Still waiting for this Brave World...

The one overall concept that binds Brave New World and Sir Ken Robinson's video together like glue is: Industrialization. In Brave New World we have massive amounts of clones running around supressing their emotions and daily struggles by taking soma which is quite similar to the video by watching the kids being "medicated routinely" with their ADHD pills because they just cannot stand to sit in class and be bored. This draws parallels by comparing the population of the World State by how they have to relieve their daily dilemmas with drugs just to make it to the next hour; furthermore, how kids in school must take their drugs to stay awake in class leaving no "aesthetic experience". Conformity plays a big role in industrialization because they are trying to standardize civilization and simply making them dumb and oblivious. Oh, but no fear, thats why the world has rebels. Bernard is an example of a student who is awake and is taking all of the world in and wants to create change (rebelling against the conformity) but cannot achieve that kind of mind set because he is living life in the factory production lane by having no say in how to shape society. He must obey and abide by the "assumptions of social structure and capacity." If you think about it, we are pretty much all conditioned, every single human being, to follow an example of something greater than ourselves and not to question but to accept it. As Bernard is going to get a permit signed by the director to visit the Reservation he comments, "I am not pleased with the reports I recieve of your behaviour outside working hours.....If I ever hear again of any lapse from a proper standard of infantile decorum, I shall ask for your transference" (Huxley 98). This reflects on the production you do in school if you aren't benefiting society by educating yourself or obeying rules; you're just wasting your time and the time of others so they will expell you or in some cases send you to Iceland. Society only wants productive members, if not, you are only going to influence others to do the same so they must fix that by enabling your thoughts and notions. You are't benefiting from these so called wonderful structures of life or improving your own being if you cant follow rules. Bernard feels rebelious knowing that he is conflicting with the norms of society and sometimes people are not comfortable with change if it goes against what everyone else is doing. We simply cant follow "production like mentality" because we dont have creativity and creativity is what is going to make the future prosper. Standardization is demolishing divergent thinking leaving narrowness and no experience to improve life. It causes chaos. People need to step out of the box to see change in the world but you cant achieve that by being told what to do or better yet, not even having the knowledge of knowing you can attain something better.

"Straight from the Horses mouth" What does that even mean?!?!

From my understanding of Chapter 3 I can presume that induviduals in Brave New World are made into workers that dont have the privlidge of asking questions because they are "content." Contentment obviously comes from them not knowing what else they are capable of producing with that knowledge they could have had (since lower castes are treated with alcohol and are oxygen deprived while being fertilized in a test tube). "Stability....the primal and ultimate need. Stability. Hence all this" (43). Order matters, someone is control is a dominate feature in BNW, they cannot attain knowledge because then they would yearn for something greater than "[turning wheels steadily]." Society is based on what caste you were born in: Alpha, Beta, Delta, etc. the Alphas and Betas are the more powerful and productive ones and they kind of oversee the working class. They need stability because they proclaim that "No civilization without social stability. No social stability without induvidual stability" (42). Social stability in my point of view are all the workers, they must sit there working all day to make sure they are producing more stability in society, thus creating more workers as themselves. Induvidul stability may be refeering to the higher castes such as the Alphas and Betas because they are the ones that must be organized and keep a firm grip on the workers; they are treated as their own person, meanwhile, the workers and treated as a group. (Hence "social"). Mustapha Mond is manipulating the children to believe that homes and parenting are awful and have "no air, no space; an understarilized prison; darkness, disease and smell" (37).  But these kids have never experienced a home so they have to take MM's word for it. Just like in 1984 when the goverment was always manipulating the news and in The Tempest how Miranda never had contact with other human beings but than of those that Prospero let her come in contact with. In BNW I also see how they are dehumanizing the lower castes by not letting them feel emotions and they must always have a look of contentment and for crying out loud they were treating so bad during the fertilization process! The desire thing comes in by the whole not seeing someone for too long thing, like Mr. D said "they need to go around the block a couple of times." And as quoted in the text, "Every one belongs to every one else, after all" (47).

This is MY understaning of BNW so far and I could ramble on but id rather talk about it than type about it. Haha.

Preparing for The Tempest

In discussions of "The Tempest", one controversial issue has been colonialism and imperialism. On the one hand, George Will, a political commentator, argues that we must view Literature in a political viewpoint. The piece of literature we are examining is Shakespeare's, The Tempest, and if you look through the eyes of Will you are going to see the direct meaning of colonizing countries and/or in this case, people, and see that Shakespeare was pro-colonization because he wanted to appeal his work to the audience which was the Queen and her loyals. In order to pay the bills Shakespeare had to be their puppet and I think that is why other people have different viewpoints on The Tempest because Shakespeare himself was confined to limited expression. Will wants you to dissect Literature as "this is how it is and you are going to like it." You have no induvidual thought in the matter and in my honest opinion, that is boring. As quoted in the article, "the transmission of the culture unites, even defines America-transmission through knowledge of literature and history-is faltering." This goes to show that we obviously have lost the creative thought process while we read literature. On the other hand, Stephen Greenblatt, Professor of Humanities at Harvard University, contends the view that we should take risks and have our own opinions on what we read while respectfully maintaining what the piece was put out there to be. This makes reading more interesting and makes you want to keep reading and gaining more insight instead of being like a political robot and accept whatever is being handed to you. He states that "critics want a tame and orderly canon," while as I can infer that he is opposed to that type of approach. Greenblatt wants us readers to go in depth and analyze reading from different viewpoints and share our cummulative knowledge. In that case we should view Shakespeare's writing as creative and accept different points of view on the play such as, Aime Cesaire's, A Tempest, which to my understanding is mocking colonialism. Greenblatt is simply suggesting to not get stuck in "the social cement" of literature and "take the risk of collective amnesia." You will never get to your full potential of understanding if you follow in someone elses footsteps. However, my own view will reside with Greenblatt and I will use some of his approaches to my understanding in creating an essay that will explore The Tempest in new depths and not "deculture" literature but merely broaden the potential the play has.



Hopefully this sounds okay :)