Monday, January 23, 2017
Connections
This week we begin presentations. You each chose from my list a book to read, and now, it is presentation time. As you are listening to the presentations this week, I want you to make a connection to your book. What from their presentation resonates with you, and how can you connect it to your book. Explain the connection in your post.
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The novel I read was Brave New World, and today the The Things They Carried group presented their information. I found it SO interesting that Tim O’Brien took his real life experiences and mixed it with fiction. The Vietnam War is a topic to O’Brien that brings up so much emotion and experience, yet he knew that readers would not gain the full picture of the war without “stretching the truth.” The Things They Carried, as Luke and Cassandra explained, is a combination of stories all surrounded around the war, yet some are true and some aren’t. The statement they used to describe this was, “O’Brien took fiction and made it as real as possible.” I connected Brave New World immediately to that statement because the dystopian society in the novel is not real, but Huxley took many real facts from our society and applied it to his in order to make it seem as real as possible. His commentary was that everyone should have emotion and love, and that we cannot let our world lose the relationships and beauty that it may already be losing. By taking a fictional world to comment on our world, it makes it seem very possible. He added so much detail even down to how many humans one egg can create (its 96 by the way) to make them seem impossible to be false. In doing this, it adds to the further theme and message that Huxley is trying to convey to his readers of the 20th and 21st centuries. And so, both authors took fiction and made it seem real, and both for very logical reasons.
ReplyDeleteToday Brave New World by Aldous Huxley was present by Kara, Rachel, and Devon. I read The Things They Carried and the point that was made on the desire for safety and happiness stuck out to me. I both books characters struggle with the fact that the world is not always pretty and nice. In Brave New World the society as a whole chooses to simplify life and take away all of its meaning. In contrast the soldiers in The Things They Carried looked for meaning in each circumstance that they found themselves down trodden. From learning to cope with death to deciding to go over seas, these soldiers always looked for a deeper purpose for what they were doing in order to survive. An emotion and place of thought that I saw parallel between the two novels was fear. In Brave New World society is quite literally ruled by fear and is founded upon fear. That being said the rebellion against those ideas by Bernard and John make them courageous. In The Things They Carried each and every young soldier shows courage by being in Vietnam. Citizens at home are protesting and crying for peace while they create an uproar. These young boys are choosing to fight for a cause they may not totally believe in or feel prepared for, yet they are being accosted for a choice they didn't make. The courage they have to go and fight is incredible and that fear and rebellion against it is what stuck out to me most when it came to comparing The Things They Carried and Brave New World.
ReplyDeleteAfter listening to both presentations, I am definitely adding both books to my ever-expanding book list. What I loved the most about all of these books was the similar theme of humanity. Each explored the ideas of being human and duality and complexity that comes with it. The Things They Carried focused on the human struggles of being a soldier killing other soldiers. Cassandra and Luke (and David, in spirit) talked about how the world of war is not a black and white job. Making the decision to take another’s life does not come with a morality meter and trying to justify the actions of war can seriously hurt many people mentally. This completely contrasts with the society of A Brave New World, where the people sort life into black and white and live a life of mental simplicity. This society doesn't see a need for human complexity and much prefers to manufacture lives based on pills and pleasure. This creates less conflict, but less depth, less beauty, and no room for humanity. Huxley uses this world to highlight the importance of choices both good and bad. Choices define humanity and provide the value and progression of humanity.
ReplyDeleteThe book I read, The Picture of Dorian Gray, battles the same idea of human complexity. Just as Luke mentioned in his song analysis, Wilde writes about the lack of black and white choices in life. Dorian as a character lives life believing he must either be purely good or evil, ultimately causing himself to mentally become conflicted. I love this idea of the duality of man and how it is vital to living a life of happiness and depth. Being able to embrace the many sides of humanity is a personal goal for myself and has been a common idea in existentialism and the these three novels.
I read the novel A Brave New World and I listened to the presentation on The Things They Carried. In the presentation Luke mentioned that the soldiers wish that the world could be seen as black and white. For them everything that they do is in a gray area. They seem to understand that killing is wrong, but yet they have to do it anyway. I think this connects to A Brave New World, because it mirrors this. In their society everything is black and white. Nothing is gray, or could be seen as sort of ok. They have guidelines that tell them how to behave in society, and people don't stray out of them. It creates this perfect, controlled society. The behaviors and social standards are seen in black and white, making it easier for the average citizen to distinguish what is right and wrong. However, we do see two characters who stumble upon a sort of gray area. John and Bernard both come to this conclusion that there might be more to the world, and question if the society that they are living in is really a good one. Like the soliders in The Things They Carried, they are doing things that they know may be wrong, but they have to do them to survive. They have both come to a gray area where they can't tell what is right and wrong and they have to make a moral decision on their own as to what they want to do.
ReplyDeleteThroughout the Brave New World presentation, I thought I would struggle to find a connection to The Things They Carried. The book I read was one based on war, while Brave New World was a dystopian themed fiction. The two plots were drastically different, but it was amazing how connections were still able to be made. A theme that resonated most with me in the Brave New World presentation was the absences of true identity. The people in the novel are created scientifically, already known what they are going to be when they grow up and stuck in the social class they were “born” into. The characters never develop any individuality, as they are all created and conform under the government. This is similar to the struggle of a soldier finding their identity once they return from war. Veterans often feel they belong in combat, so when they come back to real life, they cannot find their place in society. For example, Norman Bowker unfortunately committed suicide shortly after his return from Vietnam. He could not find the real meaning to his life and his true identity in society, much like the characters in Brave New World that deal with this struggle. I also remember Devon, Kara, and Rachel discussing a suicide in their novel as well. Both individuals (their character and Bowker) just cannot face the difficulties of the world they live in, as they feel they do not belong. I enjoyed both The Things They Carried and the Brave New World presentation, and the theme of identity was the greatest connection I saw comparing the two.
ReplyDeleteThe novel I chose to read was The Picture of Dorian Gray. The similarity that was pointed out by Jessica during The Things They Carried presentation was that both novels discuss the idea of “black and white”. In The Things They Carried, this is seen as the fact that war is not black or white, there are gray areas. In The Picture of Dorian Gray, the idea is that people are not just simply black or white (evil or good), they are more gray (a combination). What I found interesting is that A Brave New World has a complete opposite view of the black or white idea. In the society in that book, it is believed that there is a very certain way that everyone should be like. They want to create a perfectly controlled society, and whether you see their society as more black or white, there is no gray. Dorian Gray, the main character in my choice book, struggles with this idea of being black or white; he doesn’t know it’s okay to be gray, and that humans are a mix of good and evil. This is also seen in The Things They Carried. I believe it was Luke who was discussing how soldiers face the difficulties of having to kill other people, because sometimes you don’t know if you’re killing someone evil or if you’re killing a completely innocent person, and they struggle with their want to be white (good), but their duty to be black, and have to kill in order to defend themselves and their fellow soldiers and their country.
ReplyDeleteI read the book The Things They Carried and saw a presentation on A Brave New World. The plots of these novels are very different, yet they capture similar ideas. In A Brave New World, characters are made in a factory, already programed for what role in society they will play. This displays a lack of freedom to be an individual, different from everyone else. In The Things They Carried, O’Brien uses the things soldiers carried to describe them and their individual lifestyles. Although the soldiers still have their individuality, some of them did not have a choice to not go to war. Similar to A Brave New World, the government controlled that decision for the men. The men in Vietnam know that killing is wrong and the truth behind war is that it does not really solve anything. This relates to A Brave New World because the higher class citizens, such as Alphas, know that the happiness and peace is just pure ignorance. People take Soma to always be happy and content with their lives, like lower class citizens with poor jobs never complain or want anything more because they simply do not know that they are getting the worst jobs. Alphas are more intelligent and are unhappy because they know the truth behind Soma and the control the government has over the people. In The Things They Carried, people at home would be proud of their soldiers and happy that they are fighting, but the soldiers know that they really are not making a difference or solving anything problems.
ReplyDeleteMy book, The Picture of Dorian Gray, and the presentation of A Brave New World by Quinn and Lizzie were connected in many different ways. I felt that many questions were brought up about the state of our current society and what steps might be taken to work towards the future. It was also amazing to see how that dystopian society of A Brave New World was present during the Victorian era and how it influenced people's way of thinking at that time. In A Brave New World, a utopian community is created through the control and expectations of society. The people are categorized by their intelligence and there is a distinct separation between right and wrong. For example, it is wrong and immoral to have children and it is right and normal to be involved in multiple unloving relationships with individuals at the same time. In the same way, Dorian Gray lives in an aristocratic Victorian society where outward beauty is valued more than inner beauty. Dorian Gray starts off as an innocent young man but through the influence of his friend, Lord Henry, he goes astray with his morals. Just as in A Brave New World rights and wrongs are established, in The Picture of Dorian Gray, Dorian develops a duality of human nature, where he is part good and part evil but does not know which part to follow. The dystopian society of A Brave New World tries to conform its people so that the world may be more efficient and productive. It encourages people to accept false happiness so that people may never change and continue on with their lackluster lives. In The Picture of Dorian Gray, the Victorian society disregards all of Dorian Gray's immoral sins because his face still looks pure and innocent. Even though they know about the terrible acts he has committed, without their acknowledgement, Dorian Gray is encouraged to continue with his immorality.
ReplyDeleteWhile listening to Quinn and Lizzy’s presentation on A Brave New World I was surprised at how many connections could be made to my book, The Things They Carried. During the presentation they mentioned that in this dystopian world, society was valued above the individual. The people in this society were viewed and treated based on which class they fell into. The characters are also conditioned to act the way that the world controllers want them to. Similar to A Brave New World, in The Things They Carried soldiers are expected to act a certain way. Society expected O’Brien to join the war rather than run from it and he was scared of being looked at as a coward. His individual aspirations were shadowed by the beliefs of society which relates to how characters in the dystopian society sacrificed their free will for society’s happiness. The change that O’Brien experienced because of the war was similar to the conditioning in A Brave New World. Due to his surroundings, O’Brien was conditioned to brush off death and learned that he was capable of evil. Whether a character is a Epsilon in A Brave New World or a soldier in The Things They Carried society will make generalizations about them based on which category they are a part of. I found it interesting how Quinn and Lizzy mentioned that in their book it was believed that you could not have truth with happiness. In my book it is explained that many war stories are not true but without them people would lose their romanticized view of war. This shows that in both books the truth is hidden to ensure the illusion of happiness.
ReplyDeleteLast week, Quinn and Lizzy displayed their presentation about Aldous Huxley’s “Brave New World”. Upon listening and taking notes during their presentation, I realized many connections can be formulated between their novel and the novel that I chose to read, which was Oscar Wilde’s “The Picture of Dorian Gray”. In particular, I discovered that an individual’s position in both societies were determined by an external, uncontrollable factor. In “Brave New World”, Huxley illustrates a dystopian/utopian society where individuals are separated according to their genetically predetermined attributes. The social class is ranked in the following order: Alphas, Betas, Gammas, Deltas, and Epsilons. In this ranking system, the Alphas are the intellectually superior individuals, and the Epsilons are the mass produced idiots who hold undesirable positions in society. It becomes evident to the reader that the social value of the lower half of the social class (Deltas and Epsilons) hold significantly lesser value than the upper half (Alphas, Betas, and Gammas) because they are mass produced through identical genetic coding, whereas the other half of society is allowed to have their own unique genetic coding that allows them to have more of an identity than the lower half. In this way, the readers may perceive the Alphas as more respectable and the Epsilons as less respectable. I found that this social class distribution and determination was very similar to the social class ranking system that Wilde presents in “The Picture of Dorian Gray”. In this novel, an individual’s moral compass is mostly predetermined by their appearance. As the novel progresses, Dorian Gray’s soul grows viler and viler as he becomes more negatively influenced by Lord Henry. As a result of this, many individuals in society begin to gossip about him: “The most dreadful things are being said against you in London”(Wilde 108). However, although negative opinions about Dorian are being created and passed on around this society, no one truly cares because this society believes that one’s character is determined through the appearance of an individual: “I don't believe the rumors at all . . . Sin is a thing that writes itself across a man’s face. It cannot be concealed”(Wilde 109). In the same way that “Brave New World”’s society allows uncontrollable intelligence determining genetic factors to determine the value of individuals, “The Picture of Dorian Gray” allows uncontrollable appearance determining genetic factors determine the character of individuals.
ReplyDeleteI think it is very interesting that in Aldous Huxley's "Brave New World" and the novel you chose to read, Oscar Wilde's "The Picture of Dorian Gray", there is a such a large connection between the appearance of someone and the where they stand in society. In "Brave New World" depending on which class an individual had been placed in they would look a certain way. For example the Alphas in society were more physically fit and attractive than an Epsilon would be. In my opinion, this is due to the fact that members of one caste in this society were not meant to have relationships with members of another class. So, if all of the alphas are more attractive than everyone else they will want to associate only with other Alphas, while the Epsilons will not have the confidence to associate with anyone of a higher class. This also helps Alphas assert their dominance over the other castes, allowing each class to understand what place they should stay in. In your novel, Lovette, you mentioned that "an individual's moral compass is mostly predetermined by their appearance". I think it is interesting that in both of our books the more attractive a person was, the better place they held within society. The biggest difference I see between these two similarities is that in "The Picture of Dorian Gray" Dorian had a friendship with Lord Henry who "negatively influenced" him. I find it interesting that Dorian was said to have not been sinning because "Sin is a thing that writes itself across a man's face" (Wilde 109) even though he was beginning to behave like Lord Henry. After comparing these two novels I have come to the realization that the authors may have been commenting on the fact that people who are smarter than others, or who hold similar morals should only associate with people who are similar to them, because if they socialize outside of those perimeters they will begin to be more unhappy or behave in a negative way.
DeleteQuinn and Lizzy's presentation of "A Brave New World" by Aldous Huxley brought to light a few similarities between their book and the book I read, which was "The Things They Carried" by Tim O'Brien. Both books make comments on society and the way we function. For example, in "A Brave New World", Huxley's society puts emphasis on sex and drugs as the means of control of the people by the government, and as Quinn pointed out although the book is supposed to be a future society, many of the messages fed to us today are revolved around sex and drugs and these media formats encourage young people, just like the society does in "A Brave New World", to try drugs and sex. In a way, the government in the novel is already one that we have - one that breeds cold-cut upper, middle, and lower classes, with no room for adjustments, and this is one of the major themes that hit home to me. When the society we live in is put into a novel with a "futuristic", "utopian" or "dystopian" feel, all of a sudden, the government is unjust and crazy and overstepping their boundaries to control the people, but when the same aspects are seen in our real life society the ideas and actions don't seem so radical. Similarly, O'Brien makes comments about the blurriness between reality and what we see and hear from the media. He believes people see war as noble and a just fight, and they see soldiers as brave men who are passionate about fighting for their country, when in reality, many soldiers, especially when drafted, are still boys in a sense. They are young and scared and while some are brave and noble, like we see them in war movies, there is a misconception that war itself is noble and all those that fight have died a noble death. O'Brien's novel attempts to uncover the truth about our society just as Huxley's novel does.
ReplyDeleteDuring Lizzy and Quinn's presentation of A Brave New World, I made a few connections between their book and The Picture of Dorian Gray. First, the most obvious connection seemed to be that in A Brave New World the characters thrive off of sex and drugs, as did Dorian Gray. In both cases, this behavior brings up the question of whether or not the emphasis on sex and drugs is natural and human, or whether or not it is an expression of free will, or the suppression of free will. Free will is another connection between the two novels. In A Brave New World, the characters are conditioned in nearly every aspect of their lives to live a certain way. Likewise, Henry in The Picture of Dorian Gray plays the role of the conditioner on Dorian, molding him into the person Henry wishes he could be.
ReplyDeleteI read The Things I Carried and saw a presentation on A Brave New World. These books are very different but the meaning they try to get across are similar. In A Brave New heart characters are made in a factory, their jobs and ways of life already cut out for them in society. This displays a lack of freedom through out the book. In The Things They Carried the soldiers were drafted into the war and didnt have a choice but to go. This also shows a lack of freedom because the soldiers are forced to go to war. The part that resonated wit me was the fact that the author used similar names when making allusions to people like Karl Marx. Usually authors will make subtle hints when making allusions but in this book the author actually uses their names: Marx and Watson. This connects with the Things They Carried because although the author doesnt allude to actually people he alludes to the Vietnam War. He does this through war fact, through the eyes of actually soldiers, and the wilderness itself. He goes mostly through the accounts of himself and finds it comforting to talk about the things that happened when we was fighting. He Also alluded to how rugged and the wilderness was and how hard it was to maneuver in and how it could change a person completely.
ReplyDeleteI read “The Things They Carried” by Tim O’Brien and experienced Quinn and Lizzy’s thoroughly enjoyable presentation on “Brave New World” by Aldous Huxley. Huxley’s novel comments on the state of society and people blindly accepting information fed to them through sleep hypnosis, catchy but frightening (to the reader) jingles, and the encouragement of using drugs to create a false sense of a happiness. The big connection I made between “The Things They Carried” and “Brave New World” is the feeding of information. The people in Huxley’s novel don’t see the world as it really is because they are conditioned to be happy but oblivious. The Alphas, who are supposed to be the smart ones, think they see the world as it is supposed to be and that they understand it, but really they don’t, because unbeknownst to them, the government is controlling their minds. In O’Brien’s work, there is a similar idea, but it’s not the same way as in “Brave New World”. A prominent example in “The Things They Carried” is the story of the baby buffalo, and how the woman only focuses on the emotional aspect of the story. She has never been to war herself, so she cannot fully understand the impact of events that have gone on; like the people in Huxley’s work, she is not fully informed of the situation, so she could be said to be blissfully ignorant because in both novels, the general population is less burdened because since they don’t know the full details (and gore in TTTC) of what actually happens to keep the country running. (I know Vietnam wasn’t for our sake, but a lot of the time, we fight in wars to protect the USA).
ReplyDeleteAs I watched Cassandra and Luke present their project on The Things They Carried, one theme stuck out to me. In the world of a soldier, love is a privilege. It is not a right, and it is something that many soldiers cannot afford. When one person loves another, a whole new set of emotions are available. Happiness and compassion are not the only feelings associated with love, there is also loss. Because a soldier feels that his life is continuously in jeopardy, the risk of love is too high, and is not a privilege of which they can take advantage.
ReplyDeleteFor similar reasons, love in Aldous Huxley's Brave New World is non-existent. Because love inevitably leads to the feeling of loss, the government has designed a society in which love is obscene. In civilized society of Brave New World, love is simply a hindrance to happiness, whereas non-monogamous, meaningless sex is the source of happiness. They do not love each other because they are afraid to experience any emotion at all.
In regards to the relationship between the book I read, The Picture of Dorian Gray, and the book presented,Brave New World, the theme shared by the two which struck me as apparent was that of how easily a man will be led away from what is natural and good by hedonistic desires.
ReplyDeleteOscar Wilde's Dorian Gray was essentially a man who gave way for the utter annihilation of his soul in order to retain his beauty and indulge himself.The citizens of Brave New World, allow for the loss of monogamy, art, individuality, and the human spirit in order to lie about contentedly sexed and drugged, glutted on pleasures, and, like Dorian Gray, free of the natural responsibilities and consequences arising from such actions. Gray yields to temporary pleasures with eternal wounds, and so do the citizens in the reality described by Huxley. For Gray's sins, by the end, have caused him a torment from which he cannot escape. Likewise, in Brave New World, the poor devils will never know what it is to live and feel, to be truly conscious and living, inimitable and wondering, and to have come close to finding their own places in this life. Each have paid dearly with that which makes man human. Dorian Gray, as well as the upper classes and others in Brave new World,lost a conscience and all that comes with: philosophy, morality, and those simplest yet essential notions of sincere love, freedom, individuality, imagination, and all else that man has the world and life on it into more than what it is in itself. Dorian Gray was beautiful as a muse to creation. Once yielded to Wotton, he wrought death and damage to those who were creators and interpreters of beauty. In Brave New World, men are not true to nature: drugging themselves empty and dry;sleeping and sexing with none of the love, and resultant creation, which imbues the act with nothing less than what is essential to the human race. Each, in two separate books, living on the baser impulses of mankind, cease to be human, but artificial the one, a devil the other. Dorian Gray ceases to be a human, but becomes a sort of fantastical thing to remind the reader of his own demons; mankind is artificially made in the other book, and so it can only live in the most superficial imitation of human beings. Neither could ever be poets, the one lives to the excess which no true poet could ever live, but only write of; the others know nothing that would pass through the head of any poet whose work had any merit.
I chose to read The Things They Carried by Tim O'Brien and I had the privilege of being an audience member to at least half of Quinn and Lizzy´s presentation of A Brave New World by Aldous Huxley. From what I could tell, having been present for only a part of their full presentation, it was very well organized and the information seemed to be divided evenly between group members. A prevalent theme that reminded me of my own choice book was the importance of characters in A Brave New World. Every character had a specific purpose given by the author. Even the characters that may have seemed somewhat irrelevant to the plot overall are significant because they represent the expendability of individuals as viewed by larger groups of people and/or the government. It could be my own interpretation of Tim O'Brien´s views on war in correlation with the government, but both texts make use of the concept of a controlling government where people are like puppets since the day they're born. ¨At night, when I couldn't sleep, I´d sometimes carry on fierce arguments with those people. I´d be screaming at them, telling them how much I detested their blind, thoughtless, automatic acquiescence to it all, their simple minded patriotism, their prideful ignorance, their love-it-or-leave-it platitudes, how they were sending me off to fight a war I didn't understand and didn't want to understand...They didn't know history. They didn't know the first thing about Diem's tyranny, or the nature of Vietnamese nationalism, or the long colonialism of the French--this was all too damned complicated, it required some reading--but no matter, it was a war to stop the Communists, plain and simple, which was how they liked things, and you were a treasonous pussy if you had second thoughts about killing or dying for plain and simple reasons¨ (O'Brien 43). This angsty quotation refers to ¨them¨ and ¨they¨ which is indirectly addressing the greater public of America. He is angry at ¨them¨ for not knowing the real purpose of this war, but he expresses no real understanding of previous or present politics in his argument. None so much as a brief allusion to some historical figures in communism. The point is, he was just like them before it affected him directly.
ReplyDeleteIn the novel, "A Brave New World," the majority of the characters undergo many stages of classical conditioning, from childbirth to their death. They lack their own thinking, as every thought has a program response and action. The characters influenced to the point of the destruction of their individualism. In "The Picture of Dorian Gray" the main character, Dorian, is severely influenced and corrupted by Henry, and their thoughts seem to overlap. While this is a less intense form of influence, Dorian's entire life and mindset is shaped by Henry. This similarity is striking between the two books, and they both seem to show the negative aspects of influence on humanity.
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