Conditioning of a human should not be counted as raising a child and it is definitely not humane. We are raised to make decisions based on what we see and who we want to be. As soon as you take away the freedom for someone to choose, you are imprisoning them. This whole new world is based on keeping people contained and trained. How is that a way to keep humanity going? Mond claims that this was the only way to keep people from turning on one another and killing each other to extinction, but how is his solution any better than war? Sure, people die, but people also die to disease, famine, drought, everything. How is making a person a prisoner a good way to keep a species alive? Ms. Connolly stated in class one day that in life, you have emotional ups and downs. This "new world" Makes it so people are just a little bit more than happy all the time, but nobody is ever excited. Think about all the memories you have ever had that you love and cherish. All those times you woke up on Christmas, the day your dad finally came home from being over seas, the day you fell in love. These are all times in our life that we hold dearest to us, and how is it anybody right to take those types of memories or connections away from us. The type of conditioning in the "new world" wouldn't help us, it would imprison us.
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Mustapha Mond is one of the world controllers that gave up science to keep himself from becoming exiled. In some of the last few chapters of the book, we see that Mond tells John about why the "new world" is better than the old one. He states that everyone is happy here, there is no war, no fear, everyone lives together in harmony. From John's perspective, this new world is anything but completely happy. Sure, people are content with what they have, but that is because they were being told that where they were now was the best place for them. Before the "new world", people had the choice to decide. The people had the power of free will, and John knows that this "world" now knows nothing of that. However Mond does relay an important piece of information that makes Bernard's exile seem "not-so-bad". Mond says that they only people who are exiled are people like Bernard. People who want to have their own say, and the people who wan the power to chose. In a way, Mond is making Bernard's punishment seem not so bad after all.
Bernard plays a crucial role in this novel, he is the first character who we see that wants to revolt against what is happening in the new world. In the beginning, all we saw was compliance and brain manipulation to achieve the ultimate goal of happiness. However, Bernard does not seem so happy. According to the novel, his embryo wasn't treated right and was mixed with an alcohol solution that caused him to be shorter than the rest of his class. It is appalling how the new world seems to be in perfect working order until this one character changes everything. When he left with Lenina, it was surprising that he did not immediately have sex with her even though she is all he wanted. In this society, it is perfectly fine to do so, but Bernard wasn't like everyone else. This raises one of my many question from this novel, if every embryo was perfectly made, would there ever be a revolution?
During class, Ms. Connolly brought up the point that we can't describe what we are feeling if we don't have the words to do so. In this novel, we see that John doesn't do anything to Popé until he reads what happens in the Shakespeare play, Hamlet. This shows us that he was mad and angered by what was happening to his mother, but he waitied until he knew what to do before acting. This plays a crucial part in the background of this novel. The new world controllers wanted to keep history hidden, to make sure that nobody would know what to do if they were mad or upset with what was going on. If people don't know what something like a rebellion is, they will never do it, which allows the controllers to have control over the minds of the people in these facilities. This book is supported a lot by logic but doesn't have as much support ethically. These people are making clones to do all sorts of work. Form the perspective of people in the 1930's, this book is an extreme social commentary. The ways that they go about living and having kids definitely makes the novel seems unethical. The people in charge or the "world controllers" aren't thinking about what the individual wants, they are only concerned about what they think and believe. I write a lot of things that bug me about this book, but one thing I really like about it is that it definitely has some accuracy. This book was written in the 1930's and has some truth to what is happening now in 2015. The age for people losing there virginity is getting lower and lower. A lot of people also cover up their feelings and their hurt by taking drugs and drinking alcohol. Not only is it happening but it is also becoming more and more acceptable. However in the 1930's, things would not be done that severely. I believe this book definitely has some accuracy to what is happening in the modern age. One of the most confusing concepts about this book is that we don't understand the plot until near the end. The book is always talking about what's happening in the moment while it would have been nice to know more background knowledge in the beginning and not at the end. Although it was nice for the author to give us the phychological information for the creation of the world state, I still think it would have been nice to know that in the beginning to help develope the plot faster. Bernard wants to expose the director for what he has done. The only reason for this is because he doesn't want to get sent to Iceland, but that is completely self centered of Bernard. This whole new world society is based off the good of the group over the good of the individual. Bernard should leave and not come back if it benefits others. The book might just fall off if Bernard leaves but I feel it's strange that the new world would enforce people to think about others before themselves but Bernard feels like he is above the rules. Sometimes this book runs into a few paradoxes that really makes the plot confusing. I thought that chapter three was a little too packed with conversations and switching roles. I feel that maybe even a split chapter of three or four parts would have been more easily understood than what was written. I also thought that the phrases the children had to repeat shouldn't be in this part of the book. We have seen so far all the order and we are trying to uncover more of the plot as the one of ten tries to explain why the current system is better than what was happening before the time of "Ford". With so much going on I constantly was trying to figure out a way to connect the fractured writing and tried to figure out the background of the novel. |