Similar To Power Struggles, Even When Conversations Occur

The idea of being ruled by a totalitarian power has never ceased to scare an audience that fears of being controlled. It is in this case that we can establish from the reality we see today in certain countries, that we create our own story of how dystopian societies can many ways be seen. Dystopian societies in movies and novels have played a huge role in our lives, from: Suzanne Collins The Hunger Games, Alduous Huxley’s Brave New World and Lois Lowry’s The Giver. Cementing humanities faults by exploiting them through harsh ideals of suppressing power. But among those movies and novels and many more, two have resonated in our minds; not only mimicking what is seen today in Syria and North Korea, but also presenting foreshadow of what is possibly going to be. The film 1984 and the novel Fahrenheit 451 use fear and illusion to capture the horror of dystopian societies that use totalitarian power to control the masses.

There are two learning processes that are used, classical condition and operant conditioning. One learning process used is classical conditioning. Classical conditioning is a learning process in which a neutral stimulus becomes associated with a meaningful stimulus and acquires the capacity to elicit a similar response. I found two TV commercials that are excellent examples for classical conditioning. The first commercial I found is an Old Spice commercial. The ad starts off with an attractive man in a bathroom telling women to compare the men in their lives to him, stating that if men would stop using girl body wash they could be like him. The ad then moves to a boat where the man in the commercial offers the women in the audience two tickets to something they would enjoy and diamonds and then states that anything is possible if men used Old Spice as a body wash to smell like a man, not a lady. The second commercial I chose is a Nike advertisement. Throughout the advertisement there are young, attractive, fit, and famous people working hard to succeed.

Aldous Huxley’s Brave New World incorporates the political ploy of brainwashing and uses it to promote the common belief. While the term “brainwashing” was coined during the Cold War era, it still carries heavy implications and often suggests harsh techniques. Subsequently, brainwashing can be seen as ridding a person of their own ideology and replacing it with a more suitable collection of thoughts. Through techniques of mass education, thought control, and depravation of critical judgment, the World Controllers in the Brave New World are brainwashing their citizens and creating a perpetual state of dependency and confusion, serving as a warning for modern civilizations.

Totalitarianism diminishes the idea of individuality and destroys all chances of self-improvement, and human’s natural hunger for knowledge. In George Orwell’s famous novel, “1984”, totalitarianism is clearly seen in the exaggerated control of the state over every single citizen, everyday, everywhere. Totalitarianism can also be seen in the book “Brave New World” by Aldous Huxley, in which humans are synthetically made and conditioned for their predestinated purpose on earth. The lack of individualism will lead a community towards a dystopia in which freedom is vanished by the uncontrolled power of the state.

Whether Orwell is recreating the ghastly atmosphere of fear and torture in Nazi Germany or in the most repressive part of the Stalinist regime, we see clearly the opposition between the charismatic leader and his inner corps of privileged lieutenants, and the collective mass of dehumanised persons who are no longer individuals. Paradoxically,

Reading Brave New World written by Aldous Huxley, readers are led to a dystopia in which the World State takes control over everything including reproduction, consumption and the most important of all‐conditioning. Although Lenina and Linda are not the main characters that bring the story to its climax, they play significant roles in the story as they represent the people being affected by the World State conditioning.

The world that is overrun with tyranny creates the capacity for people to be forced to live in inhumane conditions. This often involves a leader who silences people by restricting their power and limiting them to a lifestyle that is unsatisfactory compared to the elite in society. Through the novel 1984 and short story 2081, authors George Orwell and Kurt Vonnegut introduce readers to the idea of inhumanity by means of mentally incapacitating citizens and holding them at equal rankings through means of oppression.

In these questions I will analyze the characters while focusing on how the events in 1984 have made them who they are. I will also discuss the types of conditioning in the book and give examples of the conditioning. Then I will talk about some of the laws or regulations in the world today that I find to be not-constitutional. Finally I will define progressicism, socialism, communism and Marxism, and who founded them.

One may think that the society in Aldous Huxley’s Brave New World is a gross representation of the future, but perhaps our society isn’t that much different. In his foreword to the novel Brave New World, Aldous Huxley envisioned this statement when he wrote: "To make them love it is the task assigned, in present-day totalitarian states, to ministries of propaganda...." Thus, through hypnopaedic teaching (brainwashing), mandatory attendance to community gatherings, and the use of drugs to control emotions, Huxley bitterly satirized the society in which we live.

The system of power society has often have unexpected consequences when used in an abusive manner. My study of Brave New World has enabled me to understand that a society is capable to control the behaviours and actions of its people in order to preserve its own stability and power. In Huxley’s Brave New World, rather than using violence to enforce the law like Bruce Dawe’s Weapons Training; those in power in this futuristic society have simply programmed the citizens to be happy with the laws. This is evident through Huxley’s use of personification, “Government’s an affair of sitting, not hitting.” The rhythmic notion of “sitting” and “hitting” suggests that the same power is limited only by those individuals who desire to be unhappy. The

Free will and individualism are rights that have been used as symbols of peace and progressive, but they also have been viewed as weakness and a liability. Although free will and individualism should be viewed as good, there are times in history when they were considered a problem. These times are addressed in George Orwell’s 1984 and Toni Morrison’s Beloved. Both novels choose to outline the lost of free will and individualism through the lens of an oppressed group, and while the oppression that each group have their differences, both express how free will and individualism is suppressed and how people lived under oppression without their rights.

Dystopian novels have become more common over the last century; each ranging from one extreme society to the next. A dystopia, “A futuristic, imagined universe in which oppressive societal control and the illusion of a perfect society are maintained through corporate, bureaucratic, technological, moral, or totalitarian control,”[1] through an exaggerated worst-case scenario, criticizes about current trends, societal norms, or political systems. The society in Brave New World by Aldous Huxley is divided in a caste system, in which humans are not individuals, do not have the opportunity to be individuals, and never experience true happiness. These characteristics of the reading point towards a well-structured

Aldous Huxley’s “Brave New World”, and George Orwell’s “1984” both portray totalitarian regimes who strive for complete control over their population. The methods that they use to achieve this are almost polar opposites. While one uses war/bombing, thought/relationships, and through the dreaded room 101 as a means of control, the other uses sex/orgies, relationships, and soma to establish order throughout the population.

Derived from opinions and views of the Father of Communism and adapted to fit literature both modern and classic, the Marxist lens is a particular way to view literature in relation to a powerful bourgeoisie that abuses a less powerful or economically prevalent proletariat. Upon viewing a text through this lens, common themes such as said abusement and commonly struggles for power become commonplace. Through these lens, one can view Shakespeare’s Hamlet and find social classes set in the book and desires for power within and between them. While viewing Hamlet through the Marxist lens, one could identify the tragedy as a struggle for power and a lesson on retaliation and violence overall.

One major link includes the fight between an oppressed group and their persecutors. Whether it’s the proletariat and the bourgeois in “The Communist Manifesto,” or the inequality of genders in “The Second Sex,” or the flight of the African Americans in the “Letter from Birmingham Jail”. In all of these texts we are shown how easy it is for one group to abuse their power and create unfair rules and regulations only imposed on the more inferior members of society. Each group of oppressor thrives off of alienating, and subjugating their inferiors.