4/24/13
I found Huxley's style in chapter 3 to be very unique and interesting. Rather than following a traditional format, he weaves together multiple conversations and storylines and tells them simultaneously. While it was slightly confusing at first, the separate narratives were varying enough to be easily distinguished. Huxley starts by introducing the three separate story lines (Lenina talking to Fanny, Foster talking with Bernard Marx and the Assistant Predestinator, and the World Controller Mustapha Mond lecturing his group of students), and then slowly integrates them by splicing in paragraphs. The sections of each text get shorter and shorter, creating a build of intensity as more about the society is revealed, until it reaches a sort of climax as the key component of this society's stability is exposed: the drug soma. Soma keeps the people relaxed and casual sex keeps them happy, so no one is troubled enough to fight against their oppressive and controlling government.
Lea G.
I agree that this is a very unique and powerful writing style. I think our first reading was mostly setting up the scene and the conflict in the book and there was no room for creative language and sentence structures because otherwise the initiation of the plot would have been too complicated for the readers to follow. I thought the tempo was really cool, because at the beginning of the chapter, the individual segments were paragraph length and at the end they were only short single lines. This definitely helps the reader see that Huxley is building to something important, and the quick transitions at the end of the chapter have the reader bouncing back and forth a a rapid rate, with only fragments of ideas left in their brains. I thought in particular, that the interjections of the recording that is being played in the nurseries, is almost mesmerizing and hypnotic as it is inserted into all of the other dialogues. For example, the repetition of the lines "Ending is better than mending. The more stitches, the less riches" (49) almost creates the same affect as the Hypnopaedia, and I felt as though I had almost memorized most of the recording by the time I finishes the section. I also found that these snip-its from the recording connected a lot of the other dialogues under a common theme. For instance, as the World Controller Mustapha Mond is telling the history of the world, it parallels "ending is better than mending," because at that time the leaders chose to end the failing road and start a completely new one, this is when the time changed to "After Ford," and thus they gave up on the society and started fresh, just as they are teaching young children to do with clothing.
ReplyDeleteThis chapter is particularly powerful in its structure, and I'm pleased that you both responded to it as you have here. I agree - the escalating intensity is heightened as the sections become shorter, and those repeated phrases and fragmented ideas definitely allow the reader to experience some of how the citizens exist. Because of Soma, they are unable to fully retain meaning, and the world around them becomes fragmented too.
ReplyDelete