You Can't Live Forever

Summary

After John’s outrage in the hospital, World Controller, Mustapha Mond, decides that since neither Helmholtz nor Bernard feel comfortable with civilization, they will be expelled from it and will live in isolated islands where other people like them live. John then finds out that Mustapha is well acquainted with literary works such as Othello, and asks him about the reasons for abolishing such beautiful words from civilization. Mustapha explains to John that their world is not the same as Othello’s, that they can’t create a tragedy without social instability, and that their world is stable, he further explains why religion, love, beauty, liberty, and truth were abolished in order to maintain society happy. Indignant and upset, John leaves London to live at an abandoned lighthouse so that he can be cleansed from the wickedness of civilization, but is unable to so since bypassers find his acts of self-flagellation amusing, which then leads to articles and movies being published about John. One day, reporters arrive at John’s “house” only to find a dangling pair of feet visible under an arch inside the lighthouse.

Quote Analysis

“ ‘The optimum population,’ said Mustapha Mond, ‘is modelled on the iceberg- eight-ninths below the water line, one-ninth above.’ ‘And they’re happy below the water line?’‘Happier than above it.’ (...)‘In spite of that awful work?’ ” (Huxley, 223-224)

Along the 16th and 17th chapters of the book, Mond explains to the savage that he,too, had an interest in science and poetry. The difference, however, between John and Mustapha, is that Mustapha learned to understand the dangers of science and beauty, and the importance of having a stable society which he describes as an “iceberg”. John, on the other side, is still unable to understand how citizens on the civilized world can be happy without poetry, love, science,and truth. He totally disagrees with the civilization’s social hierarchy, and believes in equality and choice. Although they were both once the same, Mustapha Mond became a slave who loves being enslaved, while John still considers himself to be free.

I'm free to be the greatest, I'm alive
I'm free to be the greatest here tonight

“ ‘But he (God) manifests himself in different ways to different men.’ ” (Huxley, 234)

Mustapha explains to John that God only manifests himself to the people when he is needed, and since civilization is stable, God manifests himself as absence. Anyway, I do believe that God manifests himself in different ways to different people. I like to think that we all have our blessings. Like for example, maybe mothers and fathers consider their blessings to come as their children, others might see their blessings as health, happiness, or even money. Sometimes, it's much more simple.

I will never forget this one time that my family and I went on a road trip that included a pretty long car drive, and basically what happened was that we drove past some mountains that were pretty clouded except for these little patches of sky that were not clouded and that allowed sunlight to shine into the mountains. It looked pretty awesome, and my dad was pretty surprised. He slowed down the car to take a good look into the landscape and then proceeded to say, “You know, landscapes like these are proof, to me, that God exists.”

Conclusion

Yay! I finished the book. I guess that my most recurring and important thought about the book is how unexpected the end actually is. Like, if I was to go back to the middle of the book and think about the ending, what the ending actually is never would’ve crossed my mind. I can honestly say that it was a very good book. I think that the most important thing that I learned from the book is to appreciate what I have. I guess that, now that I kind of have an idea of what a life without love or freedom would be like, I have learned to appreciate these two things more than I normally would.

Life Gives, Life Takes

Summary

Now in the civilized world, John befriends Bernard’s friends and reads Shakespeare to them, which makes them understand that John actually believes in love and leads a very different lifestyle compared to them. After a while, John realizes that he loves Lenina, but when she tells her, is very disappointed and enraged that she doesn’t want to have a relationship with him or marry him, but would much rather keep their relationship casual. After John screams and (unfortunately) hits Lenina, he gets a call from a hospital saying that his mom, Linda, is dying. John arrives at the hospital as quick as he can, but is not able to save Linda, but instead witnesses the hospital giving rations of soma to kids, which he realizes is what makes people in the civilized world “slaves”. As John throws away all of the soma out the window, and while both the children and the hospital staff are confronting him, Bernard and his friend Helmoltz arrive just as authorities take both of them and John as prisoners.

Quote Analysis

“that beautiful, beautiful Other Place, whose memory, as of heaven, a paradise of goodness and loveliness, he still kept whole and intact, undefiled by contact with reality of this real London, these actual civilized men and women.” (Huxley, 201)

This quote, referring to John’s thoughts and feelings while regarding his dying mother, do not only demonstrate that what we think of the unknown is not actually what the unknown is, but that two people can have very different views of reality. Although the “civilized” world is not what John thought it would be, it is what Linda thought it would be. It all has to do with Linda’s and John’s traditions and lifestyles. On one side, Linda grew up in the “civilized” world, while being part of a high caste and believing that she belonged to everyone and everyone belonged to her, and also believed that there is no such thing as love, that there is no need for it. On the other side, John grew up in an indigenous reservation, he believes in family and grew up reading Shakespeare and he believes that there is someone out there that he will love for all eternity. So I guess that, in a way, John just wants to believe in Linda’s reality of the “civilized” world, because it reminds him of when everything was easier and when his mom wasn’t dying.

“ ‘But do you like being slaves?’ ” (Huxley, 212)

This is something that John asks the kids in the hospital after Linda died, and he realizes that everyone in the “civilized” world is a slave to both the system and the drugs that they take. I guess that the answer to John’s question is yes, they do like being slaves. They love being enslaved, but they don't kow that they are slaves. This is something that I came to realize while reading the introduction to the book, in which Aldous Huxley explains that the only way to lead a successful totalitarian government is to make the people love what they do and how they do it, even if that means loving their own pain. Based on this idea, Huxley introduced a system of predetermined social classes, abolished love and family, and encouraged drug use among the population. But, is Huxley’s explanation of what makes a successful totalitarian government put in practice today?

Conclusion

Yay! Almost done with the book. I am really happy and surprised on how the book  has turned out to be, I guess that I just haven’t expected most of the events of the plot that there has been. But anyways, I am almost done with the book (I only have three chapters left to read), which means that the problem should be getting solved soon. I guess that there are a few problems in the book. For example, Bernard feels like and outsider and wants to prove himself to be a worthy Alpha, Lenina is not as promiscuous as she should be (but then becomes too promiscuous), John doesn’t like the “civilized” world, but Linda liked the “civilized” world so much that she died (!). Apart from this, I am very excited to finish the book and find out how it ends, given the fact that there are still so many things that have yet to be resolved.

It's Not The Numbness In Your Heart

Summary

After getting the necessary permissions, Bernard and Lenina are able to take both John and Linda back to the civilized world. When they get there, the Director of Hatcheries and Conditioning threatens Bernard with expelling him to Iceland due to his unorthodox lifestyle, to which Bernard responds by publicly embarrassing him when he lets John call the Director his “father”. The Director immediately resigns from his position and Linda decides to go back to taking soma, a drug that everyone is expected to take in order to relax or be happier, which keeps her away from John. Luckily for Bernard, everyone treats him as a celebrity for a while, but it all comes to an end when a bunch of authorities come to meet the Savage (John), and he does not want to meet anyone, embarrassing Bernard in front the authorities. In addition, Lenina started liking John, who does not see her in the same way, which leaves her heartbroken and alone.  

Quote Analysis

“ ‘What fun would it be,’ he thought, ‘if one didn’t have to think about happiness!’ ” (Huxley, 177)

This is something said by Mustapha Mond after turning down a “brilliant” paper that sadly defied society’s rules on its theories of biology. I guess I doubted this since Brave New World’s society is already one that does not encourage individual happiness. Its plot is based on the crazy idea of running a society with people who are taught to feel happy if others are happy, and sad if others are sad. That said, they cannot experience true happiness or sadness because they are not feeling it for themselves, but for the community.

On the other side, the Director, thinking that he knows happiness, is able to understand that without sadness we wouldn’t be able to feel happiness. Which is something that I have been taught by both my mom, at home, and teachers, mostly while reading Lois Lowry’s The Giver, that we can't feel pleasure without pain or love without hate. We can’t have one without the other.

"Life is a balance."

“One of the principal functions of a friend is to suffer (in a milder and symbolic form) the punishments that we should like, but are unable, to inflict upon our enemies.” (Huxley, 179)

What I like most about this quote, is that it references love and friendship in a world where people are numb but consider themselves to be “happy”. This references Bernard's complicated social interactions after he brings John to the civilized world, which somehow affects Bernard’s already complicated relationships with other people. What I first thought of after reading this quote, is the pain that we can cause to the people that we love. The best example that I could think of for this quote is when you don’t get along with someone so you don’t treat them as well as you should, so then you start behaving like that with the people you do get along with, and eventually you hurt those people for trying to hurt someone else. Are we entitled to hurt people that we love? Or do we just don’t consider it pain when we cause it on someone we love?

Conclusion

I honestly think that this book is just getting started. Even though most (?) of the characters have already been introduced, there has already been a lot of problems that have yet to be solved. The man vs. society conflict that has been present in other dystopian fictions books that I have read has not been introduced yet, which I think is definitely weird since I am more than halfway through the book. There are still many questions that have to be answered. For the next couple of chapters, I hope that Bernard reflects a bit on his newfound fame and doesn’t let it get to his head (which he definitely has). I am also curious on what will happen with Linda and John, since they have been pulled apart ever since they came to the “brave new world”.

Expect The Unexpected

Meeting the Savages

Aldous Huxley’s 1932 dystopian fiction novel, Brave New Word, tells the story of how our reality would be if family, individuality, and love were taken away from humanity. As  Alpha-Plus, Bernard Marx, prepares to visit a Savage Reservation in Mexico with Lenina Crowne, he is able to share his thoughts of non-conformity with the system to Lenina who, of course, thinks he has gone mad. When they are finally able to reach the reserve, they discover something that they never even imagined of existing, they witness deadly famine and disease, dancing and rituals, sacrifices, and family. Lenina and Bernard meet John, a young man whose mother, Linda, a Beta who had visited the reserve more than twenty years ago but had been lost and forced to stay in the reserve. Linda tells Bernard and Lenina about how neither people of the “new world” would accept them because she was pregnant (with a World Controller’s baby), nor people from the reserve accepted them because they were “too white”, out of sympathy, Bernard offers to take both of them back to the “new world”.

My Thoughts On...

" -But queer that Alphas and Betas won't make any more plants grow than those nasty little Gammas and Deltas and Epsilons down there.-

-All men are physico-chemically equal,-  said Henry sententiously.” (Huxley, 74)

This quote is said by Henry Foster, one of Lenina’s lovers, while explaining to her about the process of using human corpses as a way to give nutrients to the earth and grow better crops. What really impacted me was that, no matter what social class you came from and no matter who you are, it truly doesn’t matter in the end. Even today, equality is a reality that some people are just not able to accept. Just like Henry, who describes Gammas, Deltas, and Epsilons as “nasty”, there are still people who think they are superior to others. It reminds me of all of the men that don’t think that women are equal so they don’t let them study and abuse them instead, of all of the men and women that don’t think homosexual couples should have the same rights as heterosexual couples, and all of the people that still think white is the superior “race”.

“These words and the strange, strange story out of which they were taken (he couldn’t make head or tail of it, but it was wonderful, wonderful all the same) - they gave him a reason for hating Popé; and they made his hatred more real; they even made Popé himself more real.” (Huxley, 132)

This are some of the thoughts that John had when he first learned how to read. I guess that this is when he realized that words have the power to do both great and terrible things (for the record, Popé is one of Linda’s lovers who John later tried to kill). This reminds me of a book I read last year that was also a dystopia in which it's totalitarian government understood the power that words and books can have over people, and so they banned books from society. Fahrenheit 451 is, ironically, narrated from the guy who makes sure that books are being burnt and that no one reads them, while he steals and keeps books hidden. I guess that words can give people a sense of independence and thinking into some sort of rebellion or revolution, which is exactly what the government avoids in Fahrenheit 451.

Plot Twist?

I have read a fair share of books in my life, not as many as I would like, but I still consider myself to read a lot. The thing with books, the good ones at least, is that they are unexpected. And so, the plot twist of this week is *drumroll*: a World Controller got a woman pregnant and left her in a reserve full of “savages”, more than an ocean away from the civilized world. Which doesn’t seem like a big deal but, believe me, it is. Aside from that, the book has been pretty good. I now know who the protagonists of the story are and what their general idea of life is. Also, I am pretty curious of what could happen if John and Linda are able to go back to the “civilized” world. Honestly, I’m just imagining everything that can go wrong.