2008년 4월 5일 토요일

Brave New World - Current Situations

* Are there any current situations in the world that relate to the novel? What are they, and how do they relate? Does the novel shed any light on how current situations could be resolved or “fixed”?

At first when I thought about the caste system, the first thing that came into my mind was the ancient India. The Indian caste system was very similar to this. With rigid hierarchies, Brahmins and Kshastriyas ruled the country while Vaisyas and Sudras (untouchables) labored and had inferior jobs. They could not argue with their varnas nor change them. Also, they could not marry with the different castes from theirs. In addition, their marriages were unlawful too. A man could kidnap a woman and marry. This was considered as legal, which women were treated as objects.


Also, I could compare to the polygyny. According to the polygyny, a man could have more than one wife and this was legal too. Although people in the new world did not marry, the idea was the same, which a person loved more than one person. People from the new world did not feel true love but a fake and physical love, sex. Since that was what they were like and they were educated to be, there were no solutions.




To compare to our modern world, this brave new world resembled today’s North Korea. North Koreans were brainwashed from their birth that their president, Kim Jeong Ill, is the mightiest person ever. Also, North Korean commoners were not allowed to use Internets, books, and other internationally associated things. Even though people were curious at what was going on outside of their world, people had to obey the rules because if not, people in higher position would murder them. Perhaps, internationally associated people were the ones who isolated commoners from the outside. If they knew how different outside people were, they would absolutely begin the riots. Although Kim Jeong Ill is dictating his people, maybe he was trying to create a utopia. According to the research, socialism was the ideal system to form a utopia. Socialism was a similar government as communism, which used the idea of distributing properties equally. However in North Korea, it didn’t work because there were a huge gap between the rich people and the poor people. In this sense, the new world and the North Korea were very alike.
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I like the idea about connecting the Indian caste system to the World Society's caste system.
But I think that there is a slight difference in both of them. I think that the Indian had more discrimination inside than Brave New World.
Such as Brahmans criticizing the Sudras and Vaishyas.
But the novel had none, maybe because they were all civilzied but I think that they knew the importance of each other's jobs.