English 10

Margaret Atwood’s Introduction

I agree that Brave New World has ideas that are simply exaggerated versions of the technological advancements we have in our world today. Atwood states “and busily engaging in schemes for genetic enhancement and – to go Brave New World one better – for immortality” (vi). I agree with this statement because the government in Brave New World may not want their citizens to live forever but they do want their society to live on forever  and Ford’s ideas.

However, I disagree with the ideas that at such a young age in this society that playing erotic games is acceptable. I think this is one of the only ideas in this novel that isn’t an exaggeration but quite the opposite. In our society it is quite frowned upon for pretty much anyone under the age of adulthood to do such things that children are doing in Brave New World. I was most confused by was the changing of topics, She seemed to talk about one thing and then move onto the next without a bridge in between that connected the topics.

Atwoods Introduction
“Meaning in fact has been eliminated” (p.vii) I agree with her when she says this because in A Brave New World, all books, works of art and music have been banned because it causes chaos and disturbs their happiness with spots of doubt. This endless cycle of happiness could be seen as a good thing or a bad thing because you need to know the difference between sad and happy. Francis Bacon said, “In order for the light to shine so brightly, the darkness must be present.” This can be applied to happiness too, If you don’t know what it feels like to be sad the happy feeling with just fade away and everyone will basically just be emotionless robots.

“Many utopias and dystopias emphasize food (delicious or awful; or, or in the case of Swift’s Houyhnhnms, oats), but in Brave New World the menu is not presented” (p. xii) I don’t see why what is on the menu matters in this case. If the book was more focused on food and other aspects of lifestyle such as health, then it would make an impact but in Brave New World, Simply telling if the food is good or bad is sufficient.

In Margaret Atwood’s introduction to Brave New World, she mentioned a lots of things. I agree that “Alone among the animals, we suffer from the future perfect tense. (xiv)” Because we are the most intelligent living organisms in the world, and we are the ones who actually consider or predict or guess about what will happen in the future. Sometimes concerns of future will lead to suffer, the fear of the unknown, or the worries that unsatisfying things will happen. The unique ability of thinking about future is what makes us suffer. But I don’t agree with what she said “But Brave New World is a book about the future and whatever its artistic or philosophical qualities, a book about the future can interest us only if its prophecies look as though they might conceivably come true. (20)” I am interested in this book because of the world that seems new and different, not because I think what happened in the book will be true. In fact, I don’t really think our world will become something like that. When the government tries to do something like hatching all the babies, people stand up for themselves. And an extremely “stable’ society like that will lose all the current culture, religions, languages, or even real emotions. When a society become more and more civilized, but losing all the things that inspire and interest people, it is walking down the path to the uncivilization of itself. And there is something that makes me confused. Like Atwood said “Many utopias and dystopias emphasize food, but in Brave New World the menus are not presented. (xii)” I think food, as an important part of people’s everyday life, should be somehow discussed or described in the book. So I am confused why didn’t Huxley write anything about food.

Margaret Atwood talked about so many thoughts in her introduction to the book Brave New World. There is one particular thing that I totally agree with, is that whether the world in the book is Utopia or dystopia is based on personal perspectives. Some people may prefer a stable society that everyone and everything is following its pre-designed path, but some people may prefer a natural way of being, how things are different from each other and maybe all their perfections and imperfections.

“Brave New World is either a perfect-world utopia or its nasty opposite, a dystopia, depending on your point of view: its inhabitants are beautiful, secure, and free from diseases and worries, though in a way we like to think we would find unacceptable. [vii]”

There is one thing I do not agree with, that she said “Lenina doesn’t see why she shouldn’t have sex with anyone she likes whenever the occasion offers, as to do so is merely polite behavior and not to do so is selfish. [vii]” In my opinion, Lenina, like most people in the brave new world, has sex because of personal desire, and to meet someone’s own desire is not “merely polite behaviour”. Actually I think it is selfish to have sex with anyone she likes whenever the occasion offers, because the only purpose to do so is to feed her own desire and needs. When Lenina took off her clothes and wanted to have sex with poor John, she didn’t even ask if John wants to have sex with her like that, and this act of selfishness and ignorance of others is definitely not “polite behaviour”.

And at last, there was something puzzled me. In the Brave New World, all the babies are made in the hatcheries instead of a natural way, so to be honest, they no longer need a function of being pregnant for women, or even have an organ like uterus. But in the book, not all the women are sterile, they still need to take pills for birth control. Why don’t they just programme all the female to be sterile, like how they programmed everything else? Why bother taking pills all the time if they have a way to avoid all this before the females are even born? This really confuses me.

In the introduction of Brave New World written by Margaret Atwood. In the introduction, I totally  agree with is that “Brave New World is either a perfect-world utopia or its nasty opposite, a dystopia, depending on your point of view: its inhabitants are beautiful, secure and free from diseases and worries, though in a way we like to think we would find unacceptable (vii)”. It is exactly what am I thinking about the novel. When I first time to read the book, I felt the book is describing a horrible world, which people are produced as products, programmed like machines. People in this world are separated into different levels. But when I read further more about this book, I found the world that Huxley describes is not bad, all people in this world is happy, or if something makes them not happy, they can take soma to be happy, everyone is satisfied with themselves, an Epsilon will not unsatisfied to himself, because they are programmed to think they are better than others, they are doing a great job. The world can be a utopia, also can be a dystopia, it depends on how do the readers consider this novel.

In Margaret Atwood’s introduction to brave new world, I disagree that Perfectibility preclude dissent.

“Forced re-education, exile, and execution are the usual choices on offer, in utopias, for any who oppose the powers that be” (ix).

In utopia, people should not be allowed to protest because people have to keep stability. I understand why but it is inconsistent. If people did that, power would be concentrated and people could not express their opinions. It is not utopia any more. However, I agree this opinion.

“And at the same time we want to be those anguish of others, because we believe, with John, that life has meaning beyond the play of the senses, and that immediate gratification will never be enough” (xiv).

Because if my life was just like this book, there is no differences between machine and humans. Also I am puzzled to this statement.

“Everything would be fine, we’re told, if we could only do away with industrialism and get back in tune with Nature, and deal with overpopulation” (ix).

One thing I agree with Atwood is the idea about how meaning has been taken out in the world that everything is well planned. Without emotions, variations and all the other possibilities, the world author described is indeed very boring with everything goes on in order. I disagree with Atwood’s introduction with the argument about how human want to be both miserable and be living peacefully without any worries at the same time. I don’t think anyone in today’s society would like to be suffering and be anguished even though that may be the most correct way in terms of morality and the destined way of living for them. All of us want to have the carefree lives, we all try to avoid facing the reality, want to be satisfied and gratified even if the happiness is not eternal. There is one sentence in the introduction that I don’t quite understand. He comments on the way author used visual description to bring the readers closer to the brave new world.
‘All is surface, there
is no depth.’ (xi)

I think “the Brave New World is either a perfect-world utopia or its nasty opposite, a dystopia, depending on your point of view: its inhabitants are beautiful, secure and free from diseases and worries, though in a way we like to think we would find unacceptable.”statement is quite correct, and I also think that Utopia is determined by your own personal opinions, not by others. “We wish to be as the careless gods, lying around on Olympus, eternally beautiful, having sex and being entertained by the anguish of others. And at the same time we want to be those anguished others, because we believe, with John, that life has meaning beyond the play of the senses, and that immediate gratification will never be enough.”I think that in real life, if someone wants to be beautiful forever, they will not want to be as painful as John, and no one will easily try John’s pain. My question is“which is a kind of union with the immanent “Tao or Logos, the transcendent Godhead or Brahmin””why is this “Tao or Logos, the transcendent Godhead or Brahmin?”

Margaret Atwood’s introduction – Arantxa Gomez – Oct. 30

In Brave New World novel, the introduction was written by Margaret Atwood. One of the things Atwood stated that was similar to my ideas and I actually wrote on my personal response essay was after she explained the characters and started explaining what she thought of the book.

“Brave New World is either a perfect-world utopia or its nasty opposite, a dystopia, depending on your point of view: its inhabitants are beautiful, secure, and free from diseases and worries, though in a way we like to think we would find unacceptable” (7).

While I was reading the book and discussed it in class, I started seeing the book more as a Utopia rather than a dystopia. Huxley’s purpose was to make make a world that was stable and in which everybody was happy. And as Atwood said, maybe we should see this book in both ways, because people are scared and terrorize with the idea of how the world is organize, but in reality, this way may be beautiful and helpful.

Later on, Atwood described a third hypothetical scenario in which she set John, the Savage, having another alternative of life. Huxley only wrote two alternatives the first one: “an insane life in Utopia” (8). And the second one: “the life of a primitive in an Indian village…” (8). Atwood didn’t like this ideas and created this third alternative in which Brave New World would possess an artistic and philosophical completeness. But later, she said:

“But Brave New World is a book about the future and whatever its artistic or philosophical qualities, a book about the future can interest us only if its prophecies look as though they might conceivably come true” (20).

This booked interested me, and I don’t think this will come true. Society is smart enough to not create this extremist world. Maybe some ideas will be followed, but no all of them, society is bigger than the government, and if there is the need to have a revolution to stop the government to control or have power over the people, people would probably fight.

Finally, Atwood wrote about how in Brave New World, Huxley didn’t wrote any information about atomic a energy. She said that atomic energy was important to mankind, but it confused me how she explained it. “The release of atomic energy marks a great revolution in human history” (21). “This revolutionary revolution is to be achieved, not in the external world, but in the souls and flesh of human beings” (21). Since my first language isn’t english, I didn’t understand what she meant with this “revolution”, she used queer words and started talking about sanity in mankind, which confused me even more.

Margaret Atwood’s Introduction Response-Max Mingo

In Margaret Atwood’s introduction to Brave New World, I would have to agree with her point on how the book can be thought of as a Utopia and a Dystopia.

Brave New World is either a perfect-world utopia or its nasty opposite, a dystopia, depending on your point of view:(vii)

In our class, we have not yet talked about the possibility of there world being a place that should exist. I agree with her on the fact that some people already live out there lives like this, whether they believe it or not. For example, a person that works 8 hours a day, goes home, and watches TV. They’re choosing to live in a world that shares a lot of similarities to Brave New World.

I disagree with Margaret on her point of Interpretation of H.G Wells Time Machine. She was trying to say that Time Machine is a literary precursor to Brave New World.

H.G. Wells’s The Time Machine, in which the brainless, pretty “upper class” play in the sunshine during the day, and the ugly “lower classes” run in the underground machinery and emerge at night to eat the social butterflies(viii)

I think that Time Machine isn’t a prediction of a future social class of humans, but an exploration of what time and evolution do to our natural world. Whereas Brave New World is an exploration of what humans can do to themselves in the future, not what the environment and biology of our world evolve to.

Finally, Margarets Atwood’s curiosity and fascination about the history and relevance of “Zippers” confuse me.

Nor did I know that zippers, when they first appeared, had been denounced from pulpits as lures of the Devil because they made clothes so easy to take off – I nonetheless had a vivid picture of “zippicamiknicks,” that female undergarment with single zipper down the front that could be shucked so very easily:(vii)

I still fail to see the purpose and what it adds to the reading of Brave New World. It might just be the author’s way of bringing her own words into the eyes of one of  Aldous Huxley’s Books.

In Margaret atwood’s introduction, I agree with is in the book is created social world controllers, Huxley clever illusions about the future is also lit up the moment, I don’t think the controller is one of the world is not clever use of genes, I think the clever use of the word is not appropriate, because people didn’t enjoy the real happiness, only on the surface of the happiness. One of my puzzles is why Bernard wyeth had an unnatural desire, and what prompted him to have an undefined desire to break free.

In the book Brave New World, Aldous Huxley described a dystopia that is very different from our world. He depicted a shocking world that seems civilized, peaceful and developed, which actually manipulates humans and their lives. All the humans are created by chemicals and machines instead of being born naturally, and their physical conditions, future and social status are “designed” before their birth.

“‘We also predestined and condition. We decant our babies as socialized human beings, as Alphas or Epsilons, as future sewage workers or future…’

He was going to say future world controllers, but correcting himself, said

‘future directors of Hatcheries.’ [10]”

Furthermore, the children’s thoughts are infused when they are still very young, even when they were just infants, and they believe that it is instinctive to think the way they think:

“‘They’ll grow up with what the psychologists used to call an “instinctive” hatred of books and flowers. Reflexes unalterably conditioned. They’ll be safe from books and botany all their lives.’ The Director turned to his nurse. ‘Take them away again.’[17] ”

As you can tell from the quote, the dominator of the world educates people the way he wants, to maintain the society the way it is now. And the way he carry out the teaching is inhuman and cruel.

“The screaming of the babies suddenly changed its tone. There was something desperate, almost insane, about the sharp spasmodic yelps to which they now gave utterance. Their little bodies twitched and stiffened; their limbs moved jerkily as if to the tug of unseen wires. [17]”

With this setting starting the whole book, I could already sense how abnormal the world is in the book. In our current world, it is intolerable to treat human like that, cruelly and unfairly. And as the reading went further, I found a lot of evidences that prove my opinion, that this world has moral principles which are totally unacceptable to us. For example, people can have sex with whoever they want to, love or sex is not exclusive. And when people want to relax or feel frustrated, they use Soma, which is a kind of drug, to escape their troubles and negative emotions instead of trying to solve the situations.

“Feeling lurks in that interval of time between desire and its consummation. Shorten that interval, break down all those old unnecessary barriers..[37]”

In my opinion, the process to pursue consummation is important, that is why desire exists, to motivate you to go after something. In the Brave New World, consummations are given immediately or soon after you feel your desire, which takes away the possible emotions that you can experience. It is pathetic that you cannot fully experience all kinds of feelings, impulse and emotions as an independent human being.

I am going to talk about Bernard Marx who is the one of main characters. I have more sympathy with him than other characters. Because I think he has more human feeling compared with others. Specifically, He has a complex about his appearance. He is shorter than other alpha and looks like Gammas. He feel inferior to the others. It is a quality like human, because in this world, all people believe my hierarchy is the best by hypnopaedia.

“His self-consciousness was acute and distressing. Each time he found himself looking on the level, instead of downward, into a Delta’s face, he felt humiliated”(55).

So he doesn’t have confidence. For that reason, he always care what other people think and waver between hopes and despair by Evaluation from people.

“Success went fizzily to Bernard’s head, and in the process completely reconciled him (as any good intoxicant should do) to a world which, up till then, he had found very unsatisfactory” (136).

“Pieced by every word that was spoken, the tight balloon of Bernard’s happy self-confidence was leaking from a thousand wounds. Pale, distraught, abject and agitate, he moved among his guests, stammering incoherent apologies, assuring them that next time the Savage would certainly be there, begging them to sit down and take carotene sandwich, a slice of vitamin A pate, a glass of champagne-surrogate”(152).

He feels lonely and he is conscious of his difference. That’s why he want to change against this world. For example, he doesn’t want to take a soma and wants to be free.

“But wouldn’t you like to be free to be happy in some other way, Lenina? In your own way, for example; not in everybody else’s way” (79).

This is similar to way of thinking in our world. In conclusion, I sympathize with him. Basically, I cannot understand ways of thinking and values of most of characters. But I can understand only about him. Because I feel his way of thinking or values are similar to ours.

The world was very modern, tall buildings mostly neutral colours. We learnt in the very beginning of the book. “A squat grey building of only thirty-four storeys”(1) A tall building in our world is about that height, but in A Brave New World that is one of the shorter buildings. The world seems crisp, cold and sterile, the labs are harsh to be in. “A harsh thin light glared through the windows, hungrily seeking some draped lay figure, some pallid shape of academic gooseflesh, but only finding the glass and nickel and bleakly shining porcelain of a laboratory” (1) Aldous Huxley was trying to explain how the lab seemed cold even with the sun shining through because everything was put together so tidy and it was so clean. It doesn’t feel like people are there. Personally I would not like to live in this world, I like to express personality and I enjoy others personalities. I love cozy spaces that feel warm. A Brave New World seems very fake, like playing with the original Barbie dolls, there is one person, and all the others are the same with only small modifications so you can tell them apart.

Personal Response – Arantxa Gomez – Oct 25. 2018 – 1st approach

After Reading the novel Brave New World by Aldous Huxley, I got really confuse. I didn’t understand some of the words I was reading, because Huxley wrote the book for English speakers and used old english words that are not longer use in the present. In the book, Huxley started the novel by describing the setting. “Winitriness responded to winitriness” (1). Huxley wrote this to make reference that the place looked hopeless and cold. If the teacher had no explained the meaning to me, I would not have understood it.

Later on, I really started enoying the book, I understood it and thaught that my ideas weren’t the same. For instance, when Lenina and Fanny were discussing in the dressing room, because Lenina only dated one man and Fanny didn’t agree with it, because of their social rules and tried to convince her by saying: “After all, everyone belongs to everyone” (37). She said that because, ever since people were born, society taught them that having more than one partner at the same time was normal, because in that way, they wouldn’t feel attached or comitted. In this world, Huxley’s point was to make a society were people would never feel sad and if they felt comitted, they wouldn’t feel happy, they would feel stress. While Lenina was dating a second man name Bernard, she started having stressful feelings, because Bernard took her to a trip to New Mexico, and they weren’t in a very comfortable place or at least didn’t look anthing like home. They were watching a human sacrifice and Lenina got shocked and thaught: “Oh I wish I had my soma”(100). Soma is a pill their society swallows everytime they start feleling sad, stress or anxious. It makes them happy and is their drug. Of course I do not agree with this idea. The point of leaving a life is to feel different emotions and learn from them by having different experiences. If you only know the feeling of happiness, how can you become a better person? People become better person by failing. And taking a drug, it’s not going to make anything. Soma kinds of make references to the drug people consume in our world. It makes you happy for a while, but afterwards everything come back to the normal. I know that everybody wants to feel happy and at some point it isn’t a bad idea, I see Huxley’s view, but the way this society reaches it, makes me think it a lot. They have a human hatchery , there, they educate people to have social stability. The hatchery director thinks: “Bokanovsky’s Process is one of the major instruments of social stability”(5). By creating thousand of babies at once and later, with punishment tecniques, teach them to be scare of certain things, isn’t and human thing. That could harm really bad the baby. Also, by creating thousand of clones, blocks the uniquiness of a person. While I was reading the part in which they described the process by which the babies passed to belong in a certain social group, I felt sad and sensitive.

Moving forward, when Huxley, introduced the Savage, I liked him because his ideas were “normal” to say it in some way. Maybe Huxley introduced him to remove so much rarity of the book. While the Savage and Mustapha Mond (one of the society’s controller) were having a conversation were the Savage discussed and question the reason in which people acted the way the did, a comment of Mustapha Mond caught my attention. “Particulary when they’re beautiful. Beauty’s attractive, and we don’t want people to be attracted by old things. We want them to like the new ones” (193). This shows that the government has total control over the community and they don’t have their own way of thinking. This is similar to our world. In some countries, the governments try to control what comes up on the internet and gets into people’s head so that they do not have opinions that put the government against them. Another thing that happened when the Savage got introduced, was that Lenina started having strong feelings for him. She started having this unusual sensation of only wanting him. “ ‘If I didn’t like you so much’ she said ‘I’d be furious with you’ ”(168). Lenina had the courage to tell the Savage her feelings , and because the Savage has this old perspection of the world’s society and comes from an uncivilized community, she really like her too, but wants to have a formal relation. I got really glad in this part of the novel, not just because I love romantic novels, but because, finally the commitment between people is beginning, and even though they’re kind of breaking society rules, I like it.

Huxley’s wrote a dystopia novel, but I don’t agree. This was a utopia novel. He wants a happy world, and wrote the book base on his ideas of a stable society that would always be happy. He wrote a less obvious version of our society and civilisation. Saying this, he made us think that the world he described was horrible, but as you got into detail of whats happening, it is not that different from our society, it’s just an exaggeration of it.

Make connections with the world you live in and see around you. Is the world depicted in the text similar to yours, or different? How? Explain.

The world depicted in the book is different from our world. In the Brave New World, author depicted a perfect civilized world in which everyone seems to be happy at all times, everything goes on peacefully and the society is stable. This can partly attribute to how the government breeds human in the “CENTRAL LONDON HATCHERY AND CONDITIONING CENTRE”. The controllers in the world believe that Bokanovsky’s Process is the key for social stability. The director addresses to the students about this idea when introducing the cloning process to them.

Bokanovsky’s Process is one of
the major instruments of social stability! (5)

This means the world’s social stability is based on the use of Bokanovsky’s Process.The government manipulates all the human activities and emotions, there is no liberty for citizens. They have no rights to decide what they want their future to be like. Citizens do their work according to the hierarchy without any complaint and feeling happy with the taken of Soma. The society is safe and stable. This is different from our world which babies are mainly produced through sexual reproduction. Everyone is unique in personality and appearance. We are free to develop our own minds and are able to change our future by working hard to pursue our dreams. There is lots of chaos going on everyday in the world and people are always unhappy and unsatisfied with their daily lives.

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