Brave New World: Week of 10/27

** Do you like what you are reading? Why or why not?**
Pages read: 112-153

      Am I enjoying this book? Yes. Yes. Yes. Very much so. It is seriously so interesting, no one has any idea how interesting it is until you've read it.  So far, it's great.

     The book is about a utopian society and like The Giver, it's showing the reader the darker side of that paradise. The dark side of the society has already been revealed but even so, I think you can still consider it a utopian society. On some level. Maybe. It's so interesting because it makes you think about what a utopia really is. In The Giver, as soon as the dark side is revealed, we can all agree that their society is actually much like a dystopia rather than utopia. However, in Brave New World, it's hard to tell.

Their society is centered on the idea of the assembly line created by Ford, the creator of the Model-T car in 1908. This is where utopia and dystopia clashes. Children are no longer born by mothers and fathers. Rather, they are created artificially. In labs, eggs are fertilized and from there, things get a bit more...Futuristic. The eggs are then "conditioned" to become whatever the lab workers need or want. The society is broken up into five classes, with a highest and lowest class. The people in the classes have different jobs depending on what class they have been created into. For example, someone in the lowest class would be a person pressing buttons for you in an elevator. Someone in the highest class might be the director of a company or a specialist. So labs can take these eggs and condition them to fit into which ever class they want. Need more geniuses? All they need to do is put certain chemicals into the eggs and they will develop to fit the needs of the society.

But again, this is where the line between utopia and dystopia is blurred. Everyone is conditioned to fit into their own class. Everyone is conditioned from the very beginning to fit their job. Everyone loves their job. No one is unhappy. Because they can create workers when they need them, the economy is stable. People have also been conditioned to help keep the economy booming. When the embryos grow into babies, the conditioning does not stop. Again, certain classes go through certain stages of conditioning to suite their job and class. However, there's one really clever part. The government wanted people to spend money and travel, so they conditioned babies to associate plants with happiness and joy. This made people travel like the government wanted to. However, they loved plants so much that they no longer wanted to stay in cities (with no wilderness) and work. The government then tried a different tactic. They conditioned a new set of babies to hate plants. How did they do this? They would put a group of toddlers in a room. Whenever they touched a plant or got closer to it, the babies were shocked with electricity and they suffered through a terribly loud and painful noise. They grew to associate wilderness with pain and suffering. But, the government was clever. They conditioned the children to hate the wilderness but love outdoor sports. This meant that the people would still work in cities and factories but they would no longer have that need for wilderness. Instead, they would only travel out to the country to play sports (which required them to spend more money on gear).

All in all, everyone is happy. No one hates their job and the economy is stable. But it makes you think about what a country being "stable" really means. Yes, no one hates their job but they have been trained to do so. They, essentially, have no choice. People have been so conditioned to stay happy and content that when someone shows the slightest sign of being unhappy or different, they all freak. They freak out or they simply don't understand how this person is not having the time of their life. The main character, for example, is one of those people not having the time of his life. Bernard is an Alpha, the highest class. People of his class are to be respected always, and even feared. However, that is not the treatment he gets. Bernard is shorter than the usual Alpha (by eight centimeters), so he's scene as a joke. Because he is shorter and not respected as he believes he should be, he is unhappy. Because he is unhappy, he is an outcast from everyone else. Because he is an outcast, he doesn't view things as a utopia. In a way, he is a person looking into their world but he just sees a zoo. He sees these animals and he sees what they are doing, but he doesn't quite understand why.

So...So far it's pretty good. It's really interesting with the points it brings out that can be applied to today's society. I don't recommend it if you can't handle a bit of mature topics...I guess is the best way to phrase it.
Just don't read it with someone looking over your shoulder.
That would not be best.