Literature Analysis # 2
Brave New World by Aldous Huxely
GENERAL
1.
Briefly summarize the plot of the novel you read, and explain how the
narrative fulfills the author's purpose (based on your well-informed
interpretation of same).
The plot of Brave New World has this one goal in mind which is technological progress. It describes how there society revolves around industry, economy, and technological growth and improvement. The town is brain washed since the day they were conceived. The babies were already being programmed into there designated life style. The scientist controlled everything that went being closed doors. They decided whether what type of baby they will be. There were the babies that received the DNA into becoming Beta children (scientist, teachers, doctors, etc.) Then you would also get the Epsilons that were the dumbest kids, so they'd probably receive a job working as janitors for example.The Deltas were in between the Beta's and the Epsilon's.
"Delta children wore khaki. Oh no, I don't want to pay with the Delta children. And Epsilon's are still worse. They're too stupid to be able to read and write. Besides they wear black, which is such a beastly colour. I'm so glad I'm a Beta." (page 35) The author's purpose for this novel is to portray how the future could end one day. Technology will soon be inside every home and will become dependent on it.
2. Succinctly describe the theme of the novel. Avoid cliches.
The theme revolves around the idea of technology uprising the industrialism and the economic system. How the advancement of science can affect the human immorality.
Inside Utopia they are big on invention. believing in creating something new rather than repairing it.
"Ending is better than mending, ending is better than mending." (page 55)
3. Describe the author's tone. Include a minimum of three excerpts that illustrate your point(s).
The tone appears to be happy at first, everything is well put together and things seem to be working fine.The principle is speaking to the children and giving them a tour in the science facility and he is proud of the work that is being done inside those walls.
"Outside, in the garden, it was playtime. Naked in the warm June sunshine, six or seven hundred little boys and girls were running with shrill yells over the lawns, or playing ball games, or squatting silently in twos and threes among the flowering shrubs. The roses were in bloom, two nightingales soliloquized in the boskage, a cuckoo was just going out of tune among the lime trees. The air was drowsy with the murmur of bees and helicopters." (page 37)
Disillusionment is an important tone that is expressed through out the novel. For example, the towns people can not really have "formal relationships", in fact they they prefer them to have just relations with one another.
"I really do think you ought to be careful. it's such a horribly bad form to go on and on like this with one man. At forty, or thirty-five, it wouldn't be so bad. but at your age, Lenina! No it really won't do. (page 46)
4.
Describe a minimum of ten literary elements/techniques you observed
that strengthened your understanding of the author's purpose, the text's
theme and/or your sense of the tone. For each, please include textual
support to help illustrate the point for your readers. (Please include
edition and page numbers for easy reference.)
Alliteration-
"Ending is better than mending, ending is better than mending" (page 55)
Dialogue-
"Explain what?"
"This." He indicated the pueblo. "That." And it was the little house outside the village. "Everything. All your life."
"But what is there to say?"
"From the beginning. as far back as you can remember."
"As far back as I can remember." John frowned. There was a long silence. (page 116)
figurative language-
"to reconstruct. As though we were living on different planets, in the different centuries. A mother, and all this dirt, and gods, and old age, and disease..." (page 116)
Hyperbole-
"Like drums, like the men singing for the corn, like magic, the words repeated and repeated themselves in his head. From being cold he was suddenly hot. His cheeks burnt with the rush of blood, the room swam and darkened before his eyes." (page 124)
Irony-
"But cleanliness is next to fordliness," she insisted.
"Yes, and civilization is sterilization," Bernard went on, concluding on a tone of irony the second hypnopaedic lesson in elementary hygiene." (page 105)
imagery-
"For suddenly there had swarmed up from those round chambers underground a ghastly troop of monsters." (page 10)
CHARACTERIZATION
1. Describe two examples of direct characterization and two examples of
indirect characterization. Why does the author use both approaches, and
to what end (i.e., what is your lasting impression of the character as a
result)?
Direct-
"Solved by standard Gammas, unvarying Deltas, uniform Epsilons. Millions of identical twins. The principal of mass production at least applied to biology...Ninety- six seemed to be the limit; seventy-two a good average. From the same ovary and with gametes of the same male to manufacture as many batches of identical twins as possible- that was the best ( sadly a second best) that they could do." (page 19)
The Director is directing this to the Science lab where all the babies are made. Explaining how much better they would be if they can produce a mass production of babies as fast as possible. There goal is to produce as many babies with in a short time, that way they can double up with the end result, which would be babies.
Indirect-
"I'd simply love to go with you for a week in July," she went on. (Anyhow, she was publicly proving her unfaithfulness to Henry. Fanny ought to be pleased, even though it was Bernard) "That is," Lenina gave him her most delicious significant smile, "if you still want to have me."
Lenina here is just expressing how she likes to meet more guys and have more than one relation compared to just sticking with one guy. It shows how she is unfaithful and how she is just throwing herself at him means she doesn't have much respect for herself. She rather enjoy herself.
2. Does the author's syntax and/or diction change when s/he focuses on character? How? Example(s)?
"...upwards of five thousand kilometres of fencing at sixty thousand volts." (page 98)
One of the settings in the novel takes place in London and there spelling of measurement is different from the United States. Lenina gave off a perfect example of
kilometres vs.
kilometers.
"Try to realize what it was like to have a viviparous mother" (page 42)
Viviparous meaning
bringing forth living young. Producing babies through feeding an egg, or in the sense of producing seeds that germinate on the plant
3. Is the protagonist static or dynamic? Flat or round? Explain.
" A love of nature keeps no factories busy. It was decided to abolish the love of nature, at any rate among the lower classes; to abolish the love of nature, but not the tendency to consume transport. For of course it was essential that they should keep going to the country, even though they hated it. The problem was to find an economically sounder reason for consuming transport than a mere affection for primroses and landscapes. It was duly found."
This shows the characters to be static and flat. They are programmed to not enjoy the beauty of nature but enjoy the idea to travel into the country. Transport out to the country so they can help out the economy when it comes to relations with money, industries, or businesses.
4. After reading the book did you come away feeling like you'd met a
person or read a character? Analyze one textual example that
illustrates your reaction.
"now we proceed to rub in the lesson with a mild electric shock... The screaming babies suddenly changed its tone. 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...at the approach of the roses, at the mere sight of those gaily-coloured images of pussy and cock-a-doddle-doo and baa-baa black sheep, the infants shrank away in horror; the volume of their howling suddenly increased...Books and loud noises, flowers and electric shocks- already in the infant mind these couples were compromisingly linked; and after two hundred repetitions of the same or similar lesson would be webbed indissolubly." (page 30)
This has to be one of my favorite passages in the novel because, so soon in the beginning it is explaining how it programs the babies to like and dislike certain things. They program all the humans to fit the needs of their Utopian world. So they can improve economically, and technology wise. The humans are the consumers and the humans are programmed to consume what can benefit, not themselves, but the world.
This story is very out there and it just makes you think how twisted their world is compared to ours. There main motifs are efficiency, production, and consumerism. When you compare it to our motifs and values which happen to be family, love and success.
