Well, now that I have read the rest of Brave New World, I really don’t know how to feel about it except for appalled. Overall, this book angered me because this is essentially what Aldous Huxley thought that we were headed towards as a society and that is a scary thought. It shows that he doesn’t really have in hope in humanity. People are being manufactured in factories and bottles, they are being conditioned with ridiculous phrases on a daily basis, and being drugged so that they can overlook anything bad that they have experienced, so that they are kept in the state of mind of an infant. Although there was a lot of things that greatly troubled me when I was reading this novel, there was one idea that I liked in Brave New World that I would love to see enacted in our world and that is death conditioning. I think that the way that they condition the little kids to not be afraid of death in Brave New World is great. In the world we live in today, death is one of the top three fears if not the number one fear and I still don’t understand why people fear it. Maybe because it has such a negative connotation, but if bribing people with ice-cream bars while they are surrounded by the dying keeps them from fearing death, why not? With that being said, I think that Brave New World functions well as a dystopia because it is a huge warning about what can happen to society in the future.
So now I have started reading Nineteen eighty four and I haven’t gotten very far but this is a strange novel. My first understanding of it is that this world (Oceania?) is a place in which it is centralized on war. This place is a war generating machine filled with spies, and propaganda. I don’t know much about Winston yet, but I already find his character to be very frustrating only because in the novel, it says that he is somewhere in his thirties but I feel as if this story should be coming from a teenager or at least a pre-teen and it bugs me! But I have high hopes for this novel because I want to compare it to the other novels that we’ve read.
I agree with you thoughts on Huxley, how he thought that the future was has a possibility of being so consumeristic. However, I would not like to go through death conditioning. When someone we love dies, I feel that we should care, should fully emote what we are going through. With death conditioning, it almost makes the loss of another human being negligent.
ReplyDeleteI think that Winston seems so young becasue he is living in this sheltered place where he has no real life to live on his terms. He only knows what they have told him.
ReplyDeleteI think the death conditioning aspect of Brave New World is interesting. In theory, not being afraid of death would be a very enlightening experience, but the way Huxley uses this conditioning in his world is something I would not like to see in our society. It almost seems like brainwashing to me, training the children that people are disposable beings.
ReplyDeleteI completely agree with you Gwen that the fear of death should not overrule a person living their life. Since death is guaranteed to all of us, and no one knows precisely when death will be "Knocking at their doorstep", I am unsure why people would resort to living a life of extreme paranoia, instead of just living life. In a day-and-age when society is desensitized by death, and the portrayal of death (Mainly due to the media), I feel that the best thing is to live each day as if it is your last, that way there will be no regrets. Well written blog!
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