its been a really long time =O!

So its been a while so I decided I would catch up on the blog :) And I decided I would answer this question because it brings up a lot of discussion.

What ideas about humans, society, life, or science have you formulated as a result of reading this novel?
To be conpletely honest, when I opened this book, I hated it and I kind of closed my mind to it. But then I kept reading the book because I had to answer the study guide and we kept discussing it in class. Once all the scientific mumbo-jumbo was explained in class, the book was much easier to understand. Plus, there was more of a storyline once you reached chapters 4 and 5.
I learned a lot from this book. It taught me that humans can strive and strive to be perfect, but its just never going to happen. Bernard turned out to be a total mistake, and he is different from the other Alphas. Linda got pregnant because her reproductive organs were never removed as an embryo. Many mistake popped up in the book, but the people of the new world still continue to think that their life is perfect. They are pompous and very hot-headed, but that is all they know how to be. I learned that there is no use in trying to be a perfectionist, because eventually you will slip-up and make a mistake; it happens to the best of us. Its part of being a human.
I learned that science is starting to become scary. We are now doing things that were thought never possible. Parents will soon be able to pick the sex of their baby, and I totally disagree with that. Let nature take its course and just experience the miracle of having a baby without science becoming involved. I think a lot of science that interferes with human life is wrong. For example, machines that prolong the life of someone. I think that when the doctors decide that the human body can no longer function, that is the truth. What right does science have to interfere with any part of nature? Honestly, what is the difference between prolonging life and postponing death? But thats just one of the many things that science can now do. Science can now keep people's hearts beatings when they should have died in the first place, science can now allow parents to choose if they want a boy or girl, and science can now even have a pregnant man. What if this continues? Can future generations end up like Huxley's visions of the future? In my opinion, it is a good possibility. Its not guaranteed, but its a good possibility.
I learned that the people in our society are growing up too fast. Things that once been known as a privledge of being an adult, are now given to teeangers. Privledges given to teenagers are given to children, and so on. Its scary to think that sixty years ago, a teenager's biggest worry was if her family was going to have dinner that night because of the Great Depression. Today, a teenager's biggest worry is if they have a date Friday night.
The Great Depression led to the findings of new scientific studies. If we have another depression, will this Brave New World be the result? Like the Eleven Years War, will we have a choice to keep fighting or to have everything?
I learned that humans are supposed to have emotions. I can never imagine a life of always being happy. People can claim to be happy 100% of the time but that just can't be. The thing is though, our emotions make us a stronger person. We can deal with the things that life throws at us without popping a soma tablet into our mouth. And sometimes, its okay for the strongest people to break down and cry. It just makes us come out stronger in the end.
Personally, I would never want to live in the new world. Its so scary to think of having no originality and having sex with a new person every week. I think it is immoral, and that the people in this book have absolutely no morrals.

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Saturday night, Maria and I were bored so we decided to go see Madagascar 2. It's almost like Huxley has a sixth sense or something because the leader of the whole reserve of animals was ironically named Mustapha. And the most powerful group of penguins were called the Alphas. That's so weird. The book is relating to stuff that we're learning in American Cultures too, about communism and Karl Marx. I think Huxley's Brave New World is sooner than we can imagine.

I was wondering why it's called Brave New World. I understand the New World part because its obviously an entirely different and newly originated world from before, but what's so brave about it??

Bernard & Iceland

What is Bernanrd's initial reaction when he finds out he is going to Iceland?
When Bernard finds out he is going to Iceland, he feels very confident. He has a sense of indivuilality and is very proud of that. Bernard likes the idea of being different and feels as if he can face the task of going to Iceland.
I guess its not such a good idea to like the idea of being different in this book. It would most likely get you many enemies. I kinda think of this Bernard as like in that one episode of the Fairly Odd Parents, when Timmy wishes everyone would be the same, so everybody on Earth changes into big gray blobs. But then Timmy puts on his pink hat and it makes him so different from everyone else that he has a lot of people angry and criticizing him. (I know, I'm comparing classical literature to a cartoon, but hey, it works..)
Bernard doesn't have many fans. Other main characters in the book make fun of him for supposedly having alcohol in his surrogate. And this has to do with the fact that he is different. This is why Bernard is proud of going to Iceland because he wants to express his individuality, and the fact that he now considers himself kind of like a 'rebel'.


But! I have a question and I was hoping someone could help me...??
It says right in the book that Bernard is proud of his individuality and he is confident in going to Iceland and all that stuff. But if Bernard loves being different and doesn't like the idea of taking soma, then why does he go to those Solidarity Sessions?
The parts about the Solidarity Sessions reallllyyy confused me..

thinkin'?

I was thinking a lot about what Mrs. Hoppel was talking about during the book discussion today. Do we really want the future to end up like this??
Like sexuality, for example. In Brave New World, six year olds are having sexual activity. Why?? Because in this world, there is no respect for their bodies and no morality. Nobody in this book has any morals!
The scary thing is, future centuries CAN end up like this. Just think about it, kids are having sex younger and younger now. In the book, there are comments about how horrible it must be to wait until your twenties to have sex. Well, most people don't even wait until marriage now. Like how the Director was making fun of "the old ways" of waiting until twneties to have sex, a lot of people get made fun of right now. I mean, how often do we hear boys, and other girls, call girls "prude" or scared and stuff along that. So, we think we must do these things, which leads to younger and younger ages having sex. Scary to think that in maybe thousands of years sex won't even be important, it will just be an everyday thing that everyone who is "mature" (or older than five years old) will be doing.
And with the caste system also. You walk into school and you have all of your little cliques. Of course there's the jocks, the preps, the geeks, the goths, emo kids and whatever other labels you can think of. In movies and books, the preps are always perfect, pretty, smart and funny. And the jocks? Girls go crazy over jocks. This relates to the caste system in the book. The Alphas are the perfect ones, always look good and do good.
Huxley really does make you think. What if we continue like this? What if our future ends up with embryos being bottled? Now that I view it in this perspective, I'm actually beginning to understand the book. I'm still having trouble with the scientific parts, but I can kind of understand what Huxley is going to try to say throughout the book.
I'm glad I didn't give up with it. You can actually learn a lot from this book :)

Facism.. again

Because of Maria's blog, I now understand what facism has to do with the novel :) So if you were really confused by reading mine (because it was really bad) then read hers because it clarifies a lot of things. =]

"Community, Identity, Stability"

In Brave New World, identity is majorly sacrificed. It is sacraficed to guarantee the stability of the community. Once you are an embryo of Bokanovsky's Process, you do not have individuality. You are catorgiezed and stereo-typed by either a Gamma, Alpha, Beta, Delta or Epsilon. The "community" is the potency in which children are created to serve. Every child and all the actions they preform are made to boost the stability of the community.
Anyone agree or disagree?? =]

A Brave New World

What is fascism?
To be completely honest, I had no idea what this word meant until I just looked it up. So I'll try and put together what I learned, but it's probably not going to be the best definition..
But anyway, fascism is a government led by a dictator. If you are under a fascist government, your leader has complete control over what you do or don't do. The dictator isn't always fair ; he is somtimes racist, aggressive and very critical. Even if you don't like your leader, you don't have much of a choice but to listen to him. In a dictatorship, the people have no consent within their government.
Personally, I would hate to have a person who I don't even know control my every move. I believe that each and every human being has an individual part in their society without the influence of others. There has been many dictatorships in history, and most of them have failed (at least the ones I just read about). In America, we practice democracy which is the belief that every U.S. citizen has a voice in government. I think this is the best choice because even if something goes the opposite of what you wanted, you can have a peace of mind knowing that you at least contributed to what you thought was best for our country.
And again, I have no clue what this has to do with the book we're reading, but when I figure out, I'll have to update this :)

Guilt

Okay, so let me begin this with that you should only feel guilty if you really deserve to!
Gene deserves to feel guilty. He deserves to have his conscience eat away at him and he deserves to have to live with the fact that he permanently hurt his best friend. But really, who decides if we should really feel guilty or not? Sometimes, I think that people convince us over and over again that we are at fault so we just believe we are guilty. And half of the time, we really aren't.
And yes, Gene did push Finny, but those kids in the basement had no reason to harass him. It probably just added to his guilt even more.
The guilt is very obvious though. If he didn't feel bad about it, then why would he flashback and tell the story? I think he's trying to tell us that we can move on from the past.. but that doesn't mean that we accept it and forget it. There's just somethings in life that you have to live with and take into the future with you. And deep down, you know if you were right or wrong, so don't let other people get to you.
Gene moved on from the past, but he still vividly remembers what happened that summer. Just like if you went through an accident, illness or anything else dramatic, you're going to get better and move on, but that's going to stay with you the rest of your life. So just make the best out of it and don't dwell on what could have been or how you could have prevented it.
I think what the author is trying to get across is that, if you regret something that happened in your past, just try and move on. And even, if you can, find something positive out of it. Because I'm sure nine times out of ten, there's at least one positive thing that can come from a mistake.

alrightyy, night babes :)

Seasons and Change

The summer session at Devon was so much fun for Finny and Gene. They played games, went to the beach and were inseperable. Finny was immature at times, always acting like a kid and weasling his way out of trouble instead of taking his punishment maturely. And then Gene was the total opposite. Gene always liked to follow the rules and was a very studious student. It was so wierd that these two boys were best friends, I guess its kind of like that saying "opposites attract" because it was so true for these two boys. In the summer, they didn't have to care about hardwork, getting in trouble or anything like that. The only thing that was on Finny's mind was having fun and playing sports with his best pals. Until the very end of summer, when Finny has the tragic accident of falling / getting pushed off a tree branch and severely breaking his leg.
The winter session, on the other hand, is totally different. Just in the beginning of the session, you already see Gene working hard and shoveling snow. In the winter session, there was no time to be a kid. As Gene was a well-rounded student in the summer session, he still was in the winter session. But what about Finny? I don't think Finny would of made it well in the winter. Finny didn't care much about his grades, he was basically care-free and only wanted to do what he felt like. In other words, Finny wanted to be a kid.
So I think Finny never made it to the winter session for a reason. Maybe the change in seasons is a symbol that Finny would never be able to survive as an adult. Or maybe the break of his leg symbolizes that everything does happen for a reason. Finny always depended on someone to make his bed and clean up after him.. and thats not exactly how an adult acts. Maybe Finny was supposed to remain young and never really grow up, and thats why he dies.
Its kind of like spending three months in the fun and youthful season of summer and then going back to the disciplined structure of school. Except at Devon, it was much more difficult due to wartime and they were seniors and about to become adults. Because at Devon, they basically were adults in those winter months. So because of Finny's immautrity and carefree character, he never would have made a good adult. So possibly he was unable to survive on his own, so he dies and never has a chance of entering this independent and mature world.
Wellll, thats all I gottt :)