Thursday, April 25, 2013
From the first 57 pages of A Brave New World, there are numerous connections with the Handmaids Tale, as well as Children of Men. In all three, the main conflict or issue is fertility and the role of parents in a child's upbringing. The book begins in a fertility factory, where they have developed extremely efficient artificial insemination processes. The factory can produce 96 humans from one egg, and close to 15,000 humans from one ovary. The whole process is completely mechanical, and no human interaction is involved. There are no parents, no families, and no real emotional connections between people. The role of parents and families is very similar in the Handmaids Tale, where the mother has no connection to her child, and the role of parents is very minimal. Having said that, there are more physical interactions in the process of making the baby in the Handmaids Tale; however, after the birth the role of the mother is very minimal. The key similarity, however, is the concept of pro creation, and how in each of these futures it is the crucial difference. In Children of Men there is rampant infertility, and this threw the society into chaos. In the Handmaids Tale, the role of parenting and the process of pro creating is completely warped, and it resulted in an oppressive society. I am interested to read more into A Brave New World, and see how this surreal fertility process influences the citizens of this twisted society.
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I agree with Chris. It is interesting to compare The Handmaids Tale and Children of Men. In all three works, the major conflict is fertility. In each work, they approach this problem differently. In The Handmaids Tale, the society regulates the reproduction of babies by isolating a group of fertile women and having them sleep with the commanders. The society is in complete control over which individuals and groups are allowed to have intercourse with the commanders. In Children of Men, the entire world is in turmoil with the declining or almost non-existent birth rates. The boat tomorrow is an escape from the world and into a fantastical place where there is fertility. In Aldous Huxley’s Brave New World, the society also tries to cope with the conflict of fertility. Instead of regulating the intercourse, the society has come up with an efficient way to produce humans. It is almost like the humans are merely objects. They go through these assembly lines where they are categorized or trained to look and act a certain way. The society thinks that by doing this, it will provide stability. The Controller says “Stability”, that “stability. The primal and ultimate need. Stability. Hence all this” (43). In each one of these works, the society is solely trying to keep everything stable. Reading or watching these pieces, the audience might think that their actions towards the people in the society is oppressive, but each society is only trying to retain control and stability.
ReplyDeleteAnd yet, in Brave New World, the citizens seem to accept this method! Even Bernard, the novel's anti-dystopian protagonist, does not necessarily oppose the test-tube process. In both Children of Men and The Handmaid's Tale, the protagonists and the societies at large reject the stability that is offered through fertility regulation, while citizens in Brave New World are more accepting of that notion.
ReplyDeleteIt's interesting that in Brave New World and in The Handmaid’s Tale the role of parents is very similar – the biological parents are isolated from their offspring and the process of raising a child is done at arm’s length, unemotionally – yet the “naturalness” of conception and birth are complete opposites between the two societies. In The Handmaid’s Tale, there is no technology involved in the process at all: no artificial insemination, no drugs to control fertility, no control of the growth of the fetus, and a completely natural birth. It seems the society in Brave New World is absolutely in contradiction with these ideas. Their babies are grown in test tubes, controlled to yield a specific result, mechanized, completely artificial in every way. I think this could be important regarding Ms. Graham’s point about no one in Brave New World objecting to the mechanized child-creating process; when removed from the natural world and other human things, people seem to lose their humanity, sense of self, and sense of purpose.
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