Brave New World Discussion

[Patroclus]

All right folks! Here we go with discussions for Book Club book number two: A Brave New World by Aldous Huxley.

I want to know how many people have read a dystopia before. I have read 1984 by George Orwell. I think that reading that book first has pre-disposed me agains this book. Did anybody else have similar reactions to this book?

[Rusty T]

I've read both books, and found them wonderfully thought-provoking. I would recommend both.

[Patroclus]

For those who also read AOM, what do you think of this book in the context of the last chapter in AOM?

[dizzle]

I read and loved 1984 and am loving this one!! It is fantastic, I am so glad we are reading it. This may sound pathetic, but my life gets so hectic sometimes that at points the preconditioned happiness sounded like a good rest. Even Epsilons are useful.

[Patroclus]

Why do you suppose Huxley decided to categorize the feti by Greek characters?

[Sher]

BTW ... I just found the full text online tonight, if anyone hasn't been able to get the book yet

http://somaweb.org/w/sub/Brave%20New%20World%20fulltext.html

[Wesley's son]

Maybe it's just me, but I think that Orwell did a better job with 1984 than Huxley did with Brave New World. The writing in the former seemed much more sophisticated than the latter. BNW was thought provoking of course.


Anyone seen the film Gattaca ?

[Sher]

Today @ 02:23 PM post located here (http://www.theologyweb.com/forum/showthread.php?s=&postid=102350#post102350)
Wesley's son:

Anyone seen the film Gattaca ?

Yes! I only started reading this a bit last night after I found the link, but that was what came immediately to mind ... except I couldn't remember the name of the movie :argh: ... only who was in it. Thanks :thumb:

[dizzle]

I do not get to read much during the week, I will finish the book this weekend. I actually think it is right on par with 1984.

[Patroclus]

Well, for now (I have not finished yet), I do think Orwell's work is superior, artistically anyway. Orwell uses several recurring images like Beetles and chess pieces. I have yet to see the same in BNW. Moreover, C.S. Lewis argues in one of his critical essays that Animal Farm, also by Orwell, is superior of 1984. I have the essay somewhere. Perhaps I can provide the details as to why in the near future.

[dizzle]

This book to me has a much different focus that I find compelling In 1984 it seems like everyone is play-acting up to extent, they are restless, and pretending to be happy, but underneath that is a current of disconnect, but even the very language to express it has been taken away from them.

In BNW, it seems like Lenina has been actually recreated. She is not unhappy, would not even fathom what that is, though she has become unhuman. Linda yearns to go back. The angst is just shown in Bernard who seems a genuine anamoly.

I do not think the two books really compare on more than a thematic level. They go down different paths.

Now Animal Farm, I LOVE that book.

[Yog^sothoth]

I suggest everyone read the book, [u]The Giver[/i]

http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/tg/detail/-/0440237688/qid=1053517721/sr=8-1/ref=sr_8_1/002-7062989-9646420?v=glance&s=books&n=507846

if you liked 1984, Gattica, and Brave New World i'd say you'd'all love this one..and it's short!

Nick

[Sher]

Today @ 07:48 AM post located here (http://www.theologyweb.com/forum/showthread.php?s=&postid=103061#post103061)
Yog^sothoth:

I suggest everyone read the book, [u]The Giver[/i]

Oh ... Lois Lowry ... I may check that one out. She also wrote "Number the Stars"

[Ryokan]

I felt BNW was better than 1984 because it seems alot more plausible, to me. People aren't machines, as 1984 pretends they are, and even if you remove the words for love, laughter, sadness, whatever, they will still exist, and people will miss them. In BNW, you have everything you want. There is no reason to rebel. You aren't free, but most anyone can do whatever they WOULD want to anyway, so who cares?

1984 just scares us, but BNW asks us what our freedom is worth.

[Patroclus]

That is a very good point. So, in light of AOM, what do you think about what Ryokan says?

[dizzle]

Ry said what I was trying to. And yes it ties in so well with the last chapter of AOM wherein the social engineers not only put the people in servertitude, that is easy, they make the people love their servititude.

[Vorkosigan]

05-21-2003 @ 03:07 PM post located here (http://www.theologyweb.com/forum/showthread.php?s=&postid=103149#post103149)
Ryokan:

I felt BNW was better than 1984 because it seems alot more plausible, to me. People aren't machines, as 1984 pretends they are, and even if you remove the words for love, laughter, sadness, whatever, they will still exist, and people will miss them. In BNW, you have everything you want. There is no reason to rebel. You aren't free, but most anyone can do whatever they WOULD want to anyway, so who cares?

1984 just scares us, but BNW asks us what our freedom is worth.

Hmmm....I think one issue between them does lie where Ryo says it does, the use of emotion in both. In BNW people are reduced to machines by the dulling of normal emotion -- they take soma when they feel up, or down, or nothing at all, and it dulls the emotions. They watch killings with no reaction, they have sex without enjoyment.......meanwhile in 1984 you have the opposite problem. Emotions are strongly stimulated and then channeled, or bled off into trivialities, like when they proles revolt!....over saucepans, or the Two Minutes Hate.

They are really two sides of the same developmental lines, I would argue. One does not rule out the other. In the US you can see them both -- 1984 with the Patriot Act, the new surveillance tools and laws, the omnipresence of conservative talk icons who thrive on hatred and belittling others, and the Imperial State the Bush administration is trying to create -- and BNW in the widespread use of drugs, not so much illegal drugs, but prescription drugs like Prozac and Valium, to handle emotional ups and downs, in the spread of corporate power, propaganda and advertizing techniques and attitudes throughout society, and in the reification of a permanent economic underclass.

I think it is important to point out that 1984 depicts not only some alienated totalitarian state, but British society during WWII. The Ministry of Truth is in fact Orwell's BBC, the deprivation resembles the deprivation of wartime Britain, the political situation that of WWII seguing into the Cold War, where one minute we're at war allied with Russia, and the next we ranged against her Allied with Germany and Japan, the very nations we had just been fighting.

Just some random thoughts to stimulate the conversation....

[dizzle]

Good observations Vork.

[Patroclus]

How about the anomolies in the characters of Marx and Watson?

[dizzle]

Marx completely wigged out and was disappointing. He was like one who saw through the shallowness but turned out to be completely spineless and shallow himself.

[Patroclus]

I imagine that is the point. Remember what happened to Winston in 1984? In a dystopia, there can be no happy ending. Your favorite character must submit. I would argue, that the most sympatheitc character cannot even die because, in a way, that would be an aleviation of the suffering.

[dizzle]

Actually I did not find Marx sympathetic but rather the Savage was.

[bigred94champs]

[/quote]BTW ... I just found the full text online tonight, if anyone hasn't been able to get the book yet

http://somaweb.org/w/sub/Brave%20Ne...20fulltext.html

[quote/]

thanks for the link, maybe I'll actually read it