Essay, Research Paper: The Boys Of Brazil

Ira Levin's The Boys From Brazil is one of the most excellent, clever, and thrilling fictional novels ever written. It grasps its reader's attention and lets him hang on every word. The Boys From Brazil takes place in the late 1970's through the mid-1980's, in some parts of South and North America and Europe. It tells the adventures of a well-known Jewish man, who is chasing one of the most wanted Nazis who was active during World War II, and his advocates. The novel raises many relevant social issues as well as makes references to many important historical events. This best-selling novel is a definite must-read action thriller and a great piece of artwork.
The story of The Boys From Brazil begins with a meeting called for by Dr. Mengele, an active member of the Nazi Comrades Organization, a well-advanced doctor during World War II, and one of the most wanted Nazis in the world. The meeting, which takes place in Brazil (where Mengele is hiding from the authorities), consists of Dr. Mengele himself, six of his most loyal men, and two other important men of the Organization. In this meeting, Mengele assigns each of his men between thirteen and eighteen men to kill, in one or a pair of countries throughout Europe and the United States. Each one of the ninety-four men to be killed is an unimportant civil servant of minor authority around the age of sixty-five, whose death must seem as an accident or as a result of natural causes. In addition, their death must occur on an exact date, or within a few days of it. Mengele's men are given new identities as traveling salesmen, passports, the men's addresses, money, and the knowledge that the deaths of these men will 'fulfill the destiny of the Aryan race'.
After the meeting ends, the men discover that a young American, Barry Koehler, had managed to record everything said in the meeting. The men are sent on a quest to look for Koehler and find him within a half-hour. Koehler is found in his hotel room, on the phone with Yakov Leibermann, an Austrian Jew who works to find wanted Nazis and to raise awareness and remembrance of the holocaust all over the world, telling him about the contents of the meeting. Mengele's men invade his room and kill him as he is about to play the recording to Leibermann. The phone is hung up, Koehler gets killed and the men are sent back to their own hotels to look over their assignments. The men leave Brazil on the following day and Dr. Mengele returns to his well-hidden mansion in the heart of the Brazil jungles.
Back in Austria Yakov Leibermann debates over the validity of Koehler's phone call. He later discovers that Koehler has been killed and decide to look into his story. He asks a friend of his to collect any article clippings regarding the deaths of sixty-five year-old civil servants throughout Europe. Meanwhile, the killings start and are being done professionally and successfully, even after Mengele has learned about Leibermann's attempts of interfering with the mission.
Leibermann looks at the article clippings and tries to find men murdered whose deaths might have seemed as an accident. He then decides to travel to Gladbeck, a town in Austria, and investigate Emil Doring's (a sixty-five year-old retired worker of the Public Transportation Commission) 'accidental death'. According to police records, Doring had been killed when a whole concrete floor of an old building fell on his head while walking under it. Leibermann fails to convince the police that Doring's death could have been an accident. He then tries to find a few more details from Doring's widow, a woman in her early forties, who is left with a fourteen year-old son. She tells him nothing that could help him find out why ninety-four unimportant men are being killed throughout the world. He decides to keep going on his quest and visits another family who had lost a sixty-five year old civil servant. He again finds a widow in her early forties left with an identical fourteen-year-old son, and no motive of why the husband would be wanted dead by Nazis. After further investigation, Leibermann finds common factors to all the killings: the men are all sixty-five year-old civil servants with wives in their early forties, and identical fourteen year-old sons all over the world. These look-alike boys all possess the characteristics of having pale skin, blue eyes and a sharp nose.
After asking for the help of his friends in solving this mystery, he comes across a Biology professor who suggests that duplicates of a person had been made by the process of cloning and were distributed all over the world by Nazis. The boys' features brought the men to the conclusion that the boys are duplicates of Adolf Hitler, along with the fact that Hitler's dad died when he was sixty-five. Mengele's reputation of being an excellent and well-advanced biologist and a close friend of Hitler's, along with the knowledge of his dealing with twins in Auschwitz during the war, validates the conclusion the men had come to.
In a dream Leibermann had, Frieda Altschul Maloney, an ex-Nazi guard during the war, came up and he remembered that she was involved with the Rush-Gaddis Agency, an American adoption agency, between 1960-1963. After getting in touch with her he found out that while she worked for the agency, she had gotten calls from South America asking her to send certain adoption applications she had been coming across at her job. These applications would contain a civil servant born between 1908 and 1912 (which would make him between sixty-four and sixty-six) and his wife, born between 1931 and 1935 (which would make her in her early forties). These families would receive a baby sent from South America, always being a baby-boy. She then mentioned some of the names of the families who had received a baby. These names matched some of the names of the murdered men. Leibermann was now to put all the pieces of the story together: Ninety-four duplicates of Hitler were distributed all over the world and their fathers were being killed by Mengele in order to simulate Hitler's own boyhood. Leibermann decided to warn the next man to be killed, the American Henry Wheelock, and to involve the FBI.
So far, seventeen out of the ninety-four men had been killed successfully. Back in South America Mengele's men were being sent back home as a result of Leibermann's attempts to stop the mission. Mengele, who is unsatisfied with this decision, decides to take matters into his own hands and finish the job of killing the rest of the men. He also expected to kill Leibermann in the United States. After learning that Leibermann was going to be meeting with Wheelock, he decided to get there before Leibermann.
As Mengele moved closer to causing global terror, Leibermann alone stopped his plan. As planned, Mengele arrived at Wheelock's house before Leibermann and pretended to be Leibermann. Once he was let in, Mengele killed Wheelock and waited for Leibermann to arrive. When Leibermann arrived, Mengele let him in and revealed his true identity. He shot Leibermann several times and wounded him severely. Mengele was then attacked by Wheelock's dogs, as Wheelock's son was coming back from school. Mengele tried to convince the boy that he shouldn't call the police, but the boy refused to believe him and called to get help for the bleeding Leibermann, as Mengele was being killed by Wheelock's dogs. Help came and Leibermann was hospitalized. The story ends as Leibermann tells everything to the police and is being declared a national hero.
Ira Levin's The Boys From Brazil makes a few references to historical events as well as relates to social issues nowadays. The book deals with the events after World War II. It relates to the Nazi era during the war, which also continued in some places after the war ended. For instance, the Nazi Comrades Organization led by Dr. Mengele, which continued to follow and spread Nazi principles and worked to bring the Aryan race back to majority and perhaps control. The book also relates to the present-day anti-Nazi movement, represented by the character of Yakov Leibermann. For instance, Leibermann's work throughout the story to raise awareness and promote remembrance of events such as the holocaust, all over the world. This pertains to the philosophy of "If we remember our mistakes, we are not likely to repeat them", also mentioned by Leibermann. The book raises many controversial social issues as well. It makes a reference to how our well-advanced modern day technology can sometimes be harmful. The newly discovered human cloning technology can benefit us as well as hurt us. It raises issues such as "should we let it exist if it can be harmful to us?" The resolution of the story is open-ended. In other words, the end of the story makes the reader think and question the contents of it. It raises doubts in the reader's mind such as "what if such a thing really happened?" or "what if such a thing is happening right now?" What if such a thing was to really happen? Our advancement in Biology certainly allows for the cloning of humans. What if ninety-four Hitler clones were to be distributed? Or already have been distributed? How would we ever know? Maybe we will never know until it is too late…