Interesting Tidbits from Chapters 7 & 8
Reading these chapters, a couple of small things stuck out to me. The first thing was the similarity between proles in 1984 and the lower caste workers in Brave New World. It's interesting to me that both books would have a lower and working class, easily manipulated, and unintelligent group of people. I suppose it was due to the disparities between the classes back when the books were written, but the only difference really is that the lower caste people in Brave New World were engineered in a literal sense, whereas the proles in 1984 are "engineered" by societal processes, which in my opinion is much more realistic, as well as actually present in our world. The other thing that stood out to me was the concept of history being.. fake? Like it reminded me a lot about the anti-masker or flat-earther argument of "so you're just gonna believe what officials tell you?" but change that to like "well were you there when people were wearing top-hats?" It's a pretty irrational fear and silly argument but, and I feel like a goofball for writing this, but I was not in fact there in like Westward expansion times, so who am I to say that they happened? No, obviously there's proof of things that have happened in the past in the form of relics, paintings, pictures, fossils, all of that good stuff. It was just a funny concept to read and it was entertaining letting myself imagine history just straight up not being real for a brief moment. Also a little small thing I noticed was these authors are really mean to mothers, like in Brave New World the lady is described as like this foul monster, and in 1984 the mom has literal dust in the crevices of her face. It just seems sort of unnecessary.
Anyway, for my interaction portion, tell me about things you found interesting or funny in these chapters. Alternatively, share plans for your weekend, or your agora days schedule or something. And as a broader, more philosophical, serious question to send you off with to contemplate later, what if the past.. never happened?
The thing about mothers is striking -- really, women in general in these two books aren't treated very well. Hold that thought until we get to Handmaid's Tale. (Also, now my mind is spinning because what IF the past never happened??)
ReplyDeleteYou say that there is proof of past events like Westward expansion, but we have seen in 1984 how easily the Party changes records of the past. How can we be sure that our own records haven't been altered as well? Parts of our history could be completely fabricated, and if done convincingly enough, we would have no idea.
ReplyDeleteKind of connected to the idea of if you weren't there did it happen, I was interested in how evidence didn't actually matter. It seems kind of crazy, like if today evidence and proof weren't accepted or considered real then you could pretty much do anything and it would be totally okay.
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