Janessa's Blog

1. Bernard wanted John to explain his way of living. 2. Linda came into the reservation thinking she could apply her "civilized" values to their way of living. In that, she allowed many men into her home, causing the women on the reservation to intervene.  The children also taunt her son John. 3. Pope brings Linda mescal, the reservations version of "soma"....maybe. The mescal makes Linda laugh. 4. John hates Pope, he tried to stab him in his sleep. Pope just woke up and told John to go away while laughing. 5. John found the complete works of Shakespeare and read a line from Hamlet that related to his mothers relationship with Pope. 6. John is alone because the community view on his mother is negative, so he tends to be left out a lot when it comes to other children. 7. John wanted to know what it felt like to be crucified  because he was at a low point, and he thought if Jesus can stand it, he could too. 8. Bernard wants John to go bcak to London with him. ...

I remember  my grandma  teaching me to organize my things the night before. She taught me to assemble my clothes in the order I plan to put them on-the night before. I picked up off the concept of her lesson. If I was planing on putting makeup on, I  started to organize my brushes and products in the order I was going to use them-the night before. This didn't  necessarily  make me more successful  but make my morning go by smoother. At work, my goal is to produce twice as much as the expected amount and I've  learned little things from coworkers. This has helped my well being.

Lenina and Bernard go to the reservation and just as I suspected, Lenina hates it and Bernard is bored. I will add, Lenina did react to the sacrifice appropriately-but these "lab-creations" are bland. Now that I think about it, why would Huxley present characters who aren't human. I mean these are lab rats we are witnessing interact with each other. How am I suppose to feel connected to these characters? Huxley is personifying these characters so basic, I'm questioning their value/importance. Bigger picture, do they really matter? They're all stuck on stupid because they need their soma. I learned from Linda that in their society, you are categorized and assigned a specific job with specific instructions that you are to perform. Linda is a character who use to belong to the "civilized" society but, unfortunately, stayed on the reservation after giving birth which was wrong in the "civilized" society. So they "entertain" each other, t...

So Lenina had to choose between going to the North Pole or the a reservation and she chose the reservation because it interested her more. I feel like I've been reading into this text too fast because there's so much happening in one moment. One moment Lenina is thinking about her choices, next she is conversing with Henry, someone she had shared a bed with, about her new lover. Every time she feels unease she thinks about her soma, but of course that is what drugs can do to a person. Both Bernard and Lenina devote themselves to "Ford" and kind of use expressively. Bernard presented an observation to Lenina he made about themselves-she didn't get it. He said "...that's why we went to bed together last night...like infants-instead of waiting like adults..." For a man in his place, that's quite a bold observation, in my opinion.

While on their way back from their date, Lenina and Henry discuss the phosphorus recovery system that was taking place where basically energy is used from human corpse to help plants. Lenina points out that that people who are categorized as Alphas and Betas wouldn't make more plants grow than the "nasty Gammas, Deltas and Epsilons". I think she's pointing out that people are seen as a high respected individual when living but in death, they will only produce as much energy as the next corpse. Lenina and Henry were conditioned to believe, to a loop recording of the words "Everyone is happy now." for twelve years. Lenina and Henry go to a dining hall to eat soma, that youthful drug, which is converted into tablets and served with coffee. As they walked across the street after eating, they both failed to realize the beautiful moonlight and starry night because of the electric signs that blocked it. They went to a music hall and started dancing.

So, if I'm not mistaken, erotic pleasure is all these humans crave. It's so important to them that they've surrounded themselves with machines to do it for them. Even in public bathrooms. In the fourth chapter, we are introduced to Lenina Crowe a woman who realizes she is losing interest in pleasure. Bernard is a character who is just living according to his era but that makes me uncomfortable and hard to want to pay any attention to him. Bernard basically has trouble with his size and size matters in that setting. Enough said. He goes to confide in a friend. A lecturer by the name Helmholtz Watson. They have a conversation that was a little hard to keep up with. They talk about Lenina but Watson is too preoccupied being unsatisfied with his work. He feels he can do more with his writing.

Chapter three starts out with the Director who takes a student to a garden where naked children are playing sexual games because they were taught that it was just child's play. Immediately, I am already uncomfortable with this work. I'm intrigued at Huxleys' thought process but I'm not open to the path he chose to explain it. I'm analytical and can grasp abstract ideas, I don't need to be shocked to comprehend something that requires more thinking. As the Director is explaining, he is interrupted by a little boy hiding nearby in the bushes. He was uncomfortable with the "games" the other children were partaking in. Then we are introduced to Mustapha Mond,  resident controller for Western Europe. He's a valuable character because he has experience. Mond tells the children how the world worked before they were even thought to be conceived.  Basically, everyone became unstable in their relationships and desires which lead to disease, war and death. Fa...