The world is advancing so rapidly today, it seems that it will never stop growing in knowledge and complexity. In the novel “The Time Machine” by H.G. Wells, The Time Traveler, as Wells calls him, travels hundreds of thousands of years into the future through time. He arrives at a world that, at first glimpse, is peaceful and clear of any worries. As The Time Traveler explores the world, he discovers that the human race has evolved into 2 distinct forms. Although the world appeared to be the Garden of Eden, it was, in reality, the Garden of Evil. Wells uses three aspects of the futuristic world to illustrate this: the setting, the Eloi, and the Murlocks.
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The majority of the story is set in the future, year 802,701 AD. This place The Time Traveler goes to is, at first look, a wonderful land with no worries. The land was lush with flowers and full laughter. “My general impression of the world I saw over their heads was a tangled waste of beautiful bushes and flowers…” (50). It looked to be the “Golden Age” of the human civilization; there was no war, no famine, and no pove...
Such controlled environments provide examples of humanities belief that it is more sophisticated and indeed more powerful than the wild. Despite being written some fifty years apart both Brave New World By Aldous Huxley and Blade Runner Directed by Ridley Scott present the same message. Both texts argue that with advancing technology humanity feels itself more sophisticated and more powerful than the natural rhythms of the world. However, at the same time aspects represented in each text point out that Humanity can never be completely isolated from nature.
In Aldous Huxley’s Brave New World, truth and happiness are falsely engineered to create a perfect society; the belief of the World Controllers that stability is the the key to a utopian society actually led to the creation of an anti-utopian society in which loose morals and artificial happiness exist. Huxley uses symbolism, metaphors, and imagery to satirize the possibiliy of an artificial society in the future as well as the “brave new world” itself.
People place judgment on one another every day based on differences. Sometimes it is done subconsciously; sometimes it is done on purpose. In the book The House of Sand and Fog, by Andre Dubus III, two different cultures were represented; Kathy represented the culture of the western civilization, whereas Behrani represented the culture of Persians. People judge one another based on unimportant things, and get judged based on those same things as well. Two cultures were used to amplify how different their cultures were from one another. Throughout the book cultures vocalized what they did not like about the other cultures by placing judgment on people based on ethnicity, appearance, and status; despite how different the cultures were, they had something in common, negative judgment. In a world where there is so much diversity, the only way for all cultures to get along is to place judgments aside and accept the differences.
In the book Storming Heaven by Denise Giardina, education, and the lack there of, plays one of the largest roles in the character's lives. At this time in West Virginia, where the book is set, many children had to leave school and actually go into the coalmines, as Rondal Lloyd did, or work on the family farm. Racial ignorance is also a key element Giardina confronts in the novel. The characters, chief and secondary, equally cultural and racially bland, pass on their beliefs and therefore help to maintain the continuous circle of inequality that carries on even today. Political knowledge, at least on the national and state level, is also lacking within the little town of Annadel. With this knowledge coupled with her own experiences from growing up as an immigrants daughter in the same coalfields as her novels characters, Denise Giardina tries to explain the function of education and ignorance in not only the coalfields of West Virginia, but throughout the entire world.
Several conflicting frames of mind have played defining roles in shaping humanity throughout the twentieth century. Philosophical optimism of a bright future held by humanity in general was taken advantage of by the promise of a better life through sacrifice of individuality to the state. In the books Brave New World, 1984, and Fahrenheit 451 clear opposition to these subtle entrapments was voiced in similarly convincing ways. They first all established, to varying degrees of balance, the atmosphere and seductiveness of the “utopia” and the fear of the consequences of acting in the non-prescribed way through character development. A single character is alienated because of their inability to conform – often in protest to the forced conditions of happiness and well being. Their struggle is to hide this fact from the state’s relentless supervision of (supposedly) everything. This leads them to eventually come into conflict with some hand of the state which serves as the authors voice presenting the reader with the ‘absurdity’ of the principles on which the society is based. The similar fear of the state’s abuse of power and technology at the expense of human individuality present within these novels speaks to the relevance of these novels within their historical context and their usefulness for awakening people to the horrendous consequences of their ignorance.
The world as we know it today is full of individualism, opportunity, technology and freedom; but what if one day in the future all of that were to come to an end? In Ayn Rand’s Anthem, there used to be a world such as this, but can now only be called The Unmentionable Times. Nearly all of the remnants of this time now lie deep within the Uncharted Forest, which very few dare to enter. The only civilized place left now is the City, in which everyone lives systematically. The Forest and the City may show significant differences on the surface, but upon closer inspection they both hold surprising similarities.
Within “The Garden of Forking Paths,” Borges manifests new ideas of time, questions the standard understanding of a novel as well as contemplates the concept of fate. Time, one of Borges’s favorite topics, is easily manipulated. In “The Garden of Forking Paths,” Borges attempts to make a visual model of an abstract idea. Adding to this, the title in itself is a metaphor to aid readers in imagining Ts’ui Pen’s idea of time - infinitely veering (Borges 126-127). Borges works Ts’ui Pen’s notion of time into a rather unique book that not only discusses the idea of time, but does it in a way that causes confusion and chaos among its readers. This textual labyrinth forks in time rather than space, creating infinite futures with completely different outcomes (Borges 125). Through these infinitely different futures, Borges brings up his ideas of fate. By actions and thoughts, it is made obvious that the protagonist is a firm believer in fate, saying “the future is as irrevocable as the past” (Borges 121). All the seemingly unrelated events in his life - Captain Madden, his arrival at Dr. Albert’s house, and the novel itself - all appear to come together for a single purpose, for Yu Tsun to signal where the artillery park was located. This combination of themes had rarely been written about before, leaving Borges as the creator of new
“Paradise Found and Lost” from Daniel J. Boorstin’s The Discoverers, embodies Columbus’ emotions, ideas, and hopes. Boorstin, a former Librarian of Congress, leads the reader through one man’s struggles as he tries to find a Western Passage to the wealth of the East. After reading “Paradise Found and Lost,” I was enlightened about Columbus’ tenacious spirit as he repeatedly fails to find the passage to Asia. Boorstin title of this essay is quite apropos because Columbus discovers a paradise but is unable to see what is before him for his vision is too jaded by his ambition.
In The Time Machine by H.G. Wells, the Time Traveller first visits the year 802,701, where Wells begins to establish that humanity has split into two opposite and startling sub-species, the Eloi and the Morlocks, similar to “modern” humans. After his associations with the Eloi and finally outsmarting the Morlocks, the Time Traveller escapes millions of years into the future to a period devoid of human life, and once more after that to see the final devolution of man. With these experiences centuries into the future, it is clear Wells does not possess an optimistic outlook on his interpretations of the future, but rather one of regression. Wells’ idea that humanity is doomed to devolution and eventual extinction is shown through the
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.
Paradise Lost is an epic poem portraying John Milton’s theological standpoints. The theme is knowledge and the fall of man. Milton uses his poem to state some of his theological beliefs and his personal reflections. Milton wrote Paradise Lost in the 17th century but uses influence from classic poets. Milton’s epic is an extremely important piece of literature. The excerpt used in this commentary takes on the subjects of sin and the punishment with regards to the atonement from God’s point of view. Milton’s states many of his own theological opinions but wants the reader to know that God is justified in everything that he does, and also wants them to know that man has free will.
Our Earth is dated around 4.5 billion years old. Homo Sapiens, 250,000 years ago. In this macrocosmic time frame, our recorded history spans a mere 5,000 years. This knowledge contextualizes the limited nature of present human cognizance. Understanding human folly and wider perspectives becomes necessary in analyzing Ben Singer’s work Melodrama and Modernity, as he attempts to define modernity in contrast to this universal antiquity. Singer portrays modernity as something fluid, saying “Modernity is ostensibly a temporal concept” (Singer 17). The truth is modernity is a pattern that transcends time. Singer fancies modernity as a straight line progressing from caveman to businessman. John Anthony West, an author and Egyptological researcher
“I shall briefly explain how I conceive this matter. Look round the world: Contemplate the whole and every part of it: You will find it to be nothing but one great machine, subdivided into an infinite number of lesser machines, which again admit of subdivisions, to a degree beyond what human senses and faculties can trace and explain. All these various machines, and even their most minute parts, are adjusted to each other with an accuracy, which ravishes into admiration all men, who have ever contemplated them. The curious adapting of means to ends, throughout all nature, resembles exactly, though it much exceeds, the productions of human contrivance; of human design, thought, wisdom, and intelligence. Since therefore the effects
By using time as a symbol for humanity, the alarm clock and the weather as the symbols for time, Franz Kafka and Juan Rulfo demonstrate the readers that inhumanity is what makes everyone human through greed, love, interest, and even sometimes by turning into a bug.
In the opening lines of Paradise Lost, Milton wastes no time conveying to his readers what his purpose in writing the epic is. He writes in the beginning that he intends to “assert Eternal Providence, / and justifie the wayes of God to men” (I. 25-26). What exactly does this mean though? In order to be able to clearly judge and evaluate what these lines imply, it is important that one understands what exactly Milton’s thoughts we regarding “Eternal Providence” and the “wayes of God”. Stemming from this idea, it is important to also realize how the idea of free will intertwines with the omniscience of God. For Milton, God’s omniscient did not constrain the free will of Adam and Eve. However, this idea presents the reader with a paradoxical situation that Milton as an author was fully aware of. Paradise Lost presents the reader with eternal providence and free will as being part and parcel of each other, neither constrains the other, and it is these two aspects, along with that of knowledge that lay the groundwork in understanding Paradise Lost.