A-1 English Name:______________________________
Brave New World, by Aldous Huxley
Writing Assignment Choices
This is your first major writing assignment of the year.
Write an essay comparing/contrasting some aspect of Brave New World to 1984. A full comparative analysis would be too large for this assignment. Try to concentrate on one aspect, such as their writing style, the opening chapters, their “realism,” a one-to-one comparison such as Big Brother vs. Mustapha Mond, etc.
Analyze a single character in Brave New World. Describe the character’s personality, using lines, quotations, and actions from the novel. Then show why Huxley included this character. What is this character’s role in developing Huxley’s message?
“Everybody’s happy now”: Find ways Huxley was “right” in the novel in a social—not biological—sense. [We already covered cloning and designer babies in class.] I’m thinking of ways people in real-life modern society of 2007 seek pleasure, try to avoid pain, and generally “dumb themselves down” in efforts to escape reality. This is not the same as the legal prescription drug topic, above. This assignment is about things like: the attitudes toward sexuality; the description of the Westminster Abbey Café in Chapter 5; the constant rounds of Electro-Magnetic Golf or wrestling bouts; the “feelies”; the general attitude that Bernard is just being silly and boring by thinking so much; etc. In fact, all of these topics may be too much for one essay; you may have to narrow it down. The main topic is to relate social aspects of the novel with real-life aspects of society now, in terms of the ways people try to make themselves “happy”.
Make up your own topic for a literary or theme analysis related to Brave New World, and submit your topic to me for approval. It should be appropriate for an essay of this length.
How to Quote and Cite What You Quote
Quoting from a single text:
The citizens of Brave New World
are constantly running, too. From birth they are hypnopaediacally
conditioned to dread being alone, for isolation breeds introspection which in
turns fosters a sense of individuality. This is expressed in a wonderfully satiric
scene where Bernard takes Lenina out on their first
date—he suggests that they go for a walk along the mall and talk, but she,
finding such an activity completely distasteful, instead persuades him to take
her to the Semi-Demi Finals of the Women's Heavyweight
Wrestling Championship. Later, when they are returning home, Bernard stops his
helicopter over the
"It
makes me feel as though..." he hesitated, searching for the words with
which to express himself, "as though I were more me, if you see what I
mean. More on my own, not so completely part of something
else. Not just a cell in the social body. Doesn't it make you feel that
way, Lenina?"
But Lenina
was crying. "It's horrible, it's horrible," she kept repeating.
"And how can you talk like that about not wanting to be a part of the
social body? After all, every one works for every one else. We can't do without
any one. Even Epsilons..." (69)
That the fabric of the Brave New
World is strengthened by needless labor is later born out by Mustapha Mond. "The experiment was tried, more than a century
and a half ago," he says, describing why Epsilons work seven hour days,
"The whole of
Quoting when comparing two
novels:
Worthless labor is not the only way that the powers that be in Invisible Man and Brave New World exercise control over their societies. In both novels, hallucinogenic drugs are perceived as evils that dull the senses and destroy one's sense of urgency and desire for action. In Brave New World this comes in the form of soma, a perfect designer drug the citizens consume whenever they have the slightest psychological or physical ill. "One cubic centimetere cures ten gloomy sentiments" as Lenina says in one scene (Huxley, 69). Soma represents the perfect form of mind control, as it ultimately dulls all stimuli that would move an individual to revolution. In Invisible Man, the importance of drugs in suppressing one's individuality and desire for action is not as pronounced as in Brave New World, but we see it here and there, particularly when the narrator talks about a vision he had while smoking marijuana. "I haven't smoked reefer since,” he says, "not because they're illegal, but because to see around corners is enough (that is not unusual when you're invisible). But to hear around them is too much; it inhibits action. And … I believe in nothing if not action" (Ellison, 13). While the reefer in Invisible Man is decidedly less sinister than the soma in Brave New World, this passage nonetheless illustrates a common theme in both books—that drugs have the ability to warp reality and subdue the individual into a mode of inaction.
-- Both examples
are adapted from: “Shadows of an Invisible Man: The Role of Individuality in Invisible Man and Brave New World” by John Coughlin,