debate.

http://www.ornl.gov/sci/techresources/Human_Genome/elsi/cloning.shtml

PROJECT SUMMARY

The general title for the 3-year project is WHO ARE WE? (YOU & I- WE Are Building Europe Together).
The project proposal was born of necessity of answering the above question and of clarifying the term European Citizenship and of strengthening the Europeaness as European Citizenship is the angular stone of the integration process. A feeling of belonging to a single European entity and sharing a common destiny cannot be created. A shared consciousness between different nationalities, peoples and groups emerges from geographical proximity, collective history and experience, common values. European citizenship does not replace National Citizenship (it is an addition to it, it complements it), giving the ordinary citizen a deeper and more tangible sense of belonging to Europe.
The project aspires to study the link between European Citizenship and National Citizenship, to reveal the sense of European citizenship, of different practices with a European dimension, to promote and encourage the variety of Europe's cultural identity and diversity, to find similarities and differences in cultures so as eventually to discover how similar we are in our deepest human structure, in our way of thinking and feeling in the most important moments of life and festivals of the year. Immaterial of our nationality and mother tongue we are all members of the big European Family that inhabits the Old Continent and WE - YOU & I – are building the United Europe of future together.
Teams of pupils aged 14-18 from the partner schools in Italy, Greece, Turkey, Portugal and Romania will work on the project under the coordination of their teachers. They will collect material and data, illustrate them with photos, study them, translate them into English, exchange and compare them with the ones of their fellows, conclude, present the results in intermediate and end products, (self) evaluate the activities and products and disseminate the project outcomes. Teachers and pupils will take part in transnational mobility activities.
If pupils identify with Europe, if they feel European and if they see themselves European Citizens, then they are more likely to participate in European affairs, press far democratisation, and vote in Europe elections, while their identification with Europe will itself help to legitimate the European Union.