Brave New World Second Post

1. Why is the book titled Brave New World?
    The book is titled Brave New World because it is based off of the way the John views the One State. When Bernard first tells John he will be going to the One State John quotes The Tempest and says, "O brave new world with such people in it." (148) John has always lived in the reservation and has only heard about the one state. He has   heard many good things about it. John is fascinated to go there because he has always thought of it as being something that is better than him because all he has known is the reservation. After he gets to the One State he begins to say this quote ironically because he is disappointed.

2. Why does Linda always stay as an outsider in the Reservation?
    Linda is was not the same culture when she first came to the Reservation and therefore never really conformed. When Linda first came to the Reservation she slept with all of the women's husbands and they did not like her. She never tried to redeem her reputation and this is why she never conformed to their culture. I also believe that when she was first born she was conditioned to think that their way of life was wrong. When she arrived she still believed that everything they did was wrong and she could not break the way she was conditioned do that she could be like them.

3. Why is John so against being in a relationship with Lenina?
    John really does like Lenina and is really attracted to her but they both have different views on a relationship. Because of their conflicting views John has a hard time whenever he is around Lenina. Lenina wants to have sex with John but not have a very strong relationship with him. John is completely against that because of what the cultures is at the Reservation and what he has read in Shakespeare. John is used to reading about relationships where the characters a deeply in love and have very strong feelings for each other. While John has both physical and emotional attractions to Lenina, Lenina only really has a  physical attraction to John. John does not want to submerge himself into something that would just be physical attraction.

Brave New World First Post

In Brave New World equality and conformity are made by embryo making and hatching center, the Central London Hatching and Conditioning Centre. The centre makes the embryos so that they are similar and they give them traits needed for their level in the caste. The lower class embryos go through the Bokanovsky process where they are pretty much cloned. "But a bokanovskified egg will bud, will proliferate, will divide. From ninety-six buds, and every bud will grow into a perfectly formed embryo, and every-embryo into a full-sized adult," (pg.20). This is how lower class embryos are made, they are cloned so that they all are just like one another. The higher classes do not go through this process because they need to be more unique and have different qualities so that they can contribute well to their job. The conditioning to be in a certain class, either Alpha, Beta, Gamma, Delta, or Epsilon creates equality throughout all of the people because all of the people in each class are almost clones (except in higher classes) of each other which creates equality in the caste system. Huxley reduces conflict in religion by crossing off the tops of all of the crosses and making them Ts. This is based off of the Model T made by Henry Ford. This makes the people forget about religion and it fades away. The people do not have any individuals rights they are not allowed think alone, think about things by yourself is considered to be bad. The peoples' happiness is controlled because the people are made to be happy with their caste and they are conditioned to be happy about their life and the caste that they have been assigned to. This society is a dystopia because the peoples' rights are taken away, and their happiness is conditioned and they are not able to have true happiness.

Reading Response #3 1984

I do not think that Big Brother won because people, such as Winston and others rebelled against the government and Big Brother did not accomplish his original plans to control all of the people and their thoughts in the begining. At the end of the book I think Big Brother succeeds because he is able to control Winston's mind through the punishment he is given.

I think the only way to bring down the Party would be for all of the people to rebel. If there were a few stragglers who didn't rebel I think that the Party wouldn't be able to be overcome. To take over the party the whole population would have to participate.

I belive that by the end of the book Winston is truely brainwashed because he completely gives in to Big Brother. It says on page 245, "He loves Big Brother." We know that this is not true because of how much we have seen previously of Winston hating Big Brother. By the end they brainwash him and he completely forgets everyhting that he once believed in.

Love Language

The two cultures are a girls that is deaf and a guy who is not. The gorl does not know how to act around the guy because their cultures are different. One internal conflict is the girl vs. her thoughts; she wants to tell the guy that she likes him but then she doesn;t want him to think she is weird because she is deaf. One external conflict is girl vs. guy; their cultures are different. The girl has a hard time trying to show how she feels because she is deaf and the guy thinks she doesn't like him because she doesn't say anything to him. In the video they use the sticky notes to show the cultural conflict while in Sign Language the man and the woman are in two different jobs which is how they show the conflict.

"This Land is Your Land" Woody Guthrie

Is Guthrie's message individualist or collectivist?
-His message is individualist because he says that this land is made for you and me not us. If it were a collectivist statement he would have used the word us instead of you and me.

Is the message of this song pro-government or anti-government?
-It is anti-government because he thinks that they should have freedom to roam the land where ever they would like and the government should not put boundaries on where they are allowed to go.

American Friendships

The reason why many Americans don't have good friends is because they believe that after they talk to someone a few times or have gone out to dinner with them then they are friends. Americans are independent and want to do things by themselves without help from others. They also think that they can solve their problems without help. Because of the way Americans act they are perceived to not have true friendships.

Me vs. We

1. In a collectivist culture what personality traits are likely to be considered ideal? In an individualist culture?
-Individuals have a common trait of competitiveness. Collectivists have a common trait of being loyal.

2. In what type of culture might elders or people who have professional distinction receive more respect and less challenge from people lower on their culture's/group's hierarchy? Explain your answer.
-Status is defined very similarly in both cultures. In individualist societies they receive more respect because they are smarter and have more distinction than other people while in collectivist they receive more respect because people know they can make good attributions to their groups because of their knowledge.

3.Create a specific problem  a teacher may encounter when he/she moves from teaching in a collectivist culture to and individualist culture or vice versa. Explain the specific values/influences/obligations/desires caused by the clash. Propose a way for the conflict to be resolved.
-coll. to ind.- The teacher may be used to correcting the class as a whole because then they all will fix it (in a coll. society). When she comes to an individualist society and corrects the whole class no one applies it to themselves because she did not correct them individually and therefore they do not improve. This causes the children to not learn and some parents may get mad because their child isn't learning. The teacher could fix this by individually correcting the children.


4. What is an acquaintance? Does the word have a positive or negative connotation?
-An acquaintance is someone you know but aren't good friends with. I think it has a positive connotation because you know them but just aren't close this has is not bad in my opinion.