How would one understand darkness unless one had also known light? If bad did not exist, would good have any meaning? Contradictions create substance, and without one end of the spectrum it is impossible to comprehend the other. Like yin and yang, opposites derive meaning from their differences. Juxtaposition is necessary for an extreme to have meaning; therefore lack of alternatives nullifies significance.
This is well illustrated by the absence of dichotomy in Aldous Huxley’s novel, Brave New World. The novel is set some time in the future after the life of Henry Ford. The very fact that this is how the year is determined shows the assembly line aspect of the culture—throughout the book, one is presented again and again with the concept of factory production and uniformity. Diversity and contradictions (other than what are specifically created, such as making people Alphas, Betas, etc) are not allowed, even in the population. The lack of individualism diminishes the value of human life. In the society Huxley has created, the good of the unvarying humanity overrides the worth of the unique person. This is a distinct example of how sameness removes significance. Because the people are all the same, they themselves do not matter.
This dystopian world revolves around sexual debauchery, strictly defined class systems, and the enjoyment of mindless pleasures. Conditioned from birth through a mixture of genetic altering and brainwashing, the citizens of this society do not question their circumstances nor do they seek alternatives to their given lifestyle. Instead, they are content with an apathetic complacency. There is no juxtaposition of good and bad because anything deemed ‘bad’ is ignored or removed.
A freely distributed drug...
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...able than diversity and originality. Does this create a utopia, or destroy any hope of one? The outcome of each of the stories provides the answer. Dichotomy creates substance, and substance is meaning. If every principle and idea lacks depth, if everything a society is built upon lacks significance, if every choice one makes is really no choice it all… then life itself ceases to matter.
Works Cited
Bradbury, Ray. Fahrenheit 451. New York: Ballantine, 1981.
Huxley, Aldous. Appendix. Brave New World. New York, NY: Perennial Classics, 1998.
Huxley, Aldous. Brave New World. New York, NY: Perennial Classics, 1998.
Orwell, George. Nineteen Eighty-four, a Novel. New York: Harcourt, Brace, 1949.
Seed, David. “The Flight From the Good Life: Fahrenheit 451 in the Context of Postwar American Dystopias”. Journal of American Studies Vol. 28, No. 2 (1994): 227.
Life is a very valuable asset, but when lived on someone else’s terms its nothing but a compromise. The seemingly perfect image of Utopia which combines happiness and honesty with purity, very often leads in forming a dystopian environment. The shrewd discrepancy of Utopia is presented in both the novel ‘The Giver’ by Lois Lowry and the film ‘The Truman Show’ directed by Peter Weir. Both stories depict a perfect community, perfect people, perfect life, perfect world, and a perfect lie. These perfect worlds may appear to shield its inhabitants from evil and on the other hand appear to give individuals no rights of their own. By comparing and contrasting the novel ‘The Giver’ and the film ‘The Truman Show’, it can be derived that both the main characters become anti-utopian to expose the seedy underbelly of their Utopian environment which constructs a delusional image of reality, seizes the pleasures in their lives and portrays a loss of freedom.
Monsters under the bed, drowning, and property damage are topics many people have nightmares about; nightmares about a dystopian future, on the other hand, are less common. Despite this, Ray Bradbury’s Fahrenheit 451 and George Orwell’s 1984 display a nightmarish vision about a dystopian society in the near future. Fahrenheit 451 tells of Guy Montag’s experience in a society where books have become illegal and the population has become addicted to television. Meanwhile, 1984 deals with Winston Smith’s affairs in Oceania, a state controlled by the totalitarian regime known as the Party. This regime is supposedly headed by a man named Big Brother. By examining the dehumanized settings, as well as the themes of individuality and manipulation, it becomes clear that novels successfully warn of a nightmarish future.
The Majority of people today believe that the society in Fahrenheit 451 is far-fetched and could never actually happen, little do they know that it is a reflection of the society we currently live in. In Ray Bradbury's novel Fahrenheit 451 books are burnt due to people's lack of interest in them and the fire is started by firemen. Social interactions is at an all time low and most time is spent in front of the television being brainwashed by advertisements. In an attempt to make us all aware of our faults, Bradbury imagines a society that is a parallel to the world we live in today by emphasizing the decline in literature, loss of ethics in advertisement, and negative effects of materialism.
Captain Beatty is perhaps one of the most critical characters in Ray Bradbury’s Fahrenheit 451: he is expertly cruel and malicious, adroit at skewing the truth into a web of hypocrisies, and ultimately surrenders his own life. While Beatty attempts to continue the holocaust of books that his generation had started, in reality he is only depriving himself of a world of knowledge, imagination, and insight. Beatty proves that giving up ones dreams and aspirations may be the easy way out of conflicts and insecurities, but will quash the marvelous revolutions that can be brought upon by one with the will and determination to persevere.
Heller, Joseph. The Chelsea House Library of Literary Criticism. Twentieth-Century American Literature Vol. 3. New York. Chelsea House Publishers, 1986.
“American Crisis.” The American Tradition in Literature, 12th ed. New York: McGraw Hill 2009. Print
Fahrenheit 451 is a science fiction book that still reflects to our current world. Bradbury does a nice job predicting what the world would be like in the future; the future for his time period and for ours as well. The society Bradbury describes is, in many ways, like the one we are living in now.
For years, authors and philosophers have satirized the “perfect” society to incite change. In Brave New World, Aldous Huxley describes a so-called utopian society in which everyone is happy. This society is a “controlled environment where technology has essentially [expunged] suffering” (“Brave New World”). A member of this society never needs to be inconvenienced by emotion, “And if anything should go wrong, there's soma” (Huxley 220). Citizens spend their lives sleeping with as many people as they please, taking soma to dull any unpleasant thoughts that arise, and happily working in the jobs they were conditioned to want. They are genetically altered and conditioned to be averse to socially destructive things, like nature and families. They are trained to enjoy things that are socially beneficial: “'That is the secret of happiness and virtue – liking what you've got to do. All conditioning aims at that: making people like their inescapable social destiny'” (Huxley 16). Citizens operate more like machinery, and less like humans. Humanity is defined as “the quality of being human” (“Humanity”). To some, humanity refers to the aspects that define a human: love, compassion and emotions. Huxley satirizes humanity by dehumanizing the citizens in the Brave New World society.
Meyer, Michael. The Bedford Introduction to Literature. Ed. 8th ed. Boston: Bedford/St. Martin's, 2008. 2189.
Dystopia, a word that inflicts feelings of malcontent, fear, a place where abysmal conditions are the new normal, this genre describes a society where everything has and continues to go wrong. This genre has gripped the hearts of many readers and is compelling for people of all ages. The dystopian book Fahrenheit 451 by Ray Bradbury is a thrilling book that introduces the reader to a world where the society tries to force everything to be perfect, and danger lurks around every twist and turn. The meaning of dystopia, the characteristics of the genre, and how it is presented in Fahrenheit 451, contributes to how one could understand the dystopian style of literature.
It is commonplace for individuals to envision a perfect world; a utopian reality in which the world is a paradise, with equality, happiness and ideal perfection. Unfortunately, we live in a dystopian society and our world today is far from perfection. John Savage, from Brave New World by Aldous Huxley, V, from V for Vendetta by James McTeigue and Offred, from The Handmaid’s Tale by Margret Attwood, are all characters in a dystopian society. A dystopia is the vision of a society in which conditions of life are miserable and are characterized by oppression, corruption of government, and abridgement of human rights.
Because the Government removed the ability to question, the people in Fahrenheit 451 have deceived themselves into believing that they are happy. Guy Montag had been harbouring books for quite a long time, but only recently made it known to his wife. She had friends over, and he took out a poem book and read from it, in front of his wife’s dumbfounded friends. “Then he began to read...Mrs. Phelps was crying. The others...watched her crying grow very loud as her face squeezed itself out of shape....She sobbed uncontrollably... "Sh, sh," said Mildred. "You're all right, Clara,... Clara, what's wrong?" "I-I,", sobbed Mrs. Phelps, "don't know, don't know, I just don't know, oh oh...””. The poem book caused Mrs. Phelps to actually think about her life for the first time ever. Government censorship prevented the people from ever being exposed to material that would make them question. For the first time, she thought about her l...
Roelofs, H. Mark. "George Orwell's Obscured Utopia." Religion and Literature 19.3 (Summer 1987): 11-33. Rpt. in Twentieth-Century Literary Criticism. Ed. Kathy D. Darrow. Vol. 276. Detroit: Gale, 2013. Literature Resource Center. Web. 25 Feb. 2014.
...n American Literature. By Henry Louis. Gates and Nellie Y. McKay. 2nd ed. New York: W.W. Norton &, 2004. 387-452. Print.
1984 is a novel written by George Orwell, the main theme of the novel is about how totalitarian society can control every aspect of a person thought, sexuality and action. Totalitarianism can be define as a repressive one-party that has total control over people thoughts and actions. In 1984, people are being control totally by the Party through device such as the telescreen. People are stripped away from their freedom to do things that they want. The Party wants people to only focus on improving the Party and set everything else aside. Love is nonexistent in this government and the Party’s policy strictly forbids sex. The Party restrains people from falling in love with one another. Consequently, people cannot display their love for each other out in public. Furthermore, sex for pleasure can be considered a crime in 1984’s totalitarian government unless it is “celibacy”. Goodsex is any kind of sex that is allowable by the Party with the intention to reproduce. Goodsex will increase the total population. The more people the Party has the stronger the Party will be. Repression helps the party and hurts the people who have to tolerate the Party’s policy. The Party’s repression of sexuality helps them eliminate people who are trying to corrupt the Party, ensuring the Party that they have control over what people can and cannot do. By repressing people thoughts and actions the Party is psychologically manipulating people and physically restraining them.