Thursday, August 10, 2017

Analyze how important elements of Brave New World are “distorted,” and explain how these distortions contribute to the effectiveness of the work.

I am trying to understand what is meant by "distorted," but I will take a stab at this. Huxley has characters in the novel present the ethics of the World State as positive and beneficial when, in fact, he want us to understand they are not. Therefore, we are immediately thrown into a world in which we watch, for example, babies being given electric shocks, and this is presented as a good thing. We learn that in this upside down world, the words mother and father are obscenities, while uninhibited sex among young adolescents is described as healthy and good. We are immediately thrust into a world where all our normal assumptions are turned on their head.
This continues throughout the novel. For example, John the "savage" is actually arguably the most civilized person in the story, because he knows Shakespeare and is capable of deep emotions: so why is he the "savage?" As you read through the novel you will find many more examples of such distortion. These help make the work effective because they force us as readers to morally evaluate the concepts that underlie this brave new world.

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