Ridiculous New World Instead....

From the beginning Brave New World was such a confusing book for me to read, but after reading the first few chapters several times I finally understand what it was saying. So far I think that the society described in the novel is a horrible and awful place to live. How can it be humane to control every aspect of the development of a human being? From the class stature to their physical aspect, ever little detail of an individual is being customized in this so-called, Conditioning Centre.

I think that it is a terrible how the children are being molded from such an early age. They aren’t allowed to become an individual or stand out from the others one bit. From an early age of only eight months, these toddlers are being taught to hold hatred against books and flowers, “now we proceed to rub in the lesson with a mild electric shock” (21). The Director would later on add, “…after two hundred repetitions of the same or similar lesson would be wedded indissoluble” (22). How can a group a people stand by and watch while a group of toddlers are being electrocuted just because they touched a book? It’s like this future society not only prohibits individualism, but apparently no one has any emotion at all.

However, it wasn’t all of the children who were being treated this way. The treatment was directed only towards a class of people. From the very beginning the babies are fertilized in groups according to Alphas, Betas, Gammas, Deltas, and Epsilons. Therefore, according to the standard of each category, the kids are to be brought up a certain way, For example, the betas are to listen to tapes during their sleep saying, “Alpha children wear grey. They work much harder then we do, because they’re so frightfully clever. I’m a Beta because I don’t work so hard. And then we are much better than the Gammas and the Deltas, etc, etc…” (27). These kids are being taught to discriminate against classes and to only be proud of their social standard.

So, the question is do we consider these modifications of the world an improvement to our world today? Personally, I think its more like a downturn to what the world is like today. Why would it be an improvement, if the mere mention of the words “father” and “mother” bring upon giggles and snickers from already grown boys. It is amazing how in the society describe in the novel, these two fairly common words for us are considered something of horrible meaning (like the f-bomb for us). I guess the only improvement I see in the story so far is the technology that I am seeing being used.

Anyway, time to wrap it up now. Even though I have so much more to say, I’m afraid this blog might just go on forever. Therefore, I guess the only comment I still have to make is how confusing it was for me to get through chapter 3. with all the point of view shifts I had to label which ones went together in my book. Hopefully for me, the book begins to get a little easier to read. However, at this moment I still really like the book even though it’s a little weird and difficult to understand sometimes. Anyway, peace for now 6th period and I’m looking forward to commenting on all the other blogs. xD