Details and a due date for your essay.

Some of you may be scratching your heads and asking, "Has he laid an essay on me? What sort of length is he looking for? When is the thing due?"

Well, I don't necessarily look for length, but I've found that an essay of fewer than four pages rarely has enough substance to pass muster, so over the years I've settled on a range of 4-6 pages.

The essay is due October 7th.

More information and some tips will be forthcoming (probably in class).

Sayonara for now!

Try on some thesis ideas and see if any fit…then use the blog as a forum to improve your focus

Below are some potential essay topics for Brave New World, but please keep this in mind: these are topics, not statements. It's up to you to craft your thesis whether you make use of these ideas or something completely your own. I'd like to see you develop an independent thesis, but you might find your ideas are already going down one of these paths. I say, use whatever helps.

With that thought in mind, please feel free to use this space to post ideas, questions thesis proposals, and whatever else your creative brains have to offer. Read what others have to say--borrow ideas that help--express your insights & inspirations. Visit more than once with follow-up thoughts. Your essays will benefit from this free exchange of ideas.

1. Discuss Huxley’s intimation that the only life worth living is a "self-actualized" one.
2. Examine the implications of Mustapha Mond’s assertion: “Every discovery in pure science is potentially subversive.”
3. The best utopian—or anti-utopian—fiction is not really about the future: it is an indirect view of the present. To what extent is that true for Brave New World and our own contemporary society?
4. Discuss the necessity of adversity in order to experience true happiness.
5. Compare Huxley’s utopia with Orwell’s dystopia of 1984. Which do you find to be more sinister?
6. What does Huxley’s ending for his novel, what imply about the ability of an individual—the self—to survive in a world such as the “Brave New” one?
7. One critic wrote the following: “It is as sparkling, as provocative, as brilliant…as the day it was published. This is in part because its prophetic voice has remained surprisingly contemporary, both in its particular forecasts and in its general tone of semiserious alarm. But it is much more because the book succeeds as a work of art.”
   Do you agree. If so, explain how Brave New World succeeds not only as a novel of ideas but as a work of art.
8. Explore the idea that “civilization is sterilization”—particularly in regard to intellectual freedom and opportunity.

September 21st post: the compass to nowhere

Slowly, very slowly, like two unhurried compass needles, the feet turned towards the right; north, north- east, east, south-east, south, south-south-west; then paused, and, after a few seconds, turned as unhurriedly back towards the left. South-south-west, south, south-east, east…

Interpret this final paragraph of the book—not just as John Savage’s end, but also in light of the simile that Huxley uses. What was John seeking, and how did he fare in his quest? Does he represent anyone besides himself? What do you think the author was getting at here with this final fade-out?

I think we'll leave this post up for two class periods and discuss our findings on Friday.

Lit terms at Bedford

Just in case you didn't write down that long web address for the Bedford/St. Martins literary terms glossary, here it is:

http://www.bedfordstmartins.com/literature/bedlit/glossary_a.htm

And here's another one from McGraw-Hill:

http://highered.mcgraw-hill.com/sites/0072405228/student_view0/complete_glossary.html#

Between the two of them, you should be able to get a sense for just about all the terms provided you. If you're in doubt, raise your hand in class.

And don't forget the 1946 introduction and the last three chapters of BNW.

See you tomorrow!

J.D.

Take a hard and honest look

Here are the words I placed on the screen today. I'm sure they came from somebody specific once, but some of us others have tampered with the original language, so I'm attributing them to nobody…and to me:

The most provocative aspect of Brave New World might just be the suspicion that many, perhaps most—perhaps you—would like to live in such a society.

And I'll add something to it: we're already living, at least in some aspects of our lives, in such a society, and we're enjoying it, too!

For this blog, consider the little diagram in the upper corner of this post. Today we discussed the feelies and I suggested that Huxley described something eerily like a computer-generated effect designed to titillate the senses. Cast your net over some of the features he included in his Brave New World and find their specific parallels in popular culture today. In other words, identify the green area of intersection between what he observed and foresaw and what we, for better or for worse, are.

Please be specific: if it's "consumerism" you wish to discuss, find its point of origin in the text before you cite the parallel.

Shakespeare as a guide to living life

John's beat-up copy of the complete works of Shakespeare (a gift of sorts from his mother's lover Popé) becomes his means of understanding life and people. For example, during his big "love scene" with Lenina, in chapter 13 of the novel, John expresses his desire for a pure kind of love that can only be consummated in marriage. He stammers fragments from The Tempest—words that the young prince Ferdinand speaks to Prospero's innocent and lovely daughter Miranda:

O you,

So perfect and so peerless, are created
Of every creature's best!

But Lenina doesn't speak anything like that highflown language. Instead, she responds this way:

‘Put your arms round me,’ she commanded. ‘Hug me till you drug me, honey.’ She too had poetry at her command, knew words that sang and were spells and beat drums. ‘Kiss me’; she closed her eyes, she let her voice sink to a sleepy murmur, ‘kiss me till I’m in a coma. Hug me, honey, snuggly…’

As John becomes violent, he searches his store of Shakespeare for words that express his anger and disappointment at finding his Juliet is a mere "strumpet." From the love-smitten Ferdinand he turns to the the insanely jealous Othello: ‘O thou weed, who art so lovely fair and smell’st so sweet that the sense aches at thee. Was this most goodly book made to write “whore” upon? Heaven stops the nose at it…’

Why, do you suppose, does Aldous Huxley give his near-hero John Shakespeare and only Shakespeare as a handbook for life? What are the strengths and limitations of such a guide? What's noble and what's ridiculous about John's approach to romance?

Hold off on the blog for the moment

Dear AP Literatis,
Technical difficulties prevented me from getting the invitations sent until this morning (it's Monday). I've had a few e-mails from some of you asking how to get in (that's been my problem, too). Under the circumstances, I think it's best to wait on the first post. I'll put it up soon but won't expect comments until Tuesday eve or Wednesday.
Yrs trly,
JD