Alright well I’m new to this blogging thing but here goes…
Why do cultures create narratives/myths? I believe cultures in the past used myths to explain events of their time, and what’s strange is that what we call a myth today was most likely considered factual in that time period. Anyways people then did not have any other way of proving a story to be true. Ancient tribes also created stories about their gods and how they received their power. This is an example of how their culture and beliefs were passed on and on. A negative example of this in Brave New World would be in the decanting room in chapter 2. “They’ll grow up with what the psychologists used to call an ‘instinctive’ hatred of books and flowers” (Huxley 22). Now books and flowers may not be a very big deal to some of the babies but my point is that designing a human being to like and dislike things by force is not passing on beliefs but insisting them on everyone.
Postmodernism talks about Grand Narratives and what they really are. Basically what I understand a grand narrative to be is a large story that is made up and can account for a group of shorter narratives. A grand narrative can lead to oppression like in 1984 when it gives examples of the Soviet Union’s government and how they took control the people. This destroys the ideas of the minorities because they are too scared to supersede the authority of the government.
The novel can be a warning to our society today because it classifies savages as what we would most likely call normal people today in our society, and normal fathers and mothers savages. This is outrageous and way out of hand and I believe that it may be warning us against the effects of creating other human beings artificially or cloning.
Subscribe to:
Post Comments (Atom)
Alright Wiest so even though you’re new to blogging I think you did a very good job. I liked your examples and your point about conditioning, “designing a human being to like and dislike things by force is not passing on beliefs but insisting them on everyone”. Humans should be allowed to make choices for themselves, and it is these choices that should shape the personality and character of a person. Otherwise, like in Brave New World, you will have an army of robots who can’t think for themselves. Also, Your paragraph about grand narratives is also right on. I like how you related it to 1984 and how the government is able to control the people through this idea. I agree about how the novel is a warning to our society today and how we are comparable to the savages. Even though our world is pretty messed up already, I think A Brave New World’s idea of progress is at even higher level of corruption.
ReplyDelete