Author Archives: Jaraad B.

Blog#6: Essay#1-Pre-Draft

Posted on by
Reply

Title: Should one live up to their own standards or societal standards to find freedom and happiness?

Introduction: In society there are rules and regulations that are set for the people that are apart of it. These standards that are set by society are used as a means so that the people can be able to live freely and be able to find happiness. In the text “Brave New World” by Aldous Huxley, it deals with the people that are living in the society by being cloned and having their lives pretty much picked out for them as well. The World State’s version of what it takes to have freedom is different than what many would think. In this text, even though the society seems to be in good terms and the people seem to have no problems, it is disagreeable to live in a society like that in which one can not live by their own standards in a time and place where stuff like that is taboo.

Body Paragraph: In the story Brave New World, humans are mass produced as clones and from their creation they are given positions and are molded by the World State so that they can be able to live in society and carry out their daily duties that they are destined to perform in life. According to the text it says: “Second, a fully developed science of human differences, enabling government managers to assign any given individual to his or her proper place in the social and economic hierarchy.”(Huxley, 12). This quote is describing how what the people will go through and how they would live their lives would be determined by a higher power above them. The way this is set up means that there is no way for a human being that would live in the World State to be able to do what they freely want because they are being manipulated to live they way the higher order wants them to. Even though the people would not realize that, living in a society where one would have to abide by standards that are considered harsh would not really lead to true happiness because they would not be able to express themselves freely how they would want to.

Body Paragraph#2: In the society in the World State the humans that are created as clones are also conditioned as well in their youth and adolescence so that they can know the difference between what is considered right or wrong in that society. According to the text it says: “They’ll grow up with what psychologists used to call an ‘instinctive hatred of books and flowers.”(30). This means that the children are conditioned to note like certain things as they grow older because according to the world state factors like those can interfere with the standards they have set. This shows that you cannot find happiness in a society that conditions you and makes you experience and learn certain aspects forcefully rather than letting the person learn that through there own will.

Reflection: In the process of writing this essay I still have a while to go because I still need to organize my ideas and information better. Also since this is a draft, honestly in terms of writing those I am not really good at doing that because usually my ideas are all over the place sometimes. Also I know that in my first body paragraph I used a quote from a page before chapter one, because I had found it interesting. Overall I am still working on this essay as we speak.

Reading Response#5: “There Will Come Soft Rains” by Ray Bradbury

Posted on by
1

There Will Come Soft Rains by Ray Bradbury is a short science fiction story that describes the events of what a house would do during the day. The house is being that performs various tasks on a schedule timing and it even talks and does different things for a family that would be living there. But in this story there is nobody living in the house and the house is just empty. Even though the house is empty it still continues and carries on performing various tasks.

In the story we see that there are no actual live characters other than the animals than come near the house and interact with it. Also there was a dog that the house was able to recognize which means that that dog could’ve been apart of the family that lived in that house. Basically the main character of this story would be the house because since the story revolves around it and it even performs actions and talks a little. According to the text it says “Who goes there? What’s the password?”(Bradbury, 2). The house notices and is able to sense the presence of organisms that come in range of the house and would ask who is that being and also the password to get into the house, which makes it seems that it can be protective of a family that would be living in that house.

Since the story revolves around a house that is built to serve a family by doing various tasks, it seems that the story takes place in a time or event where the human race was eliminated by some sort of epidemic which only leaves the house alone along with some living animals roaming around. According to the story it says: “The house stood alone in a city of rubble and ashes. This was the one house left standing. At night the ruin gave off a radioactive glow which could be seen for miles.”(1). It shows that the population was wiped out because there is rubble around and it is also radioactive which means that there really can’t be signs of human life around because those are not conditions that they would be able to live in or survive.

As the house continues daily performing and functioning daily, it started to begin to fall apart. The wind had blown and crashed into the kitchen and started a fire which had started to burn everything. According to the story it says: ” The house gave ground as the fire in ten billion angry sparks moved with flaming ease from room to room and then up the stairs.”(3). The house tries to save itself from the fire by using water and other methods like using the cleaning mice. The fire ends up getting worse and spreading to every area around the house and burning away many objects. It also tampers with various mechanisms around the house like for example when it describes how the stove is producing breakfast foods at a higher rate than usual.

Afterwards as the fire than faded it left the house in ruins. At the end of the story it says how one wall was there and it voiced saying the date which was the next day afterwards when the story had started.

Blog#4: Brave New World(Chapters 10-18)

Posted on by
Reply

The story resumes in chapter 10 as the director has a plan that he wants to dismiss Henry infront of the workers as a public example because he believes that his type of behavior is a threat to the stability in the nation. Throughout these chapters, John and some other characters would quote from Shakespeare. It is interesting that Shakespeare would be quoted from these characters mouths because it is a type of literature and usually literature like that is considered to be something different that the nation does not use and can affect what they call “happiness”.

Also John is a character that is called by the name Savage now and he does not like or admire the civilization he is apart of. According to the book it says: “It isn’t only art that is incompatible with happiness; it’s also science. Science is dangerous; we have to keep it most carefully chained and muzzled.”(Huxley, page 202). This saying is interesting because in the story happiness is often compared to what the stability of the nation is and how the people are born to fulfill certain jobs or duties that they are assigned to based on the status and conditions they are born with and into. They say that they want to keep the things like arts and sciences more distant and controlled from the society because that can cause a disturbance in what they call happiness within their society, even though they use science which is when they create the clones. Also since arts or literature is banned, they did that because they want the people to be more accustomed to newer things rather than old works that can last long because to the powers in charge of that society, having stability is more important.

“Call it the fault of civilization. God isn’t compatible with machinery and scientific medicine and universal happiness.”(Huxley, Page 210). Mustapha Mond is saying that the choice was made that civilization rather would choose science and technological advances rather than dealing with God because that would make a civilization more better according to him, which is why religion and religious beliefs are not a part of what the World Nation and it’s standards.

John believes that the time and the conditions are actually a form of degradation for the citizens rather than it actually being a good thing. Since he believes this and has different ideologies it eventually leads him into getting punished by Mond and than he then leads his own life in the form of solitude away from civilization. Also Bernard and Helmotz are banished and forced to live in separate islands away from civilization because they are believed to also be able to cause harm to the ideals also. When John secludes himself away by being at the lighthouse he did so in order to be able to keep his beliefs and ideals within himself but than soon afterwards he had killed himself because of the arrival of Lenina and feeling as though he has gave in to what he despises the most which was the World State.

Overall this was an interesting science fiction story because it showed various elements that you would usually find in works of science fiction like the use of technology and creation of clones and also the different ideologies we would consider to be wrong or weird in a certain way. Also I find it interesting that even though they try to restrict science arts and aspects of religion, they still use some sort of ideas that stem from those factors.

Reading Response#3: Brave New World

Posted on by
1

Brave New World by Aldous Huxley is a science fiction story that happens to take place in a timeframe where readers would observe and notice that there are some scientific techniques that are utilized within the society like for example human cloning. It seems that the setting is in a futuristic tense and also in book one of the locations that it takes place in would be in Central London and also technology plays a big role in society.  In the first chapter on page 15, it uses the three words “community, identity, and stability” as a motto and it is a saying for the cloning that they do to produce humans. The way human beings are produced is differently than the way they usually are, they are created by parts that are fertilized and they are packed and then analyzed to see what caste they would belong into so that they can determine where they would be sent to to perform tasks and they are created in many numbers so that many can perform tasks. The World State also uses some of the babies in which it makes nurses try to give them flowers and books but as they approach those things they are than shocked than soon afterwards they do not want to be involved with those objects, which leads them to dislike the objects.  This process would make them grow up with a hatred of books and flowers.

Throughout the story human reproduction and what the people do socially in the world are controlled and altered and it seems as though this utiopia is actually a brutal one because of all of that.  As the director is giving the students a tour, he takes them to see a area in which many boys are playing with others while they are naked. One boy was uncomfortable with what was happening around him and he was sent to a psychologists. Usually a type of play or interaction like that among adolescence would be considered wrong but in the World State that concept does not really seem to apply to them. A character by the name of Mond is introduced and he is one of the leaders of the civilization at that time. There was history before the World State became like it is today, there used to be stabiity among the people but it lead to various bad things like war or disease which caused many deaths. Since the world state exists it implements it’s policies on the way reproduction and social interactions are so that they would not end up dealing with conflicts that can cause problems for them.

This story is interesting because of the fact that we get to read about a type of society that involves almost utmost control over it’s people in a way. Usually when reading science fiction stories it would seem that there would have more freedom but in this story it is a bit different. Also I find it interesting because of the fact that the civilization does various things differently that we living in the real world would consider to be not right.

 

Discussion about Metropolis Film

Posted on by
Reply

Metropolis was a film by Fritz Lang. It is a German movie and it is also a silent film in which it plays and shows the scenes but they would also use words to describe what characters say or what happens in certain events throughout the movie as well. Other info about this movie is that after it had it’s first premier it was than altered later on. Since that happened it was divided up into fragments than soon after the full version was found in Buenos Aires and also afterwards it was reconstructed in Argentina and than restored back. Also since this is an oldtime film, it is in black and white.

In the movie it looks as though it takes place in a futuristic time period. It seems that there is division among the people within the movie. There are workers who are working and they seem to be in one part of the city and than there are people who are wealthy and they seem to be in another part of the city. In the beginning we see that as the workers are working, we than see the words “Shift Change” and when the workers are arriving for their shifts they are seen walking in a sort of same manner and they all look the same as though they are wandering zombies. It seems that they are put through a intensive labor type of jobs and it probably drains life out of them.  The story takes place in Metropolis. Throughout the film’s story it seems that there has been a difference in ideas between a father and a son. Josaphat is the name of the son and it his father banished him from his presence and than the son continues to travel on. Even though he sent his son away he still wants to know his movements as according to the movie he tells a man to track his movements. As the son travels he finds a man operating a clock like machine and he offers to step in his place and even offer to swap or trade lives as well. The machine needs to be constantly watched and the hands on the clocked needs to be moved also and it seems to involve strenous work because we see the character struggling with it and talking about if ten hours would ever end. Also in the movie there is a scientist by the name of Rotwang and he invents a machine or android that resembles a person. Also they talk about The Tower of Babel and a person who resembles a powerful god like being instructed and hired many workers for the construction of it and they seem to want to do it because they were persuaded well by that figure into doing it.

This movie is a good example and work in terms of being science fiction because it has various elements and futuristic as well. In this movie it treats the characters differently like the rich are living well and workers looks as though they are dreading. In the movie I found it interesting when they said in the beggining that “The Mediater between the Brain and the Hand is the Heart”, and I found this to be an interesing quote because it describes that your heart can play a big role in the actions you do and this could be applied in real life as well.

Discussion about “The Machine Stops”

Posted on by
1

This science fiction story takes place in a area or the machine and even though there is a society they are actually isolated because of the technology. The people are not on Earth and it is known to just be a lifeless planet that is only comprised of dirt or mud. The story revolves around two characters which are a mother and son by the same as Vashti and Kuno. The people in the story are very dependent on the machine and they worship it even though it was humans that created it. I think that one of the main themes of the story could be that one should not be dependent too much on technology but rather on themselves more.

Class Notes for 2/7/17

Posted on by
1

Good morning everybody, feel free to add anything I might have missed or make corrections…

Announcements-Class Notes should be posted by night of class, write the homework/announcements/readings. Also definitions, discussions and links and citations. Also ask for help if you need it like for example if note taker missed a word or definition they can ask students to help fill it out if they know. Also when doing blogs they are due before the night of class and they should be categorized. Class notes are essential for future works and discussions we will be having in class and also each students must be the note taker atleast once or twice throughout the whole semester.

Homework- Class discussion of “The Machine Stop” and everyone has to print out the readings and annotate them.

Also it is important to have readings printed out and annotated because it was said that the readings are gonna get more difficult as well and if you can’t handle it than you have to discuss it with the professor.

We started out with recapping what we did last class which was we were talking about major types of science fiction or genres. Science fiction does not only have to be about the future, it could happen in another place or time.

“Progress” was where we ended off last class which was 2/2/17. We discussed that machines or technological developments is important in terms of progress. We viewed an image called “The History of Science Fiction” and you can find this image on one of the readings we did earlier which is “Defining Science Fiction”, which you can find on the course schedule. The image contains various things like different genres, philosophers and it is comprised of mix of different people and histories.

Science fiction does not have a specific definition. It can be a societal or cultural change. It is also said that it is the literature of the human species experienceing  change.

Also we were talking about alternative facts. Alternative facts are discussions of fake news. It has been happeining for a while on various topics like questions about the election or the war on the media.

Ursala K. LeGuin was a very famous science fiction writer and she lives in Portland, Oregan. She is atleast 80 or more years old and she claims that science fiction is about imagining possibilities and also it is not based on alternative facts.

Progress can be anything that can be seen as better.

Things we can agree that society as a views as progress as a whole- Defeat of a disease, creation of technology like for example getting Wi-Fi on the subways, human life being increased, more jobs for people, better and affordable housing, clean water, equality among people and efficiency like getting rid of train traffic

Qualities of a good job- enjoying your job by not dreading what you do, getting payed alot of money and having high positions

We did a short activity where we closed our eyes and imagined things like the blackboard or chairs then we were told to imagine things like happiness, love, respect or justice and everybody probably imagined a different versions of those things in terms of what they view them as.

Our responsibilities as readers is to understand what is happening in texts and understand what societies values in those texts.

Elements of fiction- Characters: can mean anything that has some effect in the texts, can be animals, peoples or things. Has protaganists and antaganists as well.

Setting-environment, when and where the texts takes place. One aspect in terms of settings in science fiction would be estrangement, which means to make unfamiliar./ Plot- action of story, what actually happens. Theme- message of story. Conflict: when there is a clash which causes drama in story. There are external and internal conflicts. External conflict is outside of you like for example someone vs. nature and internal conflict is internal struggles like for example men/women vs self.

Symbolism- A representation that stands for something and it does not have to be an object.

Simile is a comparison using the words “like” or “as” and Metaphor is a comparison but not using “like” or “as”.

Figurative Language- Imagery, Points of VIews or Narration

Vocabulary- 1. Omniscient: all knowing/ 2. Omnipotent: all  powerful/ 3. Punitive: relating to punishment/ 4. Intertexuality: Happens between texts where sometimes texts would refer to other texts like for example science fiction texts would refer to inventions from other science fiction texts./ 5. Allusion: literary reference that is in literary texts more than science fiction texts./6. Euphemism: a word or phrase that is meant to sound good like for example that person passed away./ 7. Commerce: income./ 8. Unequibly: without a doubt./9. Heteronormative: denoting to a world view that promotes heterosexuality as the normal or prefered sexual orientation.

 

Reading Response#1: The Machine Stops

Posted on by
2

E.M Forster’s The Machine Stops is a science fiction story that takes place in a futuristic time period. In the story the characters are in a place or machine and they are not on the Earth because during the beginning of the story when a mother was talking with her son, the son said that she wanted her to visit him even though they can communicate and see each other clearly because of the machine. During their dialogue the mother explains that she does not really want to go anywhere or see the Earth because during that time it is just a land with dust and mud which would mean that the characters are not present on the planet Earth. The machine gives the characters access to various resources that they use for everyday living like for example they can press buttons for baths, music or other various needs.  In the story the people seem to be worshipping the machine and also the world that the characters are living in is controlled by technology.

Even though the machine is a good concept for the people living in that area there is actually barely any contact among the humans because of the isolation that is caused by the machine.  Also even though it said that it was created by humans, they ended up relying too much on it and technology and they did not consider the fact that it would end up not working well against them as time passes by. Technology ended up becoming the main idea or main lifestyle for the humans.

Overall this is an interesting story by the author because it decribes how the people are dependent on a machine and not of themselves more. The life lesson of the story can be to not depend too much on technology but rather on oneself so that you can be able to do more.

Introduction…

Posted on by
Reply

Hello my name is Jaraad. Nice to meet everyone. I am from NYC and was born and raised in Jamaica, Queens. I am currently in my first year of city tech but I do come from another college before. I went to Queensborough Community College and I graduated from there recently with a degree in liberal arts. I want to do nursing and I plan to apply to the program this semester to see if I can get in for the fall and for my career goals it was always something associated with the medical field. I like to do various things in my free time when I am not  at work or at school like go to the gym or play video games. I read or watch manga and anime as well as some other shows you would see on tv, like for example the walking dead. Also I play playstation 4. I also listen to various kinds of music, but what I do have a big interest in would be rap and hip-hop because ever since I was little I grew up on that and have always respected and enjoyed listening to it. What I mean when I say this is that I enjoy the old classics from the 1980’s, 90’s, early 2000’s and maybe some after 2010, but honestly I am not a fan of the mumble rap that many like or those radio hits or songs that barely have meaning to it. (No offense to anybody).

My strengths as a writer is that honestly I don’t really know so I am sorry I can’t really answer that question. My weaknesses as a writer would be that I do sometimes make a lot of grammatical mistakes in essays and some of my sentences sometimes tends to be longer than they usually have to. What I enjoy about writing is the part of expressing how you feel. What I don’t enjoy is having to write essay’s sometimes. I do not have any experience using openlab, this is actually my first time. My experience with science fiction came from watching movies like star wars, transformers and some others and also playing video games as well. I think that this course is going to be an interesting one not just because of the fact that it deals with science fiction but because I will actually get to learn about it in a more in depth scale and also get to see how this class will be.