ok, volescu performed a genetic test to check whether or not bean's children would have anton's key. wouldn't it be easier to just take nikolai, and use his genes, bean and nicolai are identical twins, except for the whole anton key thing. therefor, if they used nikolai to fertilize petra's eggs, you would have the same chance of getting anton's key in the children as.. well as the rest of the world's population.
the only conclusion i can come to is petra secretly wants her children to die at the age of 20. or could someone shed some light on this??
it is revealed bean and nikolai are identical twins at the beginning of chapter 15 in ender's shadow.
Posted by pooka (Member # 5003) on :
Well, in addition to the issues people usually have about genetic donations is the fact that Nikolai doesn't have the rapid aging thing going on. I guess I should check Philotic Web to see how old Bean is Chronologically when he marries Petra. It's probable he was in his early to mid teens and not technically an adult.
Posted by WildZBill (Member # 5185) on :
Volescu's test was a fake, Petra knew there was no way to do the test.
Conception of children is an emotional/spiritual thing. I think that OSC got it just right. Petra wanted Beans children, no matter if they had Antons key or not.
Posted by Jexxster (Member # 5293) on :
WildZBill has it right on the money there I think. I think OSC wanted to portray Petra as having a much more broad concept of what really makes a person than a few strands of ACGT. Therefore, even though Nikolai's DNA would be (nearly) identical to Bean's, to Petra, it wouldn't matter. Bean and Nikolai are different people, no matter the degree of similarity in their genome.
This was a beautiful portrayal of a belief (that I personally hold) that creation of a child is much more than a biological binding of two gametes. Rather it is also symbolic, in a very personal and spiritual way, a binding of the very spirits and beings of the people involved. And Petra desparately wanted that kind of bond between her and Bean, IMO much more than she actually wanted children, she wanted what children represent-her's and Bean's love and devotion for each other, a love and devotion that would extend to their child(ren).
[ June 20, 2003, 11:39 PM: Message edited by: Jexxster ]
Posted by filetted (Member # 5048) on :
hmm... if you get geneticaly tested and it comes back positive? what does this mean? good or bad?
Posted by Jexxster (Member # 5293) on :
The answer to that question depends entirely on the the test was looking for. It could go either way.
Posted by filetted (Member # 5048) on :
maybe petra is smart enough to understand that "anton's key" is simplistic and crude. maybe she believes that what she sees in bean is an epigenetic phenomenon and she's content to roll the dice?
Posted by An anonymous user (Member # 5310) on :
If what is being suggested is that Petra hopes to perpetuate Bean's DNA and bear his children no matter what the risk, then I agree. I also believe that Petra is hoping for a heterozygous pairing with Anton's Key that would possibly render it ineffective. Remember, at this point we have no idea whether Anton's Key is a dominant or recessive trait.
[ June 22, 2003, 01:57 AM: Message edited by: An anonymous user ]
Posted by pooka (Member # 5003) on :
Yeah, I don't know if that was made clear. Though I also don't remember Petra actually weighing that as a argument.