* What is the major theme of this novel? Why is this theme important to a teenager living in 2007?
The theme of this novel was the eternal happiness. Can there be an eternal happiness? “Call it the fault of civilization. God isn’t compatible with machinery and scientific medicine and universal happiness. You must make your choice. Our civilization has chosen machinery and medicine and happiness. That’s why I have to keep these books locked up in the safe. They’re smut. People would be shocked if …” (pg. 234) According to this quote of Mustapha mond, he claimed that in order to live with universal happiness, he had to give up everything else except for the technology and scientific medicine. Is it really impossible to make everything coexist peacefully? Because people have different values, characteristics, sexes, and other differences, they cannot act the same. However, in this novel, a drug called soma could make people calmed down and feel good. Perhaps, this is the biggest reason why they could live without arguments.
Also, the hypnopaedia method, which was the principle of sleep-teaching made people brainwashed. It made people to adapt everything without any hesitation. That was why people, no matter what their castes were, could be happy and consider themselves as fortunate. For instance, Lenina, who was a beta woman, was keep saying, “I am glad that I am not an Alpha. I don’t have to work that hard. I am glad that I am not Gammas, Deltas, or Epsilons because they are stupid.” Everyone could labor hard because they were happy to get grams of soma for their payments.
To me, they were machines that worked spiritlessly for their goal, which was to get grams of soma. They did nothing painful. They did not have to learn because they learned everything through the sleep teaching. They did not have to feel sorrow or scared of death because they were educated to feel nothing even though one passed away. They did not have to become old and ugly because the soma made them immune to getting old. Lastly, they did not feel love because they did not know what a true love was and they did not have parents who cared for them with love. They were just apathetic.
I did not think this matters to nowadays teenagers but I did think that this would be a problem after a century. I was a little scared that the world will become like this. Although people were feeling happy, indeed, they were feeling nothing because they were just used to it. It cannot be a brave new world because it was just a dead world. The title was definately a paradox.
The theme of this novel was the eternal happiness. Can there be an eternal happiness? “Call it the fault of civilization. God isn’t compatible with machinery and scientific medicine and universal happiness. You must make your choice. Our civilization has chosen machinery and medicine and happiness. That’s why I have to keep these books locked up in the safe. They’re smut. People would be shocked if …” (pg. 234) According to this quote of Mustapha mond, he claimed that in order to live with universal happiness, he had to give up everything else except for the technology and scientific medicine. Is it really impossible to make everything coexist peacefully? Because people have different values, characteristics, sexes, and other differences, they cannot act the same. However, in this novel, a drug called soma could make people calmed down and feel good. Perhaps, this is the biggest reason why they could live without arguments.
Also, the hypnopaedia method, which was the principle of sleep-teaching made people brainwashed. It made people to adapt everything without any hesitation. That was why people, no matter what their castes were, could be happy and consider themselves as fortunate. For instance, Lenina, who was a beta woman, was keep saying, “I am glad that I am not an Alpha. I don’t have to work that hard. I am glad that I am not Gammas, Deltas, or Epsilons because they are stupid.” Everyone could labor hard because they were happy to get grams of soma for their payments.
To me, they were machines that worked spiritlessly for their goal, which was to get grams of soma. They did nothing painful. They did not have to learn because they learned everything through the sleep teaching. They did not have to feel sorrow or scared of death because they were educated to feel nothing even though one passed away. They did not have to become old and ugly because the soma made them immune to getting old. Lastly, they did not feel love because they did not know what a true love was and they did not have parents who cared for them with love. They were just apathetic.
I did not think this matters to nowadays teenagers but I did think that this would be a problem after a century. I was a little scared that the world will become like this. Although people were feeling happy, indeed, they were feeling nothing because they were just used to it. It cannot be a brave new world because it was just a dead world. The title was definately a paradox.
댓글 1개:
I am not very sure of Brave New World's theme, but if it is about eternal happiness, that's pretty sad.
I personally think that nobody is experiencing 'true' happiness. It's fake, I guess. This book resembles The Giver and Fahrenheit 451 in the light that all three stories have communities that restrict the thinking of the citizens. Oh, 1984 can be inluded as well.
Even if the people are really happy in that state of fake life, then not everybody will be happy.
Somebody will suffer. Somkebody will pay the cost of all of that. In this story, that was John's debt to pay. Nobody on earth can be the same. Different people have different values. Different types of happiness. Equal happiness might have happened if every person on earth had been brain washed, but that didn't happen. The 'savages' and John were individuals. Their happiness was different.
There is no way for everybody to become happy.
Even if 100 people live on earth and 99 of them go to heaven, one will have to go to hell.
Somebody suffers. Even if it's only one person on the face of earth.
Happiness isn't complete.
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