Emotions

"A chronic fear of being slighted made him avoid his equals, made him stand, where his inferiors were concerned, self-consciously of his dignity." pg 65


Chapter four shows that there is some prejudice going on among the different 'castes.' Bernard Marx feels inferior to many of the other men around him, especially Helmholtz Watson. I find the prejudice among the castes to be interesting for a few reasons. Firstly, I thought the Centre was developing human beings to all share similar characteristics to avoid conflict and instability. If so, this method seems to have done the complete opposite, as there is envy between different groups. The Gammas could be jealous of the Deltas, or the Betas of the Gammas. Take Lenina's words for instance, "I'm glad I'm not a Gamma." Furthermore, in part two, Bernard is jealous of how easily Alpha Helmholtz is able to pick up girls (640 in just 4 years), but he hides his envy.

Also, I find the prejudice to be interesting because it shows that the characters possess some kind of feeling. In the previous chapter, Mond talked about how they were striving to rid of ridiculous emotions that only mess with society's flow, but this chapter shows that some may exist. Some of the women may not care about the men they are spending time with, but not everyone, as with Bernard. This shows that humans will possess some type of feelings towards the events in their life, even if they don't acknowledge them. Science doesn't have the ability to interfere with human feelings. Right?

It's a Mad Mad World

"Horrible; precisely," said the Controller. "Our ancestors were so stupid and short-sighted that when the first reformers came along and offered to deliver them from those horrible emotions, they wouldn't have anything with them." pg. 45

So while I was reading chapter three I came to realize that the meaning of love in this year of A.F. 632 is very different. Mond believes that marriage and parenting are the roots of evil in society, so such relationships are regarded as immoral. The quote above reinforces the idea that love is a silly concept that only creates instability within society.  I disagree with this idea because I can't imagine a world without parents or marriage or old couples walking around. I think this futuristic society is striving for an impossible goal. It seems they try to eliminate every miniscule defect in society to create some unattainable perfect world. I found a quote that was repeated quite a lot in the chapter--"Ending is better than mending. The more stitches, the less riches; the more stitches..." I'm wondering if this is how problems are resolved--by simply discarding/ending ideas that can impede on the perfect utopia. Rather than mend the problem, why not just throw it out and create all new rules? Is that how this world is being run? I can't imagine that idea being remotely successful.

Man vs. Nature

"There was something desperate, almost insane, about the sharp spasmodic yelps to which they now gave utterance. Their little bodies twitched and stiffened; their limbs moved jerkily as if to the tug of unseen wires." pg 21

The way the Centre experiments with the children is scary. They give the babies instinctive hatreds of random things like book and flowers. Why they do this I'm not exactly sure. The Director though is very proud of what he has done. He says, "What man has joined nature is powerless to put asunder." The Director practically sees himself as superior to nature because of the ways in which he can play with developing minds. So far this Centre seems corrupt to me-Take for example the way the students take note of every single word that comes out of 'the horse's (Director's) mouth,'- everyone looks up to him like he is a powerful leader that knows all. I want to know what's occurring outside of this Centre...are there more centres like this one? Since parents are obviously out of the picture, are families simply nonexistant? It sounds like the people don't have much choice on how to live their lifes so far.

Back to the Future

"that is the secret of happiness and virtue-liking what you've got to do. All conditioning aims at that: making people like their unescapable social destiny." pg 16 Brave New World

The first chapter of this book reveals a new world in which human development is controlled by scientific engineering. The way in which the embryos are treated as lab experiments is shocking. The workers dehumanize them by grouping them into "Alphas, Betas, or Gammas" and allowing students to observe the developing life cells. Mr. Foster uses the degrading simile, "Embryos are like photographic film. They can only stand red light," to further imply that humans are treated as mere experiments. The quote above conveys the Director's purpose-to create humans to be unaware of the real world thereby forcing them to accept their 'social destiny.' I'm not sure if this method will work. I'm interested to see how adults in this different world have turned out due to all the changed genetic development and such. Will they really be stable due to 'Bokanovsky's Process' and exemplify the Centre's motto of "Community, Identity, and Stability?" It seems to me that controlling human life early would lead to dependence on others and therefore less stability but maybe not.