The Rock & The Sealing Wax

Near the end of Chapter 2, you will find this short paragraph (another sentence fragment, by the way—guess they're not so bad after all, provided you know how to use them):

Not so much like drops of water, though water, it is true, can wear holes in the hardest granite; rather, drops of liquid sealing-wax, drops that adhere, incrust, incorporate themselves with what they fall on, till finally the rock is all one scarlet blob.

Explore this simile and decide what it signifies.

Then find examples in the Brave New World in which the rock nearly breaks through the wax, or where the wax layer is so thin that the rock can be perceived, even if only for a moment. Start with the characters you explored in class and branch out if you have other examples you'd like to cite. You can do this as a group if you can figure out how to make a joint statement.

I'll do likewise and report my findings in Monday's class.

Enjoy the weekend!

JD

The Brave New World—Same Old World?

If, as we discussed, utopian fiction is less a prediction of the future than a reflection of the present, how did and how does Brave New World reflect our world, past and present. What features of Aldous Huxley's World State can you identify as exaggerated but clearly recognizable versions of Western culture?

The next question is a natural one—why? What was his purpose? What did he hope his readers would see?

Please be specific: cite pages and quote the text as you make your case.

PS: We'll save A.H.'s introduction for Monday. That'll be a read & annotate exercise.

See you Thursday, and see some of your folks Wednesday evening.

Regards,

JD

Society, technology and the Individual

Man is about to be an automaton; he is identifiable only in the computer. As a person of worth and creativity, as a being with an infinite potential, he retreats and battles the forces that make him inhuman.

The dissent we witness is a reaffirmation of faith in man; it is protest against living under rules and prejudices and attitudes that produce the extremes of wealth and poverty and that make us dedicated to the destruction of people through arms, bombs, and gases, and that prepare us to think alike and be submissive objects for the regime of the computer.

—Justice WILLIAM O. DOUGLAS, Points of Rebellion, pp. 32–33 (1970)

Justice Douglas (1898-1980) was a dedicated champion of civil liberty and an outspoken opponent of censorship of any kind. His words of warning came nearly 40 years after Brave New World appeared. What does his message have in common with Aldous Huxley's novel? Were the two writers correct?—are individual rights in danger? Is dissent itself dangerous to the individual?

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