Wow! This World Is Brave!
First of all let me just start out by saying Wow! Brave New World is the right title for this book because the ideas presented in here are really brave. Right away I was turned off. This is a world in which human beings are being manufactured! Given the fact that this book is set to deal with the future the idea of that is really terrifying! While I have not read the entire book there was a lot of things that I was confused by. I wasn’t sure if as the reader we are being told the story from Bernard’s point of view or if we were just a face in the crowd when the director is giving peoples a tour of the facility. I also dint understand the pavlovian conditioning that they do with the babies. Why do they want them to be conditioned to be afraid of flowers? The idea of being exposed to sexual promiscuity early on was a little jarring at first but I guess I can understand the reasoning behind that (not advocating for this at all). I also don’t understand what the people in this novel look like when the author talks about the different colors, is he referring to their skin tones or just the color of the outfits that they are wearing? When I first started reading this, I thought that there was nothing that I could like about living in a world like this but I was able to lighten up a little bit when someone made a comment during our discussion that unlike the other Utopia’s that we have read so far, this world allows room for people to be different and to have other thoughts and to question this way of life. It allows room for error and I completely agree and I have to say that I like that. But I do hope that we do not end up in a world like this where we are consumed by consumerism and that everything that we say is a conditioned phrase and where human beings are being mass produced because that is really terrifying. With that being said, this is definitely a dystopian novel because it is a definite warning about the future, given where we are as a society right now.
Do the characters in this story have a choice? Or the ability to question? Really I think no. I mean, their might be some who are classified as 'mistakes.' But people are brainwashed and messed with and shocked and god knows what else to FORCE them to be something. They don't think their own thoughts once in their lives unless there is something "wrong" with them. Where is the room in that?
ReplyDeleteHi Gwen, I agree that parts of this novel are confusing, especially when the third person, all seeing, all knowing narrator switches from point of view to point of view in chapter 3, almost without any warning at all. It was challenging to keep everything going on at that moment in the novel straight in my head.
ReplyDeleteThis work really made me wonder whether we are already in a world that is consumed by consumerism. Ever seen pictures or footage of people lining up for Black Friday sales or to get the latest iPhone?
I get the feeling that Huxley would be all that impressed with our society.
I can completely relate to your feelings of confusion about different aspects of this novel. One of the confusing parts that always sticks out is when the director is in the erotic play garden, you get Lenina's thoughts, Henry's thoughts, and bernard's thoughts. I had a hard time making through that section. But I also was confused about what Huxley was getting at with the completely contrasting societies, the reservation and the new world. But I think that he was afraid of both and that his ideal world was the one he was living in - which isn't such a bad idea, to be content with the life one has.
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