Scarica Brave New World by Aldous Huxley + Lord of the flies by Golding e più Appunti in PDF di Inglese solo su Docsity! Brave New World (1932 - Aldous Huxley ): Brave New World is Aldous Huxley’s dystopian novel, published in 1932. In the book, H. imagines a genetically engineered future where life is pain-free but meaningless. Plot: ►The beginning of the book describes the world the people live in, Utopia. The director of "Hatcheries and Conditioning" talks about how their world works to a group of boys during a tour. In the conditioning center, they fertilize human female eggs, and babies grow in bottles, where they are conditioned to belong to one of five castes: Alpha, Beta, Gamma, Delta, or Epsilon. The Alpha embryos are destined to become the leaders of the World State, while the succeeding castes are conditioned to be less physically and intellectually strong. There are many principles in the society, one important thing is that the leaders don’t teach people about history because they don’t want people to be influenced by things in the past enough to try and change stuff in the present. Another big principle is that people have no emotions: they are given a drug, called Soma, which makes them permanently happy. Lastly, being in love is a crime, but having sex is allowed. Themes : • Conflict (humanity vs. technology, individual vs. society, happiness vs. truth, individualism vs. collectivism); • future totalitarian societies; • science and technology as a way to control people; • Henry Ford (he’s loved like a God, since he developed mass production and assembly lines). Happiness: Huxley describes this world as a nightmare and suggests that the price of happiness will derive from consuming mass-produced goods. To reach happiness, people use the drug Soma, that strengthens suggestibility, leaving its users vulnerable to propaganda. The society tries to create a perfect community where everyone is happy by conditioning people to do and want only the things they're supposed to; but in doing that, they take away freedoms like the freedom to think for oneself. The few characters who do think for themselves aren't happy, so the novel makes the question if it is better to be happy or free. Orwell vs. Huxley: Contrary to common belief, even among the educated, Huxley and Orwell did not prophesy the same thing. O. warns that we will be overcome by an externally imposed oppression, while in H’s vision, no Big Brother is required to deprive people of their autonomy, maturity and history. As he saw it, people will come to love their oppression, to adore the technologies that abandon their capacities to think. ON one hand, O. feared those who would deprive us of information, on the other hand, H. feared those who would give us so much that we would be reduced to passivity and egoism. O. feared that the truth would be concealed from us, while H. feared the truth would be drowned in a sea of irrelevance. Lord of the Flies (1954): It is a book written by William Golding and published in 1954. The foreground is the island, where takes place a plane crash, to which only children survive. At first they are scared and alone, but then
