Fahrenheit 451

The first couple of chapters of Fahrenheit 451 introduce us to the books protagonist, Guy Montag. Guy is a special type of fireman whose job is to burn books. He enjoys his job greatly and wears the number 451 on his helmet. 451 is the temperature at which paper starts to burn. He also wears a salamander on his arm and a phoenix disc on his chest. One day, on his way home from work he meets his neighbor, Clarisse McClellan. Clarisse says she is crazy and says that firemen used to put out fires instead of create them. She tells Guy that she comes from a strange family and does weird things, like read and walk places. Guy is attracted toward her, but she makes him feel nervous. Calrisse's unorthodox views and incredible power of identification intrigue Guy. The chapter ends with Clarisse asking Guy if he is happy, and Guy leaving to think about the troubling question and his new neighbor.

“Christianity without tears – that’s what soma is.” – Mustapha Mond

Mond, Resident Controller for Western Europe, and one of only ten World Controllers is introduced in the third chapter as a very important character.

The middle of the book tells the story of how the World State came to begin.

Mond tells the reader how life was like, in regards to reproduction control, child-rearing, and social relations. Mond makes an analogy of emotion and desire to water under pressure in a pipe. One big hole will make a big stream while many small holes will create several calm streams. Mond says that emotions that come from family relationships, sex, and delayed satisfaction of desire go against the World State's idea of stability. Mond says without stability, civilization cannot exist. Mond also says that before the creation of the World State, instability was caused by strong emotions. These emotions caused disease, social uprising, war, countless deaths, suffering, and misery.

Mond tells us that people initially resisted the World State's use of the caste ststem, artifical gestation, and extreme human conditioning. During the Nine Years' War, chemical and biological warfare combined with propaganda and suppression of books weakened all resistence. The World State destroyed importance figures and ideas of the past like Shakespeare, religion, museums and the idea of a family. The World State chose the date of the introduction of the Model T to begin their new era. To assist the World State, a mircle drug, soma, was created to cure the problem of old age.

The end of the book ends in a philosophical argument between Mond and John, the illegal son of the Director. and Mustapha Mond. Before this arguement, they argued about human experiences and what that the World State has destroyed and in the last chapter of the book they argue about religion. Mond shows John his collection of banned religious scriptures, and reads passages from the nineteenth-century Catholic theologian, Cardinal Newman, and from the eighteenth-century French philosopher, Maine de Biran. They say that religious belief comes from the threat of loss, old age, and death. Mond says that in a prosperous environment there is no loss, old age or death and therefore no need for religion. John wonders if it is a inhert response to believe in god, to which Mond responds that people believe what they have been conditioned to believe.

“Providence takes its cue from men,” is the famous line he says that encompasses the entire book.

John claims God is the reason for “everything noble and fine and heroic,” and says that if people in the World State believed in god they would not feel degraded and have reason to feel guilt. Mond replies that no one in the World State is degraded they just live by a different code of morals and belief. Mond says that if anyone in the World State is unhappy, Soma will cure them. He profoundly states that Soma is “Christianity without tears.” In the end, John wants god to help keep himself disillusioned from reality, whereas Mond is more logical and knows that Johns belief in god will lead to unhappiness, which is the ultimate human condition.

Brave new world

Brave new world so far has proven to be an aptly named book. It starts out introducing a world that is astoundingly new to the reader. This world has a caste system including 5 different levels, Alpha, Beta, Gamma, Delta, and Epsilon. Gamma, Delta, and Epsilon. At the start of the book the Director of Hatcheries and Conditioning is giving a tour to a group of new students at a Hatchery and Conditioning center. The Director explains to the students that the center uses the Bokanovsky Process to create 96 identical humans beings from one embryo. The reader finds out that babies are grown and conditioned in a "factory" and that viviparous living is a baffling idea to citizens in the World State. The reason for the 96 identical twins is so that everyone but the Alphas and the Betas (Bokanovsky Process weakens the egg so it would never be done to them) could more effectively do their jobs, and to create a stable society. The World State's motto is therefore also aptly named: Community, Identity, Stability. Podsnaps technique is another method introduced to us by the Director. Apparently it can speed up the ripening process of the egg in one ovary and can produce up to 16,000 siblings in batches of identical twins from one ovary.

The Director goes on to describe how the embryos travel on a conveyor belt for 267 days and on the last day they are decanted. The Director explains in detail the extreme conditioning some of the embyos may go through. The conveyor belt may shake at certain intervals to simulate movement, some embyos may be treated with alchohal or oxygen deprivation to ensure it fits into a lower intelligene and physical stature caste. Rocket-plane engineers would be kept in constant motion, and chemists would be made immune to toxic chemicals. Furthurmore some embyos destined to work in tropical climates are condition to be physically and emotionally dependant on heat in order, in the Directors words, for them to accept their inescapable social destiny.

The dystopian similarites between the first chapters of Brave New World and 1984 are very clear. The extreme conditioning in order for people to accept their "inescapable social conditioning" remind me of the conditioning that goes on in Orwell's novel. Big Brother wants to erase all knowledge of the past in order to condition everyone born. The reason is that if no one knows about the past, they will "inescapeably" be conditioned to accept and love Big Brother.

Just recently I had grilled octopus (it was a special) in a Mediterranean restaurant and absolutely loved it. I had decided that it had become my favorite comestible sea animal . Unfortunately, I found out that octopus at restaurants is extremely rare, and that it is very hard to make yourself. When I looked up recipes for octopus I found that the key to making good octopus recipes lies in tenderizing the octopus, otherwise it will have a rubbery consistency. Unfortunately, there is no established way to go about tenderizing an octopus. Many recipes are cryptic in that they simply say "tenderize the octopus." Upon further research, I found that the best, tender octopus experiences were had when the tenderizing method included beating the octopus over a table or another hard object for quite a while. Someone suggested letting it simmer for an hour, some said a half hour, depending on the size of the octopus. Overall, the tenderizing process is seen as the anathema of making octopus because if it goes wrong, the dish is ruined. Hopefully one day I will be able to make an octopus dish as tasty as I had in the restaurant.

Big Brother reference in Texas Pilot's suicide note

A pilot, Joseph Stack, in Texas crashed his plane into an IRS building in a furious rage against the IRS and society. One person who works in the 200 employee building was unaccounted for and two were hospitalized, while two bodies were found in the building. In Stack's suicide note read many disturbing things including a reference to George Orwell's big Brother. His note reflected many of the things that are prominent in Orwell's Party dominated society.

The following are quotes taken directly from Stacks suicide letter (http://www.foxnews.com/story/0,2933,586627,00.html)

"I saw it written once that the definition of insanity is repeating the same process over and over and expecting the outcome to suddenly be different. I am finally ready to stop this insanity. Well, Mr. Big Brother IRS man, let's try something different; take my pound of flesh and sleep well."

"We are all taught as children that without laws there would be no society, only anarchy. Sadly, starting at early ages we in this country have been brainwashed to believe that, in return for our dedication and service, our government stands for justice for all. We are further brainwashed to believe that there is freedom in this place, and that we should be ready to lay our lives down for the noble principals represented by its founding fathers. Remember? One of these was “no taxation without representation”. I have spent the total years of my adulthood unlearning that crap from only a few years of my childhood. These days anyone who really stands up for that principal is promptly labeled a “crackpot”, traitor and worse."

Many of Orwell's ideas from 1984 are overt in today's society. Unfortunately, Stack could not deal with the problems he faced, or thought he faced, and took out his anger through violence.

As Stack said in his suicide letter:

"Violence not only is the answer, it is the only answer."

Just recently I watched a documentary on Youtube (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=G1QaCeosUmw) about a blind boy, now a parvenu (he has been on Opera and in various other shows and magazines), who uses echolocation to "see". Echolocation is the method dolphins and bats use to locate objects by sound, clicking and projecting sound waves forth, then interpreting the sound waves that bounce back as objects. The video shows him rollerskating, playing his gameboy, and dribbling and shooting a basketball. Not once in these actives was he maladroit. An outsider wouldn't believe Ben is blind as his movements and actions look like that of someone how has perfect vision. Not being a credulous person I doubted that this could be possible. However, the documentary goes on to tell how Ben has developed a sonar mind. It tells of submarine sonar operators who go through extensive training that teaches them how to use their sonar machines on the submarine to locate objects in the water. The sonar operaters must study the sounds to determine the size, shape and distance using machines that cost millions of dollars. Somehow, Ben has managed to train his brain to do the work of million dollar sonar machines. All throughout the documentary Ben remains sang-froid completely unperturbed by the fact that he is blind. Ben states he wants to live on his own and that being independent will not be hard. However, later in the documentary (Part 3) the narrator states that Ben may be quixotic, and must realize he has limits, despite his extrodinary skill. Ben parent's tried to send Ben to a school for the blind for year before he started highschool, however it quickly became an anathema for Ben, who functioned better than most of the other students. Later on, Ben recieved training from another blind person (Dan) who uses echolocation for mobility. However, Ben deprecated the thought of using a cane which Dan and Ben's mother both pushed him to do. Ben thought that he was not handicapped and that the cane would label him falsely. Dan's training showed Ben that even echolocation has limits and that later on a cane would be necessary. Ben, being only 14, was obdurate and showed choler whenever somehow suggested the use of a cane.

1984 Ponderings

After having read 1984 I often think about the quarrels Winston had with himself, and the Party. More than that, I find myself reflecting on the part of the book when Winston is tortured and cedes his malcontent attitude toward the Party and gives in to ebulliently loving Big Brother. I found myself thinking that the book as a whole was very hypocritical (which doesn't detract from its value). In the book Orwell insinuates that good/bad is a matter of opinion and is not objective, yet in the book is looked at as a warning toward this type of future. My question is that if good and bad are not objective, then why is this future bad thing and something that we should be warned against? Also, the idea of newspeak had me wondering about the purpose of language. There are some who say that people are born inherently knowing what is good and bad, that somehow they just know. Yet the implications of this assumption are huge. For, good and bad are English words and it would be crazy to assume babies are born knowing English. The other side might argue that the babies inherently understand the "idea" of good and bad, but then, how does one express or have an idea without using some form of language? Some people disparage this point of view, because it makes them feel very uncomfortable, as Winston felt uncomfortable when he couldn't prove O'Brien wrong about there being no objective reality, and therfore whatever the Party did was justifiable.