Brave New World: Ch 2 & 3

1. Chapter II

 

1. symbolism - white → impartial and neutral; impersonal, clean → cold, isolating, empty (STERILE → works back to the world they live in, where chemistry trumps personal affairs)
1. “Half a dozen nurses, trousered and jacketed in the regulation white viscose-linen uniform, their hair aseptically hidden under whitecaps… (pg 19)”
2. “…also pale as death, pale with the posthumous whiteness of marble (pg 19)”
2. use of imagery → personification, attention to detail  
1. “The roses flamed up as though with a sudden passion from within; a new and profound significance seemed to suffuse the shining pages of the books (page 20)”  
3. rhetoric devices → persuasion: pathos to evoke certain emotions from the audience (particularly anger, disgust, and pity)
1. “The children started, screamed; their faces were distorted with terror (pg 21)”
2. “The screaming of the 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 bodies moved jerkily as if to the tug of the unseen wires (pg 21)”
4. we see over and over again the loss of humanity
1. the people are literally manufactured in masses; they aren’t created with “love,” or nature → it’s impersonal and scientific, people are created to do what is required of them to do → they aren’t given the choice
2. they program the children
1. refer to “C” → shocking children so as to condition them
5. motif - “Ford” → also an allusion to Henry Ford, the credited inventor of the assembly line, is referred to in the novel as the start (the beginning of their time, their “godlike” figure)

2. Chapter III
1. “fordship” → Mustapha Mond, Resident Controller for Western Europe (1/10)
1. “…straight from the horse’s mouth. Straight from the mouth of Ford himself (pg 34)”
2. they have no concept of the word connotation, everything to them is in terms of denotation → reiterates what the audience already know, loss of humanity → science trumps emotion   
1. “‘And do you know what a ‘home’ was?’ They shook their heads.”
3. Huxley’s time influenced the novel → plot and theme’s correlate to issues on socialism and totalitarian governments, which was the crisis at the time Huxley wrote the novel
1. Russian names → Marx (Karl Marx), Lenina (Lenin), etc.
4. “fragmentation” → breaking something apart into fragments
1. audience doesn’t get an option; there’s a lack of structure
5. FOIL → Lenina and Franny
1. audience more like Lenina → questioning
2. Franny: conditioned into compliance, doesn’t question  

Brave New World: Ch 1

1. Central London Hatchery and Conditioning Centre - A.F. 632
1. World State’s motto: “community, identity, and stability”
1. Director of Hatcheries and Conditioning shows students around the building, telling them the history and process of fertilization
1. “A troop of newly arrived students, very young, pink and callow, followed nervously, rather abjectly...” (pg 4)
2. “Tall and rather thin but upright, the Director advanced into the room. He had a long chin and big rather prominent teeth, just covered, when he was not talking, by his full, floridly curved lips.”
1. direct characterization → usage of imagery  
3. “Straight from the horse’s mouth. It was a rare privilege.”  (pg 4)
4. “Meanwhile, it was a privilege. Straight from the horse’s mouth into the notebook” (pg 4)
1. repetition of animal imagery
2. the use of idiom - depicts authority
2. Bokanovsky’s Process → bud, proliferate, divide
1. eight to 96 buds → every bud grows to become perfect embryos → embryos grow to become full-sized adults
1. 96 human beings as opposed to 1 → progress
2. Major instruments of social stability
3. “...fertility is merely a nuisance.” (pg 13)
1. the idea of natural birthing experience is repeatedly thought of as below par with the society they are living in; they thrive off of “progress” and “process”

Education System, in a nutshell

Found this gem. 

zenpencils.com

zenpencils.com

Aldous Huxley

So, who was Aldous Huxley? I don't know who he really was. It is close to impossible to really know who Aldous Huxley was by simply surfing the web. Copy and paste doesn't really offer that foresight on a dead author. I do, however, know slivers of what the public perceived him to be, and how he wanted the public to view him as.

Aldous Huxley is known by a majority of the public for his widely acclaimed and controversial novel, The Brave New World. Born to a family of scientists, it was bound that he would become a great success. He was a satirist who often perceived society with a critical eye. It is easy to see how critical he viewed society and modernization (and technology). He wrote, in a very upfront matter, about the danger of the society we strove to be.

'But I don't want comfort. I want God, I want poetry, I want real danger, I want freedom, I want goodness. I want sin' 

Lit Analysis #1: Winter Reading

Nonfiction: Annual Editions - Anthropology  

• Topics and/or Events
• The book I read is subject to anthropology, the study of humans (past and present) and the way they interact with tradition and culture. It is set in different stories, true stories written about diverse group of people and cultures written by actual anthropologists that give insight to how they, whatever or whoever the story was based on, lived and acted, thrived and failed.
• There is no single author; the book contains a variety of stories, articles, written about the topic of cultural anthropology. There is, however, a single editor by the name of Elvio Angeloni. I believe he edited this piece because it is in his area of interest, which happens to be learning and working with indigenous peoples. It is also essential to note that he received an MA in anthropology and in communication.
• The book was suggested to me by Breanna Rodriguez after an enlightening conversation about my topic (cultural awareness and diversity, stories told through transmedia). She told me about a book that she owned and allowed me to borrow her own copy. Excited about the book, she told me about the stories and the perspective they were written in. Nodding along, I tried to get out of it, but she was insistent and promptly gave me the book right there and then.
• It was startlingly realistic, the book made me look and paint pictures of the real world, topics ranging from overpopulation to sexuality to the americanized topic of mental illness.
• People
• The authors surely created the characters, not in anyway one might think, but they did. By writing about the certain people that were presented to the audience, they did so by putting themselves in it. Yes, they were written through observations, and therefore not completely created as original creations, but were written by the authors in such a way that they put a piece of themselves in there. So, in reality, by writing about someone else (whether it be through mere observations) they did it in a way, through style and diction, that skewed the audience’s perspective therefore making it a part of their own creation. The overall tone was both conventional and informative, it informed the reader the struggles and successes people made, it showed parts of peoples’ lives.
• David Pizarro - a psychologist that experimented on the “perfect aroma,” via fart spray! His experiment essentially had to do with peoples’ influence, or rather, the way they were influenced by the way things smelled. To me, he sounds like a typical scientist, prompted by his curiosity to finding out answers. If I were to write him as a fictional character, I would mainly use indirect characterization. Using his actions to convey his character seems more ideal than just listing them off.
• Patricia Cochran - an Inuit (Northwestern Alaska) that talks about her dietary intake. She talks about how they got their food (mainly hunting and foraging) and the type of food that they ate (hunted seal and walrus, marine mammals with lots of fat). She acted pretty nonchalant, specially about the topic of food, even with the question of “why so many fat?”
• There’s something very unique and satisfying about reading people's’ stories, how they live and act, what they do or don’t do, their differing cultures and traditions. Reading and learning about someone who’s vastly different from you, yet is so similar in some says, satisfies your innate curiosity. It breaks down the boundaries set up by society, and it’s great in that way.
• Style
• The authors used a journalistic style
• “Wild-animal fats are different from other fats. Farm animals typically have lots of highly saturated fat”
• “Has poverty ravaged mother love in the shantytowns in Brazil?”
• “Kidnapping Women: Discourses of emotion and Social Change in the Kyrgyz Republic”
• The authors use more lengthy descriptions, but also use some dialogue. Since it is written as observations, it makes sense that there would be more descriptions of the things happening around the characters. However, the book doesn’t lack dialogue. There’s plenty of dialogue that allows the readers to seek input from the actual characters, and not have to rely from the author’s descriptions alone.
• The authors’ tones are informative and conventional, often answering questions that pertain to the topics of cultural anthropology and always subjected to an interview from the authors to the people
• The authors’ attitudes about the subject and/or topic - highly passionate, but inquisitive
• Variety of articles (including classic articles) and textbooks
• It didn’t really matter to my thinking, I merely used the words as guidelines and then thought about questions and/or answered questions that were pre-written on the book

Unforgotten Face

Unforgotten face

There is something so sinister about the young dying. Death in itself is common, a part of a cycle. It balances life, death does; without the other, life or death, the world gets skewed out of proportion.

Still, I can’t help but weep at the sight of the young dying. Potential struck down without mercy, life seamlessly cut down like a string.

Four months before graduation, my head still can’t wrap around the idea that one of us is gone. There’s a part of me that wants to slap you senseless, out of anger for leaving wonderful people behind and out of sadness that you are truly gone. But the rational part of me knows that it was all an accident, no one wanted this.

Even though you won’t be physically there with us during graduation, I know that you’ll still be there, in our minds and in our souls.

I can picture it now, you cheering us in the sideline. Your eyes crinkled at the side, speckled brown, and your mouth quirked up. It’s both a quirky and cocky smile.

So, thank you. Thank you for the four delightful years spent with us.

Thank you for being the best lab partner out there. Thank you for getting Noah and I out of trouble in some crazy, life-or-death lab.

Thank you for keeping the smile on your face every 7:30 in the morning.

Thank you for being a part of the AVID family, love and hate included.

Thank you, Breanna Rodriguez, forever the unforgotten face.