LITERATURE ANALYSIS #3

1. Briefly summarize the plot of the novel you read according to the elements of plot you've learned in past courses (exposition, inciting incident, etc.).  Explain how the narrative fulfills the author's purpose (based on your well-informed interpretation of same).
2. Succinctly describe the theme of the novel. Avoid cliches.
3. Describe the author's tone. Include a minimum of three excerpts that illustrate your point(s).
4. Describe a minimum of ten literary elements/techniques you observed that strengthened your understanding of the author's purpose, the text's theme and/or your sense of the tone. For each, please include textual support to help illustrate the point for your readers. (Please include edition and page numbers for easy reference.)

CHARACTERIZATION
1. Describe two examples of direct characterization and two examples of indirect characterization.  Why does the author use both approaches, and to what end (i.e., what is your lasting impression of the character as a result)?
2. Does the author's syntax and/or diction change when s/he focuses on character?  How?  Example(s)?
3. Is the protagonist static or dynamic?  Flat or round?  Explain.
4. After reading the book did you come away feeling like you'd met a person or read a character?  Analyze one textual example that illustrates your reaction.

DISCLOSURE: I was kind of disturbed when I read the book so bear with me as this is going to be a rough literature analysis. The book was alright, but I think I need to read the book again to actually get comfortable with the characters and the plot.

Brave New World by Aldous Huxley

1. Brave New World by Aldous Huxley focuses on this utopian society where humans are born identically from different groups of fertilization. Yet, within their group, the fertilization is the identical which reproduces identical humans. Each group is then created/taught to do one specific thing. There are five groups which are the Alpha, the Beta, the Gamma, the Delta, and the Epsilon. This all a part of the process to populate and make the World State (utopia) successful. Then the story heads on to the lives of the characters and how they are all connected somehow. The second part of the story starts out with Lenina being attracted to an Alpha male, named Bernard. But really, she is dating Henry Foster, another alpha male. Later on in the story, Lenina and Bernard head off to another part of the World State where they meet John. The story then shifts and focuses on John. Bernard, Lenina, and John head back to London where Bernard and Lenina were initially from. When they head back to London, John then sees the difference in society between London and where he was from. From seeing what the World State has become, he questions the values of the World State's rules and regulations. He questions that why does the World State allow such experimentation to happen. He asks why do they allow the newly born humans to be taught a certain way or scientifically/genetically changed to have one viewpoint in life. John doesn't want to be a part of the World State and all of its questionable actions. The end of the story takes us to see that John goes to a lighthouse where he finds his solitude. When people found out where John is, because he was popular, the people pressured him to whip himself. After being pressured, the next morning, John then commits suicide because he gave in to the World State society and the pressure of the people. 

2. The theme of this novel is that society can take over your life easily, but it is our job to make sure that we submit to their desires that may go against our belief.

3. I feel the author's tone is straightforward and distressed.

• "Halting for a moment outside the door of the Director's room, Bernard drew a deep breath and squared his shoulders, bracing himself to meet the dislike and disapproval which he was certain of finding within."
• "With a faint hum and rattle the moving racks crawled imperceptibly through the weeks and the recapitulated aeons to where, in the Decanting Room, the newly-unbottled babes uttered their first yell of horror and amazement."
• "The mother and father (grotesque obscenity) forcing the daughter to have some one she didn't want!"

4. Ten Literary Elements and Techniques

• Plot- The plot connected altogether in some way. It could be that the characters evolved from the first part of the story.
• "One egg, one embryo, one adult-normality." P.17
• Narrator- The narrator was Huxley himself because it was in the third person omniscient POV.
• Still leaning against the incubators he gave them, while the pencils scurried illegibly across the pages, a brief description of the modern fertilizing process." P.17
• Mood- The book seem to be nightmarish, like it was some nightmare that had a frightening society.
• "Bent over their instruments, three hundred Fertilizers were plunged, as the Director of Hatcheries and Conditioning entered the room, in the scarcely breathing silence, the absent-minded, soliloquizing hum or whistle, of absorbed concentration. P.16
• Theme- The theme of this book was that society and technology will somehow change the way of life.
• " But a bokanovskified egg will bud, will proliferate, will divide...Making ninety-six human beings grow where only one grew before. Progress." P.17
• Conflict- The conflict of this story was that John was pressured by society and was disgusted by how society has changed.
• "Drawn by the fascination of the horror of pain and, from within, impelled by that habit of cooperation, that desire for unanimity and atonement, which their conditioning had so ineradicable implanted in them, they began to mime the frenzy of his gestures, string at one another as the Savage struck at his own rebellious flesh, or at the plump incarnation of turpitude writhing in the heather at his feet." P. 230
• Imagery- The imagery of the chaos of society helps build the purpose.
• "Hungrily they gathered round, pushing and scrambling like swine about the trough." P.230
• Narrative method- With the narrator being third person omniscient POV, we get to understand the story from an all-around point of view.
• "With an infinity of precautions she opened the door a quarter of an inch; peeped through the crack; was encouraged by the view of emptiness; opened a little further; and put her whole head out' finally tiptoed in to the room; stood for a few seconds with strongly beating heart, listening, listening; then darted to the front door, opened, slipped through, slammed, ran." P.179
• Dialogue- The dialogue between the characters helps characterize the characters who are speaking.
• "'But I don't want comfort. I want God. I want poetry. I want real danger, I want freedom, I want goodness. I want sin." (Savage)
• "'Not to mention the right to grow old and ugly and impotent; the right to have syphilis and cancer, the right to have too little to eat; the right to be lousy; the right to live in constant apprehension of what may happen tomorrow; the right to catch typhoid; the right to be tortured by unspeakably pains of every kind.'" (Mustapha Mond) P. 215
• Gothic- The Gothic parts of this book help to show how the book is really kind of dark and ominous.
• "Moreover, she wasn't a real savage, had been hatched out of a bottle and conditioned like any one else: so couldn't have really quaint ideas." P. 142
• Motif- The motif was a Brave New World where this society becomes a whole new world.
• "In a few minutes there were dozens of them, standing in a wide circle round the lighthouse, staring ,laughing, clicking their cameras, throwing (as to an ape) peanuts, packets of sex-hormones chewing-gum, pan-glandular petits beurres... As in a nightmare, the dozens became scores, the scores hundreds. P.227

Characterization

1. The author uses both approaches to inform the reader of who John really is.

• "The Savage meanwhile wandered restlessly round the room, peering with a vague superficial inquisitiveness at the books in the shelves, at the sound-track rolls and reading machine bobbins in their numbered pigeon-holes." This is an indirect characterization that John (Savage) is curious.
• "The Savage looked at him. He had been prepared to lie, to bluster, to remain sullenly unresponsive; but, reassured by the good-humoured intelligence of the Controller's face, he decided to tell the truth, straightforwardly. 'No.' He shook his head." This is an indirect characterization of who John is again. 
• "The bell rang, and the Savage, who was impatiently hoping that Helmholtz would come that afternoon." This is a direct characterization that the Savage is impatient.
• "His movements and the expression on his face were so menacing that the nurse fell back in terror. With a great effort he checked himself and, without speaking, turned away and sat down again by the bed." This is a direct characterization that the Savage can be frightening.

2. The author's syntax and diction stay the same whether or not he focuses on the characters.

• "In the Bottling Room all was harmonious bustle and ordered activity."
• "'And the bottles come in here to be predestined in detail.'"

3. I feel the protagonist is dynamic and round because John learns about the World State in London and is affected by all of the things he discovers with society.

4.After reading the book, I felt like I've met a person who is organized and has his own beliefs about society.

• "Of the money which, on his first arrival, John had received for his perosnal expenses, most had been spent on his equipment...Looking at the tins now, he bitterly reproached himself for his weakness. Loathsome civilized stuff! He had made up his mind that he would never eat it, even if he were starving."