This blog is basically an outline.....
Oh Brave New World! Huxley uses the Savage as a comparison symbol from the past world, one that functioned on the "Larger Picture" that included birth, family, and death, to the new world. The new world in turn is the Savage's complete opposite-babies are decanted, family is a dirty word and no longer practiced, and death is normal and nothing to cry over. This comparison encourages the reader to self asses the state of society in our modern time. Are we becoming like the society posed in Huxley's novel?
Thesis: The grand narrative in Brave New World is all but eradicated as society thrives on micro narratives, but in today's world, societies' thrive on large scale stories demonstrating how far away the modern world is from Huxley's distopia.
Ideas and examples to use:
"Generalities are intellectually necessary evils" (4).
Marginalizing everything from people to actives
American Dream (201)
Ford Assembly Line
Family
Love (187) & Sex
Religion
Helmholtz (69), (181)
Savage and Shakespeare
Page 209
Linda
death (164)
Savage and Helmholtz relationship
feelies to movies (168)
Other works to tie in:
The Tempest
Postmodernism for Beginners
The society presented in Brave New World is one that lacks a universal language. There is an idea of a wider social community, for every one is "a cell in the social body" (90) but instead of being a community based on equality and freedom, caste are encouraged and taught that they are unequal to each other; there is no reason for an Alpha to engage in conversation with a gamma unless it is to order the lower gammas around. This society lacks a common bond, myth, or dream-there is nothing to hope for besides having a good time with a beautiful man or woman. In today's world, however, there is a language that puts everyone on the same level-hope for something better in life. People have a reason to hope and believe in something which they may never achieve in their life, but it gives them a reason to exists. Huxley creates a society to mirror what we may become in the future so we as human beings can retain what makes us unique and humane-hope and belief.
