Chapter 15 – 18

The last 4 chapters do a great job of rapping things up and even creating a deeper understanding for the society to the readers and also revealing how the society deals with the people that don’t fit into the society. In chapter 15, the conflicts between John and the society reach the climax. John witnesses the distribution of somas to groups of bokanovskificated Deltas and feels that he should save them from the way the society controls them. His idealism might have been okay but his action was too impromptu. From this, we can see that John is a very hot-blooded person who is very obsessive to his idealism. When Helmholtz and Bernard hear about this incident and comes to help, we can see the two different depths of friendship from Bernard and Helmholtz. While Helmholtz runs into the middle of the fight to save his friend without hesitation, Bernard fails to overcome his fear. Chapter 16 and 17 are explanation/debate about the society’s policies. Chapter 16 is mostly about explanation from Mond, the world controller, to Bernard, Helmholtz, and John about the things that the society has to give up for stability. It explains how history, poetry, religion, and science has to be restricted for stability of the society. In chapter 17 a serious philosophical debate between Mond and John begins. John insists that give the people reason to live and hope to look forward to. However, Mond argues that religion is only needed when there is suffering that people can’t withhold but the people in the society does not have any suffering to bear. John agrees but still insists that he want that freedom. In the end the question that remains is that can there be happiness without suffering? Mond says that with a controlled knowledge and freedom the people are always happy and don’t even know what suffering is. They are always satisfied with what they are doing in that society and there is no challenge or reason for their life. However, another option is to have suffering, randomness, goals, dangers, and freedom and feel the happiness within those unhappiness. I think this is the main question that the author is throwing to the readers. In chapter 18, Helmholtz and Bernard leaves John and John succeeds in living a life of his own. However, the fact that he is still physically within the civilized society, prevents him from living in a complete freedom. In the end, disgusted in the civilized society, Lenina, and John himself, he ends up hanging himself. Maybe that was the ‘right’ way of reaching the ‘true Utopia’ that he has been searching for all his life.

Chapter 11 – 14

Chapter 11 is the beginning of the fame that John gains as ‘The Savage’. As John gains fame Bernard also gets fame since he naturally became his tourist/guardian in the civilized land. From chapter 11 to 14, it shows some character development of Bernard drenched in his new fame, and John’s interaction with the civilized land. Chapter 11 is more towards the introduction to the new situation. The new environment where not only John is introduced to the new civilized land, but Bernard is also introduced to something called ‘fame’ for the first time in his life. This is a turn over for both characters John and Bernard and it is also a good source for a new character development for these two characters. One big thing that appears in chapter 11 is the change in Bernard’s characteristic. Bernard used to be the different and right character that was fighting against the ‘evil’ citizens. However through this change in his characteristics the readers were able to see his bad side. Though the disrespectful reactions of Bernard we can see how he was only rejecting the society not because he purely disagreed with its policy but because he was treated badly in the society due to his physical disabilities. If we happened to have been born in a high place within the society like Helmholtz, he would have had no problem living in the civilized land, rather he may have even defended its policies. All these fames fade away as John refuses to attend to Bernard’s important meeting in chapter 12. In this chapter the fame that Bernard gained from John’s specialness is lost because John begins to be uncooperative. In this chapter Helmholtz’s good personality is also emphasized by the action of forgiving Bernard’s rudeness and accepting him as a friend again. Chapter 13 is about Lenina’s passion for John and the contradictions between two characters’ idealisms. At the same time Lenina’s deep passion for John is revealed in this chapter, through the conversation with John, her love is described to be non-‘true’ love. She is still stuck in the civilized way of thinking. We also see John’s other side in this chapter. We see how John can not tolerate people who have different opinions than him. Lastly in chapter 14 John’s view on the civilized society is fixed. If the last three chapters were about the interactions between John and the civilized society’s way of thinking, chapter 14, where John’s mother dies and he meets children that talks about death indifferently, is the decisive chapter where John fixes his opinion about the civilized society to be a bad society without freedom and emotions.

Chapter 5 – 10

This blog post is about chapter 5 to 9. At the beginning in chapter 5 and 6, a juxtaposition between the standard Brave New World citizens’ way of thinking and Bernard’s way of thinking. In Chapter 5 from a conversation between Henry Foster and Lenina, the readers are able to learn about how the regular citizens in the society thinks of themselves as just a part of the community. Some quotes that show this are “Fine to think we can go on being socially useful even after we’re dead. Making plants grow”, “All men are physic-chemically equal”. Through this we can se how the citizens value more of the stability and the well being of the society as a whole than the importance of individuality. “Everyone works for everyone else. We can’t do without anyone…” However, as a contrast, in chapter 6 the conflicting conversation between Bernard and Lenina shows how the Bernard’s opinion differs from the society’s view. Lenina represents the standard normal view of the citizens in the civilized land and she is not able to understand what Bernard is trying to say to her. From chapter 6 to the end of chapter 9, it’s about the fight between Bernard and DHC to kick one another out of the society. The beginning of that fight is when Bernard and DHC have a conversation about the reserves and DHC’s past. In this conversation not only does DHC show a soft non-civilized way of thinking, but he also provides a hint for Bernard to attack him later. In chapter 7 when Bernard and Lenina finally begin the tour around the reserves, they witness something that was too hard to understand from the civilized society’s land. They see dirtiness, diseases, and oldness. They see ritual of people getting hurt and wanting to be sacrificed. They see religions. While Lenina is just shocked and horrified by the reserves, Bernard tries his best to comprehend them and think in their point of view. After that they see John and Linda. As soon as they began talking, John and Bernard knew right away that they were alike in the sense that they were different and abandoned by their own societies. Chapter 8 is mostly about John’s past. The story of how the discrimination from the fact that he was from the civilized land and how his mother acted, led to who he was. At this point, although the book doesn’t really say it, Bernard probably noticed that John was the son of the DHC. Knowing that if he just went back without any mesures he would be sent to Iceland, Bernard desperately visit the people in the high positions of the civilized society and asks the permission to bring John and Linda(the proof of DHC’s mistakes) back to the civilized society. In chapter 10, the fight between the DHC and Bernard begins. A quote that shows how the DHC viewed Bernard and the society is “” Eventually the fight ends with Bernard winning, and the DHC leaves the civilized society never to come back.

Brave New World ISearch Bokanovskification

The topic I chose to conduct the isearch on is a process called bokanovskification. In the book I am currently reading, the author, Aldous Huxley, presents an idea of mass reproduction in order to create bokanovsky groups made to perform menial labors. The fact that the Brave New World society accepted this idea, and also applied this system according to the hierarchical castes, represents a possibility of important symbolisms that hold deep meanings within the book Brave New World.

 

The first thing that I want to talk about is the significance of the bokanovskification and the importance of the meanings behind it. The idea of cloning multiple genetically identical human beings is not just a matter of creating many workers easily, but also a matter of some moral issues, such as human rights and the sense of individuality and freedom. Nature, through human eyes, comes in various kinds of randomness, and compared to artificial things, it seems much more unpredictable and fitful. By rejecting to submit to the nature and the randomness, and artificially conditioning and cloning workers for the community, the Brave New World system has obtained Stability (One of their world’s mottos). Looking at a quote on page 4 “Making ninety-six human beings grow where only one grew before. Progress.” we can see how the society cares more for the effectiveness of sustaining the community as a whole than the lives of the individuals; as if they were no more important than the non-livings, as if they were mere machines. Bokanovskification is a big part of the setting of the Brave New World society and the concept behind the system. By simply explaining the Bokanovsky’s process, the author was able to describe the fundamental idealism of the society; show them how it values stability and sustainability of the community much more than the sense of individuality and the importance of ‘living’.

 

The next thing I want to talk about is how the Bokanovskification was used in the society and how effective it was. Bokanovskification was an easy method of not only creating many workers, but also keeping them under control. It is a part of human instinct to seek a sense of belonging. And in order to achieve this, people create similarities, and bond to form a variety of groups. However, it is still the friction between these different groups and ideas that bring forth our creativities and new ideas. By putting everyone in one big group where everyone looks the same and is conditioned to think the same, the castes where bokanovskification was used became easier for the government to control. It’s as if the government is able to use the manpower of 96 human beings while, in the sense of intelligence, the government only needs to worry about putting one person under control. When people are forced to stay in a community where everyone wants to be the same, and needs to be the same, they tend to stay within the lines. Even if a few people cross those lines, they will soon be abandoned or brought back by the rest of the group. This kind of controlled system can be seen in our current era as well. For example, the way the military makes everyone wear the same clothes, eat the same food, and do the same work, allows them to easily control people to their will; for it is what they are essentially trying to do in the military. An event on page 187 describes this phenomenon very well. What John has said about freedom was still worth considering and thinking about even from the Deltas’ point of view. If there was no bokanovskification used on them, it might have brought a different result. However, in a community where people are not only intellectually similar, but also physically the same, it is extremely hard for one to think differently and even harder to have the courage to act that way.

 

Another thing that I have analyzed about bokanovskification in the book, is a problem that ought to have occurred, and how the Brave New World society used a hierarchical system to solve this problem and even go further to create a well structured society. The problem is that while bokanovskification is able to bring stability and easier control, it also contains some demerits. The major disadvantage of asexual reproduction compared to sexual reproduction is that it can’t evolve. Because everything is genetically identical, and contains no variation, it does not have the space to evolve and adapt to the new environment. The same problem occurs in bokanovskification. Where everyone is the same, and no interactions between new ideas and concepts exist, there is no possibility for the society to grow, improve, and evolve. This may not be a huge problem until the society meets an issue big enough to shake and endanger it. A substance that is solid hard will break when hit by a harder substance, but a substance that is flexible enough will never break, but continue in a slightly different form. This is the danger the bokanovskification could have brought to the Brave New World society; no flexibility and no room for improvements. However, the interesting part about the Brave New World society is that it has overcome this obstacle and has succeeded in extracting only the good parts of the bokanovskification by applying a hierarchical system. In the Brave New World society, there are five different castes that take on five different roles. From the bottom there are Epsilons, Deltas, Gammas, Betas, and Alphas. The way Brave New World society applied bokanovskification according to the hierarchical system is that it only used bokanovskification on the lower castes like Epsilons, Deltas, and Gammas, where usually menial labors are done. For the Alphas and Betas, who do more intellectual jobs, bokanovskification is not used. This way the bokanovskification is able to not only provide easier control of the castes who do harder jobs than the upper castes and thus have higher possibilities for complaints and rebellions, but also provide the ability to print out many laborers faster and cheaper. Meanwhile, in Alphas and Betas where intellectual work is done, bokanovskification is not used, to let them easily interact ideas and thoughts, and allow them to provide the society with the variations and improvements that bokanovskification lacks.

 

Through this method, the Brave New World society was able to become a society that is now not only able to have massive amounts of menial laborers with easier control, but also with enough room for improvement and adaptation to the new environment.

Brave New World IHubReads Chapter 4

The first half of chapter 4 was about a conversation between Lenina and Bernard. Lenina and Bernard met in public and Lenina accepted Bernard’s invitation where everyone could hear. However, for Bernard, it was embarrassing to talk about such things in public. In this scene, by peeking into Lenina’s thoughts, we can assume one of the reasons why she accepted Bernard’s invitation. “Anyhow, she was publicly proving her unfaithfulness to Henry. Fanny ought to be pleased, even though it was Bernard.” (Page 51) By looking at this phrase, we can see that part of her reason was to prove to everyone that she was no longer abnormal and fit into the community. The other half of this chapter was focused on Bernard’s perspective. It showed a glimpse of Bernard’s life and his complexes. After this came the communication between Bernard and Helmholtz Watson. A friendship between two very opposite men was very interesting to see. Bernard was the outcast of society; in some sense lower than the Epsilons in the community’s view, while Helmholtz was the famous; the role model. But at the same time, the fact that even the two opposite people in the society ended up with the same idea that there was something more, could be evidence to support that their idea was true. A new character that came out in this chapter was Helmholtz Watson. He was a man of admiration itself. He had a handsome body, intelligence, and girls. He was the exact opposite of Bernard. This chapter also did a good job of allowing the readers to further understand Bernard’s life and his characteristics. There were several things that caught my attention in this chapter. The first ones were phrases on page 56 and page 58 “Those who meant well behaved in the same way as those who meant badly.”, “The mockery made him feel an outsider, and feeling an outsider he behaved like one, which increased the prejudice against him and intensified the contempt and hostility around by being alien and alone.” These phrases were from Bernard’s point of view. However, while I was reading these, they reminded me of the disabled people in our current world. I thought that these phrases not only described Bernard’s life, but also described how the disabled people in our world feel when they are often seen differently, just because they are physically and mentally different. The second thing that I found interesting was on page 57 “Wretched, in a word, because she had behaved as any healthy virtuous English girl out to behave and not in some other, abnormal extraordinary way.” This phrase was interesting because even though the word ‘wretched’ was supposed to be bad, the rest of the phrase which described the victim didn’t have any bad words. The next thing that I found was on page 56 and 57. “’My word,’ said Lenina, ‘I’m glad I’m not a gamma’”, “’I am I, and I wish I wasn’t’”. The first quote was from Lenina while the second was from Bernard. We can see a clear contrast between these two. If you recall, there was a similar phrase on page 25 “I’m really awfully glad I’m a beta because…”. This was the phrase that was repeated to people every night when they were infants. By looking at those three phrases we can see the clear difference between Lenina and Bernard. While Lenina is living as the state wanted her to, Bernard was clearly defying what he should not have been able to defy, according to the information we knew about the power of hypnopaedia.

Brave New World IHubReads Chapter 3

Adding onto the last two chapters, chapter three contributes by explaining the settings to the readers in a new way. Chapter three consists of series of events that contradict our current common beliefs. By going through events like children playing erotic games, talking about families as if they are strange things, and talking about pregnancy substitutes, the author forces the readers to realize the differences between their world and ours, and to throw questions at themselves. The new way that chapter three adopted  further more represents the differences between the characters’ view and ours, by letting us hear them talking about us. By listening to the Controller and DHC recalling and explaining our current lives, and watching the students’ reactions, the readers are able to see the contrast between the book’s way of thinking and ours, and better understand the setting of the book. If chapter one and two were about describing the physical and cultural setting of the book, chapter three, by showing the readers the reactions and the characters’ way of talking, was able to show the readers the actual people’s way of life, and thinking shaped by the physical and cultural background settings of the world they are living in. Some new characters that came out in this chapter were the Controller, Fanny, Assistant Predestinator, and Bernard. The entrance of the Controller was enough to show how high he was in the social class. Even just by reading chapter three, we could see that the Controller was a round character who was not like other regular flat characters in their world. He not only had the knowledge of history, but also had the wisdom to try to understand and consider the attributes and the flaws of both political systems; of their world and ours. The phrase in page 30 does well to describe how he was a round and considering man, “There were those strange rumours of old forbidden books hidden in a safe in the controller’s study. Bibles, poetry – Ford knew what.” The fact that such rumours were half-true, and that the Controller was even familiar with books that may be considered to be a book against the state, shows that the Controller is at least not just following the rules because he was told. He seeks more knowledge and information for him to decide the rights and the wrongs for himself. The next characters, Fanny and Assistant Predestinator, seem to be flat characters, who just came out to show the contrast and the relationship between the important characters. On the other hand, Bernard was a man who was different. He first of all hated what everyone else liked, and was also physically different. The world motto: Community, Identity, Stability didn’t fit for him. His way of thinking was the opposite to the world he is living in, but at the same time, due to this fact, he was able to become a character that the readers could finally relate to. Some new characteristics that were shown in this chapter were about the two characters: Henry and Lenina. We could see that Henry was the perfect guy in his world, “the perfect gentleman” (page 37). On the other hand, Lenina was a bit special; she preferred to stay with one partner, and she decided to go out with Bernard whom everyone avoided. There were mainly two things that I found interesting in this chapter. The first one was on page 30 where the author’s style of writing suddenly changed. The setting of the conversation began changing from place to place. I tried to find some kind of relationship between the dialogues but it was hard to find something that stuck out. This was something worth inquiring into. The second thing that I found interesting was on page 44 “Ending is better than mending. The more stitches, the less riches.” This seems to be one of the mottos of their world. Through this phrase we can see how the stability and community instead of individuals were successful because of this kind of idea. By using drugs called ‘Soma’, and hiding the concept of love and passion from the people, which is the idea of ‘Ending is better than mending’, the state was able to build a society where there were no deep attachments towards each other; therefore nothing important in their lives.

Brave New World IHubReads Chapter 2

After finishing the tour in the Decanting room, the students and the DHC moved into a room called Infant Nurseries Neo-Pavlovian conditioning. In that room, the DHC presented a performance to the students, that demonstrates the use of hypnopaedia. One example of how the infants were trained was using terror and pain to make them hate books and flowers. DHC gave the infants some books and flowers, and gave them horrible sounds, and gave electrical shocks to them. Also, when they were sleeping, very quite repetitions of rules and policies they need to follow were being whispered in order to shape their moral personalities. Chapter 2 touched more upon the political shape of the world. The demonstration that may be viewed by the readers as a cruel thing to do well explained the functions and the differences of social classes. The way they were training the children was to ignore the children’s freedom, and predestine their life. This tells the readers that the political state of the world is more towards communism where the community as a whole is more important than the individuals. There weren’t really any new characters that were introduced in this chapter, but through this chapter some new characteristics were revealed from the DHC. One major thing that was revealed was “”But all these suggestions are our suggestions!”, “Suggestions from the State”, “It therefore follows…””. By this phrase, we can see how DHC understands the problems around freedom and predestined lives.

Brave New World IHubReads Chapter 1

My book for the IHub reads is ‘Brave New World’ and this blog is about chapter 1. Chapter 1 focuses a lot on describing the setting of the story. The story, told in third person omniscient view, begins in a building called ‘Central London Hatchery and Conditioning Centre’. In chapter one, the author uses a scene of Director of Hatcheries and Conditioning(DHC) giving a tour around the building and explaining the functions of each room to the students to indirectly inform the readers of what kind of world they are currently living in. Instead of just laying out the settings word by word for the readers, the author uses the characters’ thoughts and actions to allow the readers to guess the settings by themselves. By going through a tour around a building that functions as the foundation of all the strange characteristics that the world is built on, the readers are able to find the differences of our world compared to theirs, and set the basic background information about the world, which will later allow them to easily understand some of the odd principles and actions that the characters in the book are living by. By explaining to the readers the reason and the function of a fertilizing room, the readers get to know that the people living in their world no longer seek to be viviparous. By explaining the detailed process of bokanovskification, the readers get to guess the era and the political principles that the world is in. By furtively mentioning the World Controllers, Epsilons, and their social destinies, the author gives a hint to the readers about the social class and the discrimination that the people in the lower class are forced to undergo. The three main characters that chapter 1 reveals are the DHC, Lenina, and Henry Foster. DHC seems to be a very informed man with a lot of knowledge about the system of the world. Henry Foster appears to be very involved in his work. However, a quote in the chapter “He was going to say future World Controllers, but correcting himself, said ‘future Directors of Hatcheries’ instead.” (page.11) shows that he is a very sly canny person. Lenina was another character whose characteristics weren’t fully shown, who has a professional relationship with Henry Foster. There are two main things that I found interesting in this chapter. One of them is at page 5 “Ninety-six identical twins working ninety-six identical machines”. The adjectives that are describing both twins and machines are exactly the same. This rhyming quote seems to work as symbolism for how the people in this world view humans as nothing more than workers made to function as another kind of machine. Another thing that caught my interest was on page 13 “That is the secret of happiness and virtue-liking what you’ve got to do. All conditioning aims at that: making people like their unescapable social destiny.” I don’t know for sure if the author used the word ‘unescapable’ on purpose, knowing that the proper form is ‘inescapable’, in order to stress this point, but the reason why this phrase caught my eye was because this phrase sounded like it created a Utopia for everyone. In the current era, lots of people complain about how they have to give up what they want to do, and do what they are good at. Often the things that we are good at are not the things that we want to do. Reading the phrase from this era’s view, making people like what they’ve got to do really seems to be the secret of happiness and virtue. However, one thing that we have to also recognize is the word ‘unescapable social destiny’ Even if we were to like what we are supposed to do, if it’s an ‘unescapable social destiny’, would it be true happiness? Would living in a world without challenges and freedom really be a life worth living for? Would happiness gained without suffering and pain really be happy? These questions seem to be the main ones that the author is asking in the book ‘Brave New World’.

IDS the 2nd!

Good news! I have finally finished my first IDS of making the 3D model of our school. I have completed building the model, and published it on Google Warehouse. I was planning to post it on the Google Earth program itself, but due to the change in Google’s policy, I wasn’t allowed to. The name of my model is ‘Inquiry Hub’ so if you want to see it, you can search for it. Actually I have been facing some problems in the Google Warehouse. When I first posted it, when I click the 3D view on the Google warehouse, It’s was too small. So I decided to make it bigger and upload it. However, the 3D view doesn’t upload. The size stays the same. I can’t even select the location, so if I click the location, it shows a building in the United States when my building is in Canada. I tried various ways but I can’t seem to change those two… If you are reading this, and you have solution for this problem, please leave a comment below. One more thing is that my vice principal thinks that this alone is not enough to earn me a full credit. This is why I decided to continue this project and overlap it with my next IDS, since I don’t want to be procrastinating my 2nd IDS for too long. I plan is to build the simple version of our school’s inside to be able to show the visitors or new comers the inside structures. I’ll also include the garden of our school. When I’m done with this, I will put this into an Iphone app where the user can use ‘bird eyes’ to look around the school, open the roof, and even see the inside structures.

For my next IDS, I have already posted the basic Idea on my last’s last post. In this post, I’ll post my survey that I’m going to make everyone in our school do to write down their opinions of my app idea. Since my next IDS is the IHub app for all the students in the school, I need to gain their permissions. I just want to say that the IHub app I’m going to make will of course, be a good representation of IHub for others, but is actually meant to be a good tool for the IHub students to use during school hours.

This is the Survey:

A Survey for IHub site(IDS)

 

 

1. Do you have an Iphone or Ipad?

 

☐ Yes ☐No(If No, write down any other mobile device you have)

 

 

 

2. Would you prefer the IHub app to be in an internet server site (for computers), or a mobile app?

 

☐ Internet server site ☐Mobile Apple app ☐Mobile android app

(Explain why)

 

 

 

3. During school hours, which do you use more often; your computer or your mobile device?

 

☐ Computer ☐Mobile device

(Explain why)

 

 

 

4. In order to provide an easier way to take attendance and take care of your safety in an emergency situation, during school hours, we will use a GPS system and router address to track your whereabouts. It won’t be very accurate, but it will tell us whether you are in the school, or not. Do you feel comfortable and approve of this? (Of course you will have the freedom to turn it off when you don’t want to be tracked, but it will show that you are not in the school.)

 

☐ Yes ☐No(If No, explain why)

 

 

 

5. We are planning to include these functions into the IHub site. Do you approve of these?

 

 

–       The 3D model of our school that shows app users (including students and other visitors), the structure of our building and where each of our rooms are, in 3D

 

☐ Yes ☐No(If No, explain why)

 

 

 

–       A digital calendar with our teachers’ class schedules and homework.

 

☐ Yes ☐No(If No, explain why)

 

 

 

–       A digital bulletin board with important announcements and news from leadership meetings.(There will be a space on the board where it’s free for students to post interesting news or topics that they want to share with IHub. The important announcements that have been made through real presentations could also be recorded on the bulletin board as a reminder.)

 

☐ Yes ☐No(If No, explain why)

 

 

 

–       Teachers will have authority to send big messages to everyone who are using this program, when they want everyone to gather or want to make important announcements

 

☐ Yes ☐No(If No, explain why)

 

 

 

–       A chatting system that will allow students to easily make contact with other students to work on their projects or share ideas. In order to prevent any unnecessary or inappropriate chats, teachers will have the authority to view all chatting when they want to.

 

☐ Yes ☐No(If No, explain why)

 

 

 

–       A digital space where pictures and videos of our school events will be uploaded for people to see

 

☐ Yes ☐No(If No, explain why)

 

 

 

–       A digital space where the topics and descriptions of everyone’s Inquiry projects or IDSs will be posted, in order to make it easier for students to be aware of other students’ ideas, and cooperate or share their ideas and opinions with each other

 

☐ Yes ☐No(If No, explain why)

 

 

 

–       A digital discussion space where big online discussions from InHub, teachers, or any students could be made

 

☐ Yes ☐No(If No, explain why)

 

 

 

6. When this site is made, do you think it will be a convenient and useful tool for you?

 

☐ Yes ☐No(If No, explain why)

 

 

 

 

7. Do you have any other suggestions for the functions or things you would like to have in our IHub site and mobile app?

 

-The End

If there are any suggestions please comment.