Author Archives: chanae stlouis

Brave new world 1980

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Watching Brave new world 1998 film was interesting to watch since many things had been changed from the book as most movies usually do. The characters appearance seemed to be different to me especially john and his mother. John was suppose to be a blonde with beautiful eyes causing the people of the workd state to drool over him and all want the chance to sleep with him. Johns mother happened to be really skinny instead of being fat and horrible to look at according to the book. 

The chemistry between Lenina and John seemed to be better in the move rather than the book since Lenina wasn’t as slutty and persistent to sleep with john as she did in the book. I liked that she was reserved and didn’t enjoy sleeping around like the other females did with no care in the world. John didn’t attack her and yell at her like he did in the book which made the film less dramatic for the most part. 

I wonder why Helmholtz wasn’t involved in this film. I think it would have been interesting to see Bernard and John sorta fight over Hemholtz’s attention and friendship. Bernard seemed to be popular with everyone in this society which was weird to see since he is suppose to be an odd ball from the rest. The only person who seemed to hate him was DHC with a passion since he couldn’t control showing his jealousy towards Bernard’s happiness…… It was to the point that he took the time to brain wash a lower class worker to come and try to take Bernard’s life which was pretty insane since it back fired on DHC causing him to lose his job and have it handed down to Bernard.

The scene where john dies was pretty much the same as the book with the reporters and amusement of his insane outburst which made the citizen happy especially after his death. I will never understand how they can find death to be a good thing and natural births to be the complete opposite that is just strange and unusual behavoir. Watching the movie made this so called perfect society actually look worse to me than the book did since everything just made no sense at all. It also showed that the system was built with many flaws since each child from each rank had just one child that didn’t take to well to the brainwashing causing there to be a chance of future rebellion against this society which could be a great thing to help wake up the citizens in order to give them a chance to live the way they want to and not the way they are made to

I thought the movie was pretty good for the most part it did keep my attention but I felt that it was rushe’d film and didn’t cover the any parts of Bernard and Leninas trip which bought them to John and Linda’s presence. This makes me want to watch the later Brave new world movie now in order to compare the two films from the novel .

“WE” essay 2 draft

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Introduction
It is only human nature to have self doubt,it is natural. To have a lack of faith in your own society is to doubt your confidence in where you stand inside of the One State as a person. Self doubt in yourself can and will change the way you stand for or against the society you once looked up to as “perfection”. The cause of self doubt can be from what others want for or from you,which can cause you to constantly struggle to determine if you are making the right decisions or not. To carry the weight of such responsibility contributes to self doubt depending on how much the person can manage. Reading “WE” I notice the traits of self doubt in the character D-503 who wrote the entries of his observations on the One State. He struggles to keep his feelings out of the book which instead shows how many times he has doubt his own actions and feelings towards each event.

Claim 1
Topic sentence – D-503 doubts that math can ever be wrong or never change since it is error free like the one state.
Quote
“There is only one truth, and only one true way; this truth is two times two, and the true way- four and would it not be an absurdity if these happily, ideally multiplied twos began to think of some nonsensical freedom- ie… Clearly to error?” (67)

Claim 2
Topic sentence- The power of love can blind the individuals goals and prospective on life.
Quote
“Iam afraid that if I lose I-330, I will also lose what is perhaps the only key to the disclosure of all the unknown quantities (the incident of the closet, my temporary death, and so on) and even simply as the author of these notes, I feel that Iam duty- bound to find the answers.” (118)

Claim 3
Topic sentence- Obstacles built by minor issues can cause the individual to question his position in society.
Quote
“Now I no longer live in our clear, rational world; I live in the ancient nightmare world. The world of square roots of minus one.”(77)

 

Change from the One state

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Reading the novel “We” was just entries about life and order of the One State which has it’s flaws based off of some of D-503’s feelings that he tried to leave out the book. His purpose was to convince other life forms to let the One State take over their society since it is better that way based on their views of life and order.

I noticed that D- 503 love for I-330 was the main reason why he started to doubt the One States ways of life. She made him pour some of his feelings into the book with out him not realizing it, he eventually noticed and started to say that he wants to tell the readers how he feels but that isn’t the purpose of this book at all. “but the heart is nothing but an ideal pump; compression, shrinkage, the sucking in of fluid by a pump are technical absurdities”(171) his statement was D- 503 being very confused about the pain in his heart because of his feelings which he hates to show/ experience and he feels that it’s a waste for such pain to occur since he can’t tell the difference from love or pity towards affection from others.

D-503 knows that his love is only for I-330 but he can’t help but to love her although she is using him for the revolution up rise against the One state which makes him frustrated.”I know : the integral is to make its first, trail flight the day after tomorrow. On that day we shall seize it”(175) she says this to him as if she already knows that he will help her. He finds her plan to be absurd and it will cause him issues. D-503 goes along with the plan since I-330 has him where she wants him to be. This cause D-503 to question the One state even more since he is willing to help.

D-503 understood that the great society was falling to its end. “You are the first to hear it: according to my calculations, there is no infinity!”(250) thinking that a society could last forever is wrong according to D-503 it will eventually fall depending on the circumstances that the society is at. This theory makes his mind run wild about taking over .

D-503 still can’t believe that he really wrote this book although it is clearly his writing and in his possession it still don’t seem that it was him who wrote it ….which was confusing to me since he questioned his work. It seemed that he just questions everything but his love towards I-330. The uprise has made D-503 ready to take over more areas based off of his reasoning and problem solving skills which gives him the confidence to push on towards a new future for the world.

I found this story to be interesting yet confusing since I had to pay attention to each detail of D-503’s life from him being concerned about small minor issues such as radical negative one to trying to take over the One state for a revolution of change.

Irrational

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D-503 seems to be having a difficult time with his dreams and emotions that revolve around I-330 and his WE manuscript. He has started to use his pink coupon time to sit alone and record his thoughts instead of using the pink coupon for his sexual time. This might be the reason why he is having a difficult time managing his life and manuscript at the same time.(pg98) “plunging a sharp sweet needle deeper and deeper into my heart,and we walked together, the two of us-one…” This statement makes me believe that I-330 has his heart and he thinks that they both are meant to be together as one. I think I-330 might not feel the same way and is probably just messing around with him….

(Pg103) “I was alone ….imagine a human finger cut off the whole, from a hand -a separate human finger” although at one point D-503 was at one with the One State now he feels that he is no longer apart of the One state. He feels like he has started to disconnect from this society since he has gotten deeper into writing this book for the unknown readers in a distant part of the universe.

(Pg106) The Letter “I cannot live without you-because I love you. Because I see,I understand” O has poured her feelings into this letter for D-503 to read and from the looks of it he can’t return the same feelings to O. I think that O is weird for writing that letter when she could of just voiced her feelings to him in person. She wasn’t afraid to ask him for a child so why be afraid to express your feelings towards D-503 then?

(pg110) “She I -330, needs someone to think she is with me.And I need her,and what do I care for her”need”. I will not be a blind for someone else-I won’t.” Has D-503 final realized that I-330 probably isn’t into him at all and just needs to use him for her own benefit? Will he still let her use him or will he decline to assist her in what ever she needed from him?

(pg118) “iam afraid that if I lose I-330 , I will also lose what is perhaps the only key to the disclosure of all the unknown quantities….” Is D-503 deeply in love that he will break his concentration of recording this book if he happens to lose I-330? May be he just needs her as guidance for the answers he is searching for.

(pg124) “can’t anyone invent a remedy for this dream -sickness? Or turn it into something rational, or even useful” D-503 dreams hasn’t made sense or helped him figure out anything about his book… He Is aggravated at his dreams just as much as he dislikes the irrational numbers he keeps running into. Maybe if D-503 can accept the irrational numbers as if it’s a rational number maybe he could figure out what his weird dreams are telling him? It might be giving him clues that he will never bother to look into since it seems useless to him, until then he will just be irritated….

D-503

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Reading the story “We” starts off with the main character D-503 who writes all the entries about his life in this book. He seems to want to be friends/ close with any individual who happens to get the opportunity to read this book since he feels that he can’t get anyone else to understand how he feels at the moment. 

“Long live the one state ,long live the numbers…”(pg 2) seems to be the same mentality as the World state in “Brave New World” based off of reading this story so far both societies seem very similar. “As always, the music plant played the March of the One State”(pg 5) is like a brain washing song for the citizens played as a daily routine. I also notice that the citizens don’t have names, instead they have numbers and have a titled position for example D-503 he is the Mathematician of the One State. Another similarity I have come across was that the citizens are scheduled for sexual days based on the individuals needs.

D-503 hasn’t experienced life outside the green walls that he could not “imagine life that isn’t regulated by the figures of our tables”. His Mathematician role makes him think like a machine which can ultimately overload the individual causing issues later on in the book. (Pg11)

D-503 talks to the reader as if he is actually right next to you in person which I find interesting since he tries to make a joke then say it isn’t a joke it’s all a lie if it was a joke on (pg14) ……this shows me that already this character is in a conflict with himself and the society he lives in, since he might be losing his mind slowly in my opinion. 

“The savage, at least had more courage and energy and logic, if only primitive logic” (pg 16) I think D-503 wishes he had the courage to step out of line to explore something new although he has the brains to get started he rather not. This upsets him causing him to make some sarcastic remarks. He feels that it’s nothing but empty thoughts left since he is assigned to his section and there isn’t anything he can do about the situation, which brings him to express his feelings to the outside reader. 

“You are carefully examined in the laboratories of the sexual department….” every citizens gets coupons based on their needs (pg 22) does this act as a drug that they can receive on certain days? I find it weird that they have to use a coupon book don’t they have advance technology? 

“Liberation? Amazing, the extent to which criminal instinct persist in human nature…” this society makes the people believe that freedom isn’t good for anyone since without it there wouldn’t be any crime done. Why would the people think this theory is correct when taking away everyone’s freedom can also be considered a crime from human rights then?

although D-503 is the mathematician why does radical negative one upset him so much? He acts as if it is the end of the world since it is a irrational number… It has to be a better explanation for his anger towards this particular irrational number.

The insane outcome..

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Reading chapter 14-18 ending “brave new world” was not my anticipated outcome at all. The ending showed the true character in the male main characters. It was sad that johns mother Linda died which was expected but the way the nurse reacted to johns emotions was disgusting on page 187 when she tells him “can’t you behave?” Since this can mess up the death conditioning of the children, rather than take the children out the room and let him grieve in peace. To make matters worse she let the kids watch him and ask if she is dead as if it was really amusing to see. I was surprised that John did not harm the children who stayed to make fun and point at his dead mother.

The savage in rage of this society and the death of his mother makes him speak out against the world state on page 192 when he says “I come to bring you freedom”. He wants to undo the conditioning of this society since he sees that nobody is truly free, they have no emotions. I find john to be brave enough to throw away everyone’s supply of poison soma to state a point. The people of this weird society can function fine without the drug that makes you happy and cuts your life duration down tremendously. I thought it was interesting that he sorta did get through to the people which caused a team to break up the savages attempt by brain washing the people again and giving them a fresh supply of soma. I was hoping that his speech and destruction of the toxic pills would wake most of the citizens up permanently.

I was really disgusted by Benards behavior, he turned out to be a coward which I did not believe would happen since he was on the same level as the Savage and Helmholtz. I believe that after his party that everyone bashed him in his face with insults permanently shut down his will to fight and be strong as He once was to threaten society. Helmholtz and the Savage proven themselves to be stronger than Benard. On page 197 the three meet the controller. Who tells them the reason they don’t allow books such as Shakespeare to be read by citizens is because “it’s old:that’s the chief reason”. The controllers reasons for the way society is set up seems odd but makes sense to the Savage in certain aspects.

Meeting the controller showed that he is really relaxed and not crazy as the world state is since he is one of the select few of people that is allowed to think for themselves and not have to take soma. I found it interesting how towards the end of the book after the savages talk with the controller he later on thinks about Lenina which causes him to go mad and beat himself. Although the savage is in pain the citizens watch him in excitement as he suffers since it’s something new to them. The ending of this story was weird and confusing and I lost interest in the last chapter. My question is will this society ever change its view on suffering instead of using soma to block the pain and emotions?

Bernard’s Distraction

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I found this weeks reading chapters 10-13 to be really interesting, since things played out completely different than I expected it to turn out. I felt that Bernard gave the director a visit immediately upon his arrival back to the world state, that things would drastically change this society when Bernard expose terrifying Linda and handsome son john to the director in front of many citizens. The only thing that really changed was Bernard himself. After the Director resigned immediately due to embarrassment and shame, Bernard was treated extremely nice by society which wasn’t genuine at all but was looked upon as Bernard’s big break.

I didn’t appreciate how fast Bernard became a true citizen only because the citizens had been fake and welcoming towards him. I’m pretty sure that Bernard is aware that the citizens don’t really like him but they just need him to get closer to john, but since the attention was on himself felt great he would now all of a sudden sleep around with the females. (Pg.145) “And I had six girls last week”…… Why is Bernard boasting about this? It’s out of character since before the trip he couldn’t stand orgy and any other group activity. This leads me to believe that in fact alcohol was given to Bernard by mistake during birth. This would explain his depression and also it was conformed by one of the characters that the rumors about Bernard is really true.

I feel that the society is trying to kill Linda by allowing her to over dose on soma that way they don’t have to see her and see don’t have to see them. “Soma may make you lose a few years in time”(pg.143) how is soma safe if it cuts your life down by years in exchange for just a few hours of happiness ? Is this the reason why citizens die after they reach 60 years old? This pill will most likely lead to johns mothers death later on since right now she is stuck in holiday and hasn’t moved from her bed yet.

Bernard is caught up in all this attention that he isn’t interested in the health of Linda at all, he just wants john around to keep the company and attention of the hateful citizens which to me is crazy. He is completely off task with trying to break society but instead society will soon break him emotionally back to his old gloomy self. “Success went frizzily to Bernard’s head”(pg .145). This scene shows that Bernard’s ego keeps getting larger and irritating towards others,his only true friend Helmholtz couldn’t relate to Bernard any longer because his drastic change in character. Helmholtz challenged authority just like Bernard so had a better connection with each other.

On page 159 Bernard was in for a rude awaking  at his party when john decided not to show himself to the citizens that has pretended to be nice to him. This is where the citizens true characters showed how much hate they have for Bernard. I think that this was good for him to face so he can snap back to reality since all this time he was just used to see John which never happened. I wonder if this experience will give Bernard the will to try to break the world state or just live his life as an outcast “Savage”.

Brave new world ch.6-9

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This week reading ch.6-9 focused on mainly Bernard and Lenina along with a few shocking new experiences the couple had a chance to endure without the use of soma. Bernard is not considered normal to the citizens of the world state and is sorta made fun of by Henry on pg.88 “you can’t teach a rhinoceros tricks” basically saying that any amount of conditioning can’t fix someone (Bernard) that is already broken/retarded. Why is Bernard considered to not be normal since he likes to think for himself and rather have his space away from everyone else besides his girlfriend lenina? Maybe it’s his actions that most citizens find rather strange possibly.

Although the director seems to like Bernard at the same time he can’t stand his arrogant behavior. The director trust him enough to tell him a story about a girlfriend named Linda that he lost in malpais years ago. He then snaps out of his reminiscence to then proceed to threaten to send Bernard to Iceland for further conditioning if he continues to act out of place again. To me the Director’s conditioning is also disrupted almost like Bernard but the difference is the the Director dose not flaunt it around like Bernard would. Maybe it is because he lost Linda who he cared strongly for that probably prevents him from acting as odd as Bernard would….

Bernard and Lenina have such a strong bond relationship even though they both have different view points on the world state, Lenina loves the jolly feels of soma and the so called happy/perfect world they live in while Bernard can’t really stand the society most the time which makes him not “normal”. Although Lenina cries about Bernard’s hate towards society she still loves him and rather be with him instead of finding someone else who loves the world state as much as she does. Is this a sign that that Leninas conditioning is off balance as well as the Director and Bernard? This reminds me of the short story”The machines stops” since the story starts to unfold it shows glitches with in the system which wasn’t there before. Glitches in this instance is the resistance from the conditioning from the humans which can lead to the end of the World state in due time.

Bernard and Lenina take a trip to Malpais where it is a complete different world compared to the world state. Malpais is filled with smelly dark skin Indians who seem to live like savages in the eyes of Bernard and lenina. This is where they forget to bring soma and have to face reality head on. There is one point in the scene when the celebration noises sound like “orgy-porgy” to Lenina at Malpais, but the more she listen to the sounds without the soma the faster she forgot about the orgy call. This confirms that soma is the root balance of the world state order. Could humans in this world state survive and be happy without this significant drug?

The best part of the chapter was when Bernard discovered that Linda was alive and had a baby boy by natural birth from the director who does not even know that Linda survived all these years. Bernard seems to have a plan to throw off the balance of the entire world state by bringing back both Linda and the natural son back to probably expose the Director. Hopefully bringing the two back will flip the world state upside down. This should be interesting to see Bernard’s true intentions and side effects It may cause others.

Brave new world ch 1-5

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Reading “Brave new world” was interesting so far since it took time to break down the structure of class and rank in this new society that has been built. The concepts of cloning is introduced in the central London hatchery and conditioning centre. This is where the artificial children are produced since natural birth is completely obsolete in this society. It explains how the ranks of children is determined and conditioned at birth so that later on down the road the individual wont rebel against the system and hate/ change the system for a different future. It seems that the company is completely ok with explaining the procedure of the artificial processes of human development. The director explains to the students about the rapid production of humans known as the podsnap which has the ability to produce thousands of humans at once,then he continues to explain how the conditioning process don’t only prevent rebellion but it actually gets the embryos to really believe that they like their job rank and know that they can never change their fated job since it’s just futile to do the exact opposite. I don’t like how the method of conditioning is done to cause the children to have a instinct fear against certain products by electric shocking them repeatedly to hate the product and only like products that are allowed to their rank. I see that the point of conditioning is not only to shape each human to a rank but it is also to keep business running, to basically influence them to buy certain products to make profit. i found it weird that mentioning mother or father is actually considered as porn in this society which is ridiculous in my opinion……… So far I see that the conditioning method is basically repetitive and psychological damage to shape the children and society to fit their standards of living. I feel that this will become an unstable society soon. Children retain the most information so why does the conditioning process involve sexual erotic play which is forced upon them? I consider this society to be a horrible and corrupt dystopia. I feel this way because children should not be forced to participate in acts of vulgarity during the duration of their innocence. I find that Bernard can relate since he seems to be the only human that is a misfit since he can think for himself and find the community activities to be distasteful. Bernard seems to be slowly reversing the conditioning process since his insecurities about his size and rank is starting to show, he also tries to spend as much alone time as possible away from the society although this is considered illegal unless you are sleeping. They do this to everyone so that they can monitor everyone’s behavior to ensure that everyone is acting “proper” in their view of an ideal society which is pretty bizarre to me. For example the quote “orgy-porgy, ford and fun kiss the girls” was actually sung by Bernard while he was forced to participate in the weekly orgy in town which he seemed to hate. It was his way to make fun of the society and it’s weird ways since although they want “perfection” the world can not function steadily with out some type of release which I now understand why they infuse the conditioning process with sexual activities that they can express their feelings rather than keep it inside maybe??

The machine stops

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This story was very interesting to me since it showed how this generation only relied on technology to function every single day. The machine in ” The machine stops” provided everything for the humans down to artificial air and isolated rooms so everyone could communicate in but still not have that natural human interaction that people should have. The machine is looked upon as a god which is almost sickening since it’s forcing the citizens to isolate themselves and always function inside a computerized setting. The mother (Vashit) really idolizes the machine she holds the book like a bible and wishes nobody to even think about speaking down on it. She loves to be isolated and it seems to not bother her to go visit her son every time he asked her to, it is almost as if she liked to see her own son unhappy which gave her pride towards the machine since it allows her to see him and others from a distance.

The story takes place in a era where earth has been destroyed to the point that most living things can’t survive on hence why people depend on the machine as their only life source to sustain humanity. This society no longer believes in physical gatherings, why are all functions done in one room? I think it makes the citizens grow distant from one another. This also makes them really lazy and too dependent which can be a bad thing in the future. I don’t under why vashti and other people fear traveling the world and prefer to stay isolated in their room as if they are bound and not allowed to leave. Since her son won’t speak to her since she avoids him she finally takes the time to go see him which brings us to her plane ride. This shows me that even on the flight everyone has a small room to keep isolated in which still seems weird in my opinion. They keep metal shades on the window to avoid letting the sun touch them as if it would burn them on contact……They almost remind me of vampires since they hate sunlight and anything natural.

Why is human contact almost obsolete? I don’t understand why when people looked outside the window and observed the outside view of mountains and seas their only response was “no ideas here” and shut the blind in disgust. This shows that the machine has really taken away the human mind to think freely and be open minded. Kuno the son seems to be the only open mind human in this society and questions why his mother praises the book and the machine as if it helps her. She fails to realize that the machine controls you and this makes Kuno upset. He happened to walk the the earth without pro mission and got in trouble for it. He then realized that the machine has slowly stopped since it didn’t bother to kill him as it would usually do if a citizen broke the law. He was pretty smart since it took a while for the other citizens to start to see the system.