Brave New, Ironic World

"Brave New World" by Aldous Huxley

“Brave New World” by Aldous Huxley

While describing a changing world and satirizing human kind in his dystopian novel, Brave New World, Aldous Huxley uses irony. Creating ironic situations and references, his novel can be viewed as comical because of the funny and odd situations his characters experience. They speak with irony, act with irony, and think with irony.

Helmholtz is an unusual character in Huxley’s novel who is much like Bernard, pertaining to his views on the society of the new world, but has his own trademark personality. An Alpha Plus individual, Helmholtz has been blessed with intelligence and opportunity, but ironically, is unsatisfied with his life and wishes for change. Bernard, Helmholtz’s familiar friend, wished for change because his appearance isolated him from his peers, but “that which had made Helmholtz so uncomfortably aware of being himself and all alone was too much ability.” Through his character, Huxley shows how happiness cannot be manufactured, created, or programmed into a person, even when that individual seems to have everything he could want. He demonstrates that a perfect world cannot truly be created and that not everyone can be content at once.

Throughout Brave New World, Huxley pokes fun at how desensitized his fictional population has become and how unhuman they appear. He satirizes the fact that with improved science and technology, their humanity has been lost, their individuality destroyed, and everything around them has become manufactured and standardized. The people of his society have become so automated that they are not always referred to as humans. “Infants were unloaded” from their cribs and imperfect people were dismissed as mistakes. Huxley uses this irony to demonstrate the madness involved with the loss of humanity and how inhumane people can become when technology becomes dominant.

Because the society has lost its humanity, morals and values are different from what we are familiar with. In Huxley’s created world, children are expected to participate in erotic play and show no abstinence. Hearing a nurse announce that a “little boy seems rather reluctant to join in the ordinary erotic play” is ironic to the reader because our society does not hold the same expectations. Huxley uses this shocking and disturbing scene to stir up a sense in the reader’s gut that something about his fictional world is not right and that mankind should resist becoming like this. He relates sex with children, putting two ideas that the reader would generally not associate together, in order to bring up an awareness of the loss of morals, the loss of ethics, and the main theme of the story: the loss of humanity.

While the awareness of global warming, endangered species, and deforestation is constantly crying out to be heard in our world, Huxley’s society is different when concerning nature. In a society in which production and stability are the only world issues, distractions must be limited and work must be increased. With this mindset, the population of the new world felt it was necessary to make changes in the way people thought and felt about the expansion of the natural world around them. “It was decided to abolish the love of nature.” This ironic statement is meant to strike the reader and point out the backwards views of the fictional society. These views are unreasonable, inhumane, and insensitive. From this statement, the reader should realize the loss of human spirit from the overwhelming thoughts of industrialization.

Irony can be found all throughout Aldous Huxley’s novel, Brave New World, as he successfully portrays the negative effects of the loss of humanity. Through comical situations, humor shows the reader how unreasonable people can become and by shocking his audience with disturbing thoughts, Huxley can show his worry for the future. Through irony, the themes of the novel are expressed.

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Military Difficulties

Although I do not notice or think of it often, there is something in my life, a seemingly invisible force, which is constantly affecting and changing my life, sometimes without my knowledge or without my acceptance. This force has been at work my entire life, even before I was born, and has resulted in my existence here on Earth. An active-duty member of the United States Air Force, my mother makes my life what it is, naming the government and the Armed Forces as fathers of mine. I follow orders from the Air Force just as she does.

My parents met each other while attending the Air Force’s Basic Training program, and I was a result. Throughout my entire life, the Air Force has told me where to live and I have grown comfortable temporarily living on government land in a government-owned house. I have known nothing but the white walls that have surrounded me in every house I’ve lived in, and cannot even imagine a painted wall, now. House expansions and remodeling seem against the law to me since they have been against my laws. I have grown used to following government regulations and no longer find moving often unusual. Throughout my seventeen years of life, I have called eight different houses home and have cheered for six different school mascots. Because I move often, problems arise. My grades do not correctly transfer affecting my class rank, classes I have taken are not accepted in different states, friends are left behind, items are lost, and I can never truly plan for the future because I never know what’s going to happen next. I learn to live on my toes and expect the unexpected. Because of the Air Force, I have seen a variety of places, and faced different climates growing comfortable right up against the Canadian border and the Mexican.

Because the Air Force controls when people come and go, I am comfortable giving goodbyes to loved ones, wondering when I’ll ever see someone again, and shedding tears at an airport. Each year I must meet new friends to leave the next year and while my sense of adventure brings optimism to each move, my sensitive side dwells on the loss of friends. Relationships of mine have broken and ended because of my situation, friends unable and unwilling to keep in contact. Family life is also affected, my mother willing to be sent away to participate in a war, help in a distant region, or receive more training in a different place. Gone for two weeks, gone for four weeks, gone for eight weeks, gone for twenty-four weeks, it’s different every time. With my mother’s long working hours, leaving the house at five in the morning to return as late as eight in the evening, and deploying to Maine, Alabama, Cuba, Afghanistan, I have adjusted to life at home with my dad. My mom’s schedule is unpredictable and she can leave at any point, sometimes even excusing herself from dinner or sneaking out from the darkness of the movie theatre. While I must be ready to leave a friend, my mom must be ready to serve her duties.

They tell her not to drink the water. They restrict her from the leaving the base alone. They issue her a gun and train her how to use it. The Air Force consists of people willing to work in dangerous situations to protect their homeland. My mother is one of these people and while she may not rush into combat with bullets brushing her shoulders and grenades ringing in her ears, she does reside in dangerous areas. Working in the medical field, my mother treats those who have fought and those who have been injured. Her enemy is disease and her goal is not to protect the innocent villagers, but to save their lives. While she is away, I worry for her safety, knowing that there is a possibility that she may not return.

As I live my life, the United States Air Force makes many major decisions for me: where I will live, when I will say goodbye to my friends, when my mother will work and where she will deploy. While these may add difficulties to my life at times, I have grown used to them and have become familiar with the procedures. I continue to make new friends as I am pulled from one place and stuck in another and continue to worry for my mother as she is sent away from my family and me. I take required classes that I have missed and try to straighten my grades out between schools. I may live as if I could move soon, but I try to find “home” in each place I reside. Because of these difficulties, my perspective of life has been sculpted, leaving me to believe, “You never know what’ll happen.”

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John, the Hope Within the Brave New World

"Brave New World" by Aldous Huxley

“Brave New World” by Aldous Huxley

To create an interesting novel there must exist a well-thought plot, developed characters, and some form of conflict. This conflict usually includes good versus evil, each side usually represented. Even in dystopian novels that tell of negative utopian worlds, hope is embodied in at least one character struggling against the dominant society and representing the last flicker of humanity as he tries not to be overwhelmed by the darkness. In Aldous Huxley’s dystopian novel, Brave New World, a young man named John represents hope. Raised with morals and views that we are familiar with, John struggles to survive in a different society, desperately fighting as he brings his own light to the dim novel.

Throughout Brave New World, Huxley describes a fictional future for our planet in which people are created and manufactured, then told how to live their lives. The ideas of family life, sexual abstinence, marriage, and solitude are abandoned and people are brainwashed with hypnopaedia to believe, think, desire, and decide how the Society wants them to. With morals and ethics that contradict our own, the people of this society seem doomed to live a life with little personal freedoms and glazed eyes. The future looks dim and change seems like an impossibility.

While creating a dystopian novel, Huxley does not devastate the reader with a deprivation of hope. By adding the character of John who was raised outside of the Society with similar morals as the reader would most likely have, hope is restored and “good” is introduced to the story, just as it must be in any novel. As the story progresses, the emphasis focuses more clearly on John and his trouble adjusting to the Society. This theme of isolation, discrimination, and differences is common throughout the entire novel and is portrayed through John’s small gleam of hope. His positive aura keeps the reader interested, the story continuing, and the conflicts brewing. While his view may be considered “correct” to the reader, they are considered immoral to the residents of the new world, causing him to be shunned, disliked, studied, and questioned. As he lives in the Society, John continues to spread his positive views, delivering the motifs of the novel and keeping the hope alive.

Because a novel cannot exist without conflict and problems, characters with different views are placed together, stressful situations are created, and emotions are stirred. To help deliver his message, Huxley creates a positive character named John, following the formula and bringing an opposing force to the dominant society. This individual faces discrimination because of his differences and is left to suffer in solitude. He demonstrates perseverance and determination and continues to fight against the controlling society. With the inclusion of this positive character, Huxley creates a conflict that delivers his themes and demonstrates his messages. John is the guiding light that reveals the darkness of the new world.

 

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Defacing Humanity

"1984" by George Orwell

“1984” by George Orwell

A society is easiest to regulate when people are almost programmable, unable to feel or think for themselves and are completely devoted to the state. Stripped of their humanity, the people are putty in the government’s hands and have limited personal freedoms. In George Orwell’s fictional dystopian novel, 1984, Oceania enforces regulations through language, personal relationships, work, and the media that limit the Party members’ freedoms and destroy their human spirits.

People think, speak, and communicate with words, and by controlling the words that they are able to use, Oceania controls and limits its member’s thoughts and conversations. By creating a new language, Newspeak, and enlisting it as the national language, Oceania began requiring its members to write and speak with the improved language. English was then considered Oldspeak, and was declared outdated and flawed. Deleting words and eliminating ideas, Oceania slowly began to compress Party members’ thoughts and control their minds with each new installment of Newspeak. “Don’t you see that the whole aim of Newspeak is to narrow the range of thought?” declared Syme, an Outer Party member defending Oceania’s purpose for limiting language. The time in which Party members would only be able to think what the Party wants them to think since unwanted ideas cannot exist would begin an era in which Oceania would completely control its members’ minds and their overall humanity.

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School’s Out – Updates

Okay, so school just got out like three days ago for me, and summer’s ahead. 🙂 I love summer.

I’ve decided that I should start using my blog again; I never really stopped, I just haven’t had the time to update it. My junior year was the most busiest school year of my life, I do believe…Oh my gosh, I can’t believe it…Anyways, summer’s here and I am really really hoping that I will have time to enjoy and relax. I doubt it, but you never know. 😉

I just went through my entire blog and updatted every single post. There are now little indentions next to introductions to posts and everything is just a touch more uniform and organized, how I like it. 😀 Going through my whole blog and reading my past…makes me miss everything so much. I miss Magic Pens, and my old blog, and I wish I had transferred over all of the comments. I missed quite a few, but I got most, so it’s okay. I also really hope that I will come to love this new blog just as much as my old and that I will get some more readers. In Magic Pens I was used to having anywhere from 5-10 readers on each post and receiving many comments and feeback. This blog barely gets 5 pageviews at all and I am left to feel so alone… :\

I plan to post some more essays I wrote over this year, make some more minor updates, and perhaps start creative writing again!

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We Can’t Afford to Care About the Environment

With temperatures rising and new environmental issues becoming revealed, we all feel the need to act out, become heroes, and save the planet, but is this thinking truly reasonable? Global warming has become a common topic of debate in the modern world, some arguing it is a persistent problem that needs to be resolved, with others not even believing it is happening. While global warming becomes a conflict in our world, we cannot blind ourselves to other issues. Global warming is just that: global. It is a substantially large issue that currently cannot be resolved without wasting large amounts of money that would hurt the country and prevent it from succeeding and growing. Although a problem in today’s world, global warming needs to be resolved step-by-step without major changes. There will be no future to protect if we only choose to resolve global warming.

Large steps have been made to prevent and reduce global warming, yet they have not yet proved successful. “In February, the Kyoto Protocol to reduce global warming took effect, requiring participating countries to reduce their greenhouse-gas emissions to below 1990 levels over a five-year period beginning in 2008,” (Kyoto Protocol.) This act was created to help reduce the harmful greenhouse-gas emissions that continue to plague our planet and encourage global warming. It is expected to become the first major reaction that will help slow the onslaught of environmental issues and benefit conservation efforts. One overlooked flaw will keep the protocol from becoming successful, however. While it’s expected to become a major change in order to help the world, it does not change enough. “The Kyoto Protocol currently negotiated has cuts of emissions relative to 1990 levels of between three and eight percent for just over half of the developed world with no restrictions for the less-developed world, while scientists have suggested up to a sixty-percent global cut is required to prevent major climatic change,” (Maslin.) The Kyoto Protocol may help, but it will not help enough to show effective improvement. Not only will this plan not create enough change, but it will also detract from our society, taking money and resources that we currently cannot afford.

While people wish to become environmentally-friendly and “go green,” they do not wish to pay the price. Installing solar panels and purchasing vehicles with lower greenhouse-gas emissions are expensive and so are plans to prevent and reduce global warming. This money can be spent on more-appreciated causes, especially with the United States’ currently declining economy. “Only when we get sufficiently rich can we afford the relative luxury of caring about the environment,” (Lomborg.) An issue of morals and global economics, we are faced with the decision to spend money on global warming resolutions or other world affairs, such as the protection of future generations and the development of the Third World. “We have to find a level at which there is sufficiently little pollution, such that our money, effort, and time is better spent solving other problems,” (Lomborg.) With only so much money to spend, we must choose what is more important.

Because people feel the need to make things right and fix problems, it’s no wonder that they all feel the need to act on the urgent situation of global warming, but at the moment, it’s not reasonable or quite possible. With more urgent issues, such as the economic recession of the United States, the government needs to resolve greater problems at hand and not put as much effort or money into failing programs like the Kyoto Protocol. We need to focus on resolving current problems and fixing the simpler situations. We simply do not have the money or the resources to battle global warming. At this point in time, we cannot afford the luxury of supplying the world with its own thermostat.

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Classroom Terror or Electronic Godsend?

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A minute electrical device could save a life in the case of an emergency, create persistent distractions that causes a student’s grades to drop, interrupt classes with an array of annoying sounds, violate personal privacy, help keep track of time and events, and even act as a tool to cheat in school, and everyone has one in his pocket. A necessity in most people’s lives, the cellular phone contributes to modern society adding to the list of valuable tools available. Yet school boards disagree with each other on policies to regulate cell phone use in school; some argue that students should be trusted with the freedom to possess cellular devices, while others state that the devices should never reside on school grounds. With so many teens possessing a cell phone, schools should create a fair policy to deal with the popular technology.

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Individual Importance

My Saturdays have been occupied with Ready Writing UILs quite often now…I attended another UIL competition, this time at MacArthur High School on January 31, 2009. This was one of the bigger contests with a stricter competition, or so I was told by my teachers and instructors. I believe there were about 56 contestants at this Ready Writing competition, and I placed 6th. I admit this essay is the worst that I have written so far and I am really not pleased with it. I struggled with it more, and just know that it can be improved in so many ways. The topic I chose is listed followed by the essay I wrote.

“It is the art of mankind to polish the world, and everyone who works is scrubbing in some part.”
-Henry David Thoreau, The Writings of Henry David Thoreau (1906)

As time proceeds and the future becomes the past, the world is constantly changing. Mountains rise from the flat plains they once were. Oceans split apart lands, destroying continents, but creating new ones. Trees loom and fall while flowers blossom and die. The world grows and dies in a constant cycle that continues to repeat itself time and time again. Along with the world, mankind has endured time’s challenges and has changed and grown. Humanity, however, is not trapped within a cycle doomed to repeat itself. With unique individuals each working to improve his own life, culture is created and knowledge is shared to aid the development of mankind and the world. Mankind’s development has become an art, and everyone who works applies his own stroke of color.

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Pressured to Succeed

After carefully monitoring her grades throughout the semester and struggling to put full effort into each of her projects and all of her completed homework, an overachieving student destined for the Ivy Leagues finds herself facing a major obstacle. Although she had studied the night before, the multiple-choice test resting upon her desk that glared back at her now seemed to mock her, eating away any focus she could create. Racing thoughts of college, parents, teachers, counselors…too many thoughts cluttered her mind with each passing minute being pounded into her ear by the ticking of the clock against the wall behind her. She could not fail this test, she could not get a B, she could not upset her parents, and she could not give up her chance at a potential college. So many factors depended on whether or not she shaded a circle marked “A,” “B,” “C,” or “D.” Willing to sacrifice just a bit of integrity in order to save her future life plans, she glances to the tattered piece of paper in her pocket and mindlessly fills in the bubbles as if reading an instruction manual.

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Spirit of Service

In this “new era of responsibility,” President, Barack Obama, has explained the personal engagement needed to solve the nation’s problems through his Inaugural Address. With an ailing economy, weakening school systems, and energy crisis, followed by numerous disasters and emergencies, he brought to attention the troubled state the nation has fallen into. With this awakening, he brought hope, however, introducing his ideas to help and the new responsibilities each citizen should carry out.

“Certain tasks … cannot be accomplished by volunteers showing up occasionally or contributing a few hours a week,” writes The New York Times, reflecting Obama’s ideas. Opportunities to serve the community need to be expanded, and plans for doing so have been introduced. Democrat of Massachusetts, Edward Kennedy, and Orrin Hatch, Utah Republican, have introduced their Serve America Act to the Senate, an act that should “expand the number of full-time and part-time national service volunteers eligible for minimal living expenses and a modest educational stipend.” These new positions will be targeted at strengthening education, cleaning the environment, repairing our economic state, responding to emergencies and disasters, and boosting energy efficiency. A well thought out plan, everyone is invited to become involved, including “people of all income levels and ages.” Along with the Volunteer Generation Fund the will help nonprofit groups with volunteers, our new President along with the Senate are aiming at creating new jobs and aiding the nation’s economy. Personal engagement is most needed at the moment, as the country won’t repair itself.

With our families and neighbors losing their jobs all around us and businesses constantly having to close their doors for a final time, it’s amazing how we can act as if nothing is happening. Citizen activity and willingness to help is essential to keep the country running. Where would the country be without her people? Amongst our diverse crowds, we need to grasp the idealism and unity that makes us who we are and increase the productive national and community service granted to our communities. With the help of the Senate’s proposed Serve America Act, “tens of thousands of meaningful new positions for people ready to work hard for the public good” should become available and with the Volunteer Generation Fund, volunteers will be gifted many opportunities to help nonprofit groups. By helping our neighbors, our homes, our communities, and our country, we help each other. We help restore our economy to the stable platform it once rested upon. We help deliver rich knowledge to the children of the next generation. We help the air become more pure and the leaves on the trees thrive as green as they once did. By volunteering and getting involved with programs in our communities and with the new acts proposed under our new President, America can be revived and once again become an inspirational land that bestows upon her people what they put effort into.

Every citizen carries his own responsibilities and plays a part in the restoration of America. To solve the nation’s problems, Mr. Obama declared that each person would need to become involved. The “spirit of service” that he spoke of in his Inaugural Address is within all of us, and it needs to be awoken.

Reference

“The Moment for National Service.” The New York Times 26 Jan. 2009. 26 Jan. 2009

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Delivering Hope

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A cold and frigid morning, millions were anxious to hear from their newly elected leader.

After speaking the sacred oath, Barack Obama, chosen to become the first African American President of the United States of America, still had many words to speak. The moments were writing themselves in the history books and each word and idea he expressed needed to change the world, or at least the thoughts of its people. He was America’s inspiration, after all, and her citizens were waiting to hear his voice. The styles of his phrases, the choices of his words, and the organization of the ideas that made up his forecoming speech had been carefully examined with a single purpose in mind.

Using his skill of rhetoric, Barack Obama was expected to deliver hope to the world.

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Wolves for Conformity

"The Crucible" by Arthur Miller

“The Crucible” by Arthur Miller

Carl Van Doren’s quote, “The race of men, while sheep in credulity, are wolves for conformity,” can be used to express ideas written in Arthur Miller’s play, The Crucible. When a belief is stated, such as the belief in witchcraft within the play, people tend to blindly agree without sufficient evidence. Without thinking it through, people accept the belief no matter how ridiculous. This will create a calm and passive environment within the “herd” of people until a difference arises. Pleasant sheep will then transform into violent, aggressive wolves that fight the difference into submission, striving to keep the form and unity.

In The Crucible, John Proctor was one who would not confess to witchcraft. As he tried to convince the mistaken court into believing the children could be lying about witchcraft, he was attacked until he would agree with the crowd. The court would only believe that the children accusing him of witchcraft were correct and did not take time to logically think it through. Through this belief, they created a manner which would not accept difference. These wolves preyed upon their own flock, hoping to exterminate those who did not blindly follow.

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