I found a few strange coincidences between The Giver and Brave New World.
First off, both societies lack any animals; even pets. Second, in both societies a certain job is presented to an individual to perform for the rest of his/her life. i think the disappearance of pets has to do with cleanliness, while to give someone an important job means you're off the hook for telling them they should have a greater purpose in life. The jobs give the individual a sense of purpose that the rulers can disguise as that 'true greater purpose'.
Also strange is how in The Giver, there is no sex at all, while in Brave New World, it flourishes. But both societies run like dystopias ruled by a secret force that keeps its citizens in the dark. I just like to ponder how the two different societies manage to control their inhabitants, whether by conditioning or other strange truth-telling rituals. My question is, which society did a better job of controlling/keeping order?
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When I was reading Brave New World
ReplyDeleteI thought about The Giver and their similarities like how both choose the jobs and the future of the people and how they were able to control people but I think Brave New World did a better job because in The Giver, people were able to think and some things were kept secret like how people died. But in Brave New World people didn't care about the truth because they have been conditioned to be happy about it and used soma to keep from thinking about the truth because it gives them a good feeling that they would preferred the feeling than the truth.
I think that both of the similarities that you mentioned can be applied to most dystopian novels. For example, the novel 1984 also lacks animals and jobs are predetermined.
ReplyDeleteAlso, I feel that The Giver does a better job at keeping order because everyone is closely monitored to the point where people don't commit crimes or act out of the norm, where as in Brave New World people run amok doing whatever they pleased as long as it was within the set standards. However my opinion might stem from the fact that I find the society in The Giver is not as radical as that of Brave New World.
But in Brave New World, the citizens are watched too. Remember, Bernard and Helmholtz were discussing some, shall we say, out-of-place ideas. Then Bernard thought he heard someone at the door, but it was nothing. This hints that they are being watched. Also, if memory serves me well, Mustopha Mond explicitly says so, as well.
ReplyDeletei think that Brave New World did a better job of keeping order becasue it uses human desires , like greed and lust, to control society. The giver restricts what people can have while Brave New World does not. In a society in which you could have almost anything you wanted, why would you ever want anything more. I do agree with kylie in the fact that the giver is more mild, and less radical than Brave New World. I would even concider Brave New World (despite its better job of keeping control) more risky than the giver, because it is on a larger scale.the world state encompases almost the whole wolrd. This means that it would be easier, in my opinion, for a domino affect to occur, in which a new social norm is created and heavily adopted by everyone because there is a larger population and more peer pressure. The giver is more of a small scale society.
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