Blog Assignment 7

The text that I chose was A Number by Caryl Churchill. This imaginative text dramatizes cloning and how nature vs. nurture plays a role. Salter (the father) cloned his own son for his own reasons and purposes. He figured by cloning his son, he would be able to fix the mistakes that he had committed in the past. However, things did not end as well as Salter predicted nor wanted it to end. There were many questions that this play questioned.  Two of the many questions that A Number brings upon are: 1) Is cloning ethical? 2) What are the real benefits of cloning if there are any?
For question number 1 Churchill seems to think cloning is sufficient as well as harmful. The ending of this play is upsetting. Churchill seems to believe that cloning someone without their permission is nothing but disaster. He does (in some ways) leave it up to the readers to decide how to feel about cloning and whether it is ethical or not. It is an intriguing question; there never seems to be a correct answer.
For the second question, Churchill does not really show that there are any benefits of cloning. It almost felt as if he was pessimistic about cloning – especially without the persons’ consent. Churchill seems to view cloning as a danger to society because of the things they are capable of after finding out they are clones. It is not a settling topic to find out that the life you were living was due to an unnatural cause.