MidTerm practice

Every little event we encounter in our daily activities has science in it . The novel “Us or Me” by Ian McEwan Joe the narrator seem to had made connection with science . It started with the Joe Rose’s description of a very drastic experience in his life.

   Joe and his girlfriend name Clarisse, sharing a picnic which then they are interrupted by a hot-air balloon landing in the field. The pilot of the balloon is in trouble the pilot must have been half way out of the passenger basket as it touched the ground. The narrator and three other people see the danger, and run to help. So in all there was five men and the boy who was inside the hot air balloon.  Together with the balloon pilot, they each grab hold of a line, and so keep the balloon from rising into the air. Then among much confusion, the pilot loses his grip, and the balloon rises into the air with four people holding on desperately. The young boy is still in the basket. For a few seconds, all four hold on, and then one by one they started to let go, but one man by the name of Dr. John Logan didn’t let go. He was determined and stood till he couldn’t anymore, which resulted him to fall to his death. Joe Rose unexpectedly became part of an unsuccessful rescue mission to save a boy, eventually closing with the death of the doctor John Logan. This seemed to have made a very drastic change in Joe’s life.  

 He compared his situation to altruism . Joe emphasizes that while he was trying to save the boy in the hot air balloon in the novel several times was that there was a “lack of cooperation” and the problem was that there was “never a team”. It seems that Joe believes the absence of a leader, the pilot having “abdicated his authority”, prevented cooperation and the fact that everyone was “determined on their separate plans”. As the dramatic events unfold, Joe is constantly analyzing very scientifically the process, the failures and the “mammalian conflict”; us, or me. According to Joe, “someone said me, and then there was nothing to be gained by saying us” (Mc Ewan 272) . This brought out a situation that can be tracked back to the evolutionary theory.

 Through observations of animals and humans, she concludes that the gene that elicits altruism in organisms survives through a type of natural selection those weeds out those who do not conform to the group in which they belong. In “The Selfless Gene,” Olivia Judson’s main point is to prove how altruistic behavior is something that is not learned, but is an essential genetic trait passed down by each generation. Loners and aggressors of groups of animals and people tend to die out because of the failure to coexist within a group. This situation occurred In Us or Me . The group who was trying to save the boy didn’t cooperate as a group , the result was one died and their mission failed . At first glance, altruistic behavior may appear to be a trait that is doomed to die out, the key lies in the tight knit communities that develop between organisms of the same kind.