Wednesday, April 23, 2008

The beginning ( the paper)

In the novel, Brave New World, by Aldous Huxley, the theme of happiness from different viewpoints plays a major role. The happiness in this new world is one of scientific creation and false pretences. This happiness is psychologically and drug induced—an instant gratification that the new world promotes. The reader further understands this scientific version of totalitarianism in the new world when the savage come to the new world to show what happiness truly means. To the savage, a foil in the theme of happiness creation, happiness is his “deliberately attempt[s] to set up obstacles for [himself] which will impede the easy realization of [his] desires” (science and conscience in Huxley’s a brave new world, 315). The entrance of the savage, John, into the story brings a level of understanding to the reader because, through John, the reader can associate the society of today to the society of the new world. His opposing views of the happiness in the new society bring about a connection between his world—the world of today—and the new world—the world of totalitarianism and false happiness. In the new world, there is a seemingly human happiness that is only created by and underlying scientific brainwashing and large doses of drugs. The science of the new era becomes a substitution for happiness, family and education. These ideas that are presented in the Brave New World are not ideas that are new to literature. Huxley takes many of the main themes in the novel such as the tragedies of science, futuristic utopia, and scientific satire. Many of his ideas were taken from Shakespeare, as the savage clearly quotes, Bertrand Russell, and H. G. Wells. This novel of generational differences and blended ideas is a satirical manifestation of the importance and reality of happiness and the prevention of this joy due to scientific advancement.
As the novel declares satirically, happiness is created and pain is explicitly prevented in order to maintain a secure and content society. This self-proclaimed happiness is created, not achieved, but the people of the new world find that they know nothing better than this false happiness. This new world of technology and brainwashing is a world of simple bliss, not educated and refined happiness. The contentment found in this futuristic society is of “idealistic pretensions, it is a utopia” (ira page 44). The manifestation of this utopia is ill founded, however. In this world where all seems to be bliss and everyone proclaims that “everyone is happy now,” not a single person can justifiably claim true happiness. Only the happiness that is created by high doses of soma and by mental brainwashing is seen or felt by the people of this science-bred society. In this world happiness is created instead of won; the happiness that is shown is not based on relationships and love, odd things of the past, but rather on brainwashing science. As the test-tube people grow, they are trained, brainwashed, to believe that they are happy, yet they have nothing that makes them happy, only the belief that because they are told that they are happy, they must be so. The concepts that make a person truly happy have been eliminated for existence and made forbidden such as family and advancement in life. The “conflictless, nonsuppressive consumer society” (peter 313) of the new world shows that people are only in existence to consume; people are simply created so that their bodies can consume the products that they make. As the novel proclaims, satirically, happiness is created and pain is explicitly prevented in order to maintain a secure and content society. This self-proclaimed happiness is created, not achieved, but the people of the brave new world find that they know nothing better than this false happiness.(580)

Tuesday, April 15, 2008

Bravery in Sadness

It is crazy to imagine a world in which happiness is created and relationships and love are things the past, are things of forbidden nature. In the brave new world, when we see the agony and pain that the mother of the savage goes through because of her "uncleanliness" of being a mother, we, as readers are baffled. We learn a lot about society through the eyes of this savage who has learned about the culture outside of his reservation, but is educated in the ways of the days when people were free to live, to feel pain, and to love.
Through the savage’s reaction to the false happiness of the people in the “civilized” world, the reader can see how pained the people with no lives to call their own must need this false happiness of learned reactions and soma can contribute to a more stable society. The savage is uncomfortable in the fakeness of the world around him because he knows that true happiness only comes when one can experience true grief to gauge true happiness from. It is hard to believe that a society that can be so much advanced from the place, in which we live currently, can be so utterly corrupt. The savage sees this corruption without the eyes of forced belief of perfection. This knowledge of the possibility of a totalitarian government being able to control so much about a society that people do not even think their own true thoughts is entirely frightening. What would a world become if people were who they were going to be from the day they were conceived? The world would never be better than it was because no choices are available to be made. Every day would be as the last and no one would have the chance for improvement and failure. Once Bernard Marx finds this savage, a boy who was born from a woman who had been created, not born, this is his only chance for his true happiness, his lifting in life. As an alpha plus he innately understands that happiness stems from lack of grief, not from drugs. He realizes his need for ability to achieve and found this through recognition, something that a seemingly communistic society does not advocate or even understand. Once his fame and achievement goes away, he realizes that in the society in which he exists, greatness has no place and achievement is even frowned upon because people must follow the learning and engineering they have been created with.
It is a tragic ending when the savage runs away from the society because he cannot handle the fakeness of the world and the understanding that no person can truly be better than anyone else. Without learning and without ability for excellence, no one can make himself better. This is frightening for people who have been through hard times and know that happiness is only judged against the hard times you have had. When happiness in a society is characterized by how high you can get on a soma vacation, life is not worth living and the savage sees this. Life is made so that people have a potential to succeed or fail, be happy or sad, not so that the world appears perfect but is secretly distressed (548).


My Jstor articles:
"Brainwashing and Totalitarianization in Modern Society: by Edgar Schein
"Brave New World and The Tempest" by Ira Grushow
"Science and Conscience in Huxley's Brave New World" by Peter Firchow

Wednesday, April 9, 2008

Tragic New World

The novel, "A Brave New World", presents much commentary on today's society about personal happiness, over consumption of goods, and use of pleasure over morality. At the beginning of this novel, the most prominent theme that the reader is aware of is the uncomfortably the reader has about the lack of personal morality in the futuristic society and the overabundance of use of technology.

This social commentary on the future makes the reader uncomfortable because people tend to rely on morality as a form of comfort. In this futuristic society, there is no morality because being happy is the only reason that people live, and with the forced lack of morals, people seem to be happy with not knowing that morals exist. It is confusing for people who read this novel to understand a world without morality and a world where education is not formed by experience but rather by voices that are heard during sleep. The knowledge that small children are encouraged to partake in sexual play is baffling to a society where such activity is explicitly forbidden. Even more shocking is when we see the child who does not want to participate in such play taken to the psychiatrist because this is abnormal behavior. Not only is this shocking to the reader but it is also a subject of squeamishness because in today’s society, and even more in the time in which the novel was written, such topics being discussed were and are not publicly acceptable.

Another baffling sight that readers experience in the beginning of reading this novel is that technology is used for everything. People are created by, educated by, raised by, amused by, and changed by technology. It is amazing to see a whole society without a single family or a person who is born. The threads of society seem as though they couldn’t exist without the moral and loving center of a family unit, and yet in this novel, families are explicitly acting against. Every thought that the people of this new society think is given to them by machines that teach and enforce moral lessons. The people who live in this society actually believe this teaching is for the better because “everyone is happy now.” People are happy because they are taught that they are happy and because they are given drugs if they do not feel extremely happy. This is a wild state of humanity that is almost tragic. People can never be truly happy if they do not know what the alternative to happiness is or if they do not have anything that makes them happy, as in a relationship or an accomplishment, except the thought of being happy by tricking their brains with hard drugs.

It is almost an appalling idea of a society being completely decided before you are born. Knowing that each person’s future is determined while they are being created and no one can get around their creation, means that no one can create themselves, they are simply created and told what to think and how to act. This story is a seeming tragedy of the future of the world (523).

Tuesday, April 8, 2008

A Worse Fate than Death

XIX. To an Athlete Dying Young
by A. E. Housman (1859-1936)
The time you won your town the race
We chaired you through the market-place;
Man and boy stood cheering by,
And home we brought you shoulder-high.

To-day, the road all runners come,
Shoulder-high we bring you home,
And set you at your threshold down,
Townsman of a stiller town.

Smart lad, to slip betimes away
From fields were glory does not stay
And early though the laurel grows
It withers quicker than the rose.

Eyes the shady night has shut
Cannot see the record cut,
And silence sounds no worse than cheers
After earth has stopped the ears:

Now you will not swell the rout
Of lads that wore their honours out,
Runners whom renown outran
And the name died before the man.

So set, before its echoes fade,
The fleet foot on the sill of shade,
And hold to the low lintel up
The still-defended challenge-cup.

And round that early-laurelled head
Will flock to gaze the strengthless dead,
And find unwithered on its curls
The garland briefer than a girl's.

The poem, "To an Athlete Dying Young", is a poem that can extend through all generations without any loss of meaning. Even though this poem was written many generations ago, the meaning can still be applied to all athletes in this day and age. This is an important aspect in a work of art or literature because this poem can be appreciated for many, many generations without any loss of understanding. In reading this poem, it is important to understand that the author's use of a dramatic and seemingly dreary topic is a cover for giving a critical view of growing old as something to be avoided and feared. Underneath the surface of this poem is an ironic portrayal of death used as a way to glorify yourself.

The basic theme that this poem creates, before the reader understands the underlying commentary in the poem, is one of seeing the happiness in the gloom, the lighter side of the dark, without being explicitly morbid in the process. This poem is key in explaining the feeling of tragedy of an athlete dying in the peak of his or her talent. It shows the feelings associated with the accomplishments that the athlete takes to his grave is never forgotten because the glory of his endeavors weren’t given time to diminish before the athlete passed on. This poem can be seen as an ironically critical view of continuing life even after a person’s glory years have long since faded. Housman seems to be making a social commentary that life is great and wonderful when you are young and in your prime, but later, life becomes tiresome and your glory fades as your body disintegrates. The author does not appear to truly believe that it is beneficial for athletes to parish in their prime of athleticism, but rather understands that it is hard for people with such accomplishments early in their lives to grow old and lose what they had worked so hard to gain as young people. Growing old means losing your magnificence, a hard process to undergo for highly accomplished individuals.
While the writer shows this social commentary about the pities of growing old, readers do not take this poem to mean that life is only good if you are able to die in your glory days. It is an underlying irony that the author shows life as amazing in the peak moments of life and better to be ended during these times of glory. It is a sad truth that magnificence achieved during childhood is not glory that follows you into old age, but all that remains are the memories of greatness and rusty trophies that have no meaning. The author tries to capture this loss of greatness by showing the accomplishments of an athlete who died in his prime overcoming his “name d[ying] before the man” (line 20). The reader feels the sadness of the poem but can also understand that growing old can also be a terrible depression to one of such accomplishment, and therefore death can seem to be a blessing.
While this poem doesn’t show an obvious irony or commentary on society, the underlying message is one of morbid realization. Housman wants the reader to understand that while he does not believe that early deaths are something to be celebrating, in a world where accomplishments are prized above all else, early death means an athlete will never “see the record cut” or feel the decline of his glory. It is ironic that a poem that seems so tragic in theme—with the death of a young person—really is commenting that old age takes glory from those who deserve to remember glory for their whole lives. This robbery of feelings is even more tragic, according to this poem, than the loss of life. Death is the simple irony of humanity that saves glory forever but takes life with it (651).