explain how one character from BRAVE NEW WORLD would respond to the event, the opinions the character would have about what was happening in the event, and how it all relates to an escape from the cave.
DYSTOPIAN WRITING ASSESSMENT | Better Read than Dead: insert your sub-title here
Many Dystopian Novels are reactionary pieces to events that are headlining the news in their respective publication decades. In some way, shape or form, they promote an escape from the cave. Many of the issues that irked Aldous Huxley when he wrote his novel are in the news today. You probably noticed that the attitudes exhibited are those YOU have held about recent and current events.
For this paper, pull the following facets together –
- evidence from the NOVEL:BRAVE NEW WORLD (minimum 3 quotes from the text),
- INFO from Utopia Lecture,--use the slide Essentials of Utopian LIt (ON THE BOTTOM OF THE PAGE I WROTE SOME OF THE NOTES FROM THE LECTURE)
- a discussion on your WHAT IF choice(what if choices: CASTE, DRUGS, MEDICAL ADVANCEMENTS, LOVE), (intro or in body argument)
- a CURRENT NEWS REPORT from a reputable news organization (minimum 1 quote),
- and how, together, they promote or do not promote an ESCAPE FROM THE CAVE.
Then in your paper, explain how one character would respond to the event, the opinions the character would have about what was happening in the event, and how it all relates to an escape from the cave.
Consider the following formula:
- Identify your character and describe their personality, using quotations or direct reference to incidents in the novel to substantiate your claims about the character. What general issues interest him or her?
- Indicate which of the What Ifs you explored.
- Categorize the news article, then summarize it and document the source from which you garner this information.
- Explain how you and your character would respond to the current event you’ve summarized. You may show your attitude through choice of words and images (which is the way writers reflect TONE–author’s attitude toward a particular subject).
- Explain how you and the character see this as an escape from the cave.
- You may be creative in your organization – What is critical is that you show you understand the personality and motivation of the character in the novel.
- Include documentation of book and current news events.
LECTURE NOTES
why write about utopias?
- To illustrate …
- To warn …
- To bring …
- We must become aware …
- We must learn …
essentials of utopian literature
- the dangers of scientific advancement
- the dangers of alcoholism and drug abuse
- the dangers of too much government control
- the dangers of spiritual absence
- the dangers of conformity
- the absence of emotion
- the lack of family
In this unit we will attempt to answer this Driving Question …
- How do Dystopian Novels promote an escape from “the cave?”
brave new world
- written by Aldous Huxley
- published 1932
- written to criticize western civilization
- expresses Huxley’s distress at what he regarded as the spiritual bankruptcy of the modern world and mysticism caused by the widespread use of alcohol and hallucinatory drugs
- expresses a possible future of a society he saw slipping from grace
- Huxley’s Utopia is by no means perfect, as he never intended it to be
- wrote Brave New World revisited in the 1950s to reassess how accurate his original projections were… it turns out that he was pretty accurate… especially if you look at our world even fifty years later