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Tia
Joshua
Maayown
Justin
Isabel
Navid
Sarah
Ansley
Katie

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Micah
Vinay
Akshay
Bella
Noam
Ravi
Tyler
Jullie
Lucas

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Yoon Ji
Max
Jackson
Erin
Yusuf
Samah
Cheran
Jeffrey
Alison

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Question 1
I agree with Joshua with his choice of John the Savage, as a character. His free-will ultimately led to his demise of death.
Both insanity and lunacy are synonyms, so there is no lesser evil between the two choices. John is thought of as a lunatic by the others, yet he sees others as insane before him, until he inevitably goes insane as well.
Question 2
I believe that society and societal norms are the main antagonist(s) of the novel because they harm each of the characters in their own way, such as Bernard's marginalization in society, Helmholtz censorship, John's encounter with Lenina, etc. They all show the harm caused by society itself. No one character is the true antagonist of the novel here.

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Question 5
The worship of Science and Technology is found everywhere, especially when Bernard talks about their hypnopaedic slogans to worship science. It is hypocritical of itself because they encourage science, but their citizens aren't allowed to actually perform useful science because. I agree with Cheran because this scenario, where science is worshiped, yet still oppressed, sets a double standard for society itself.
Question 6
I agree with Cheran again because a psychoanalytic lens is the best way to observe how the needs of the marginalized and oppressed, and how the "real" people are the people who have true emotions and physiological needs, as seen with Maslow's hierarchy. Here this hierarchy is reversed in a sense, because those that enjoy free thought, need the peak of the hierarchy first, before they can guarantee their safety in society. This is exemplified by John the savage, and his death.

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Question 3:
John's death shows how society has finally taken over John and the only way for John to escape is to commit suicide. Society as a whole has taken over him and surrounded him to the point of suffocation. He feels that death is the only escape and the only way to show he has control over his life. I agree with Akshay that his death was his only choice and only way that he could be free.
Question 4:
Both Julie and Bella make a good argument showing how Huxley is warning us. Back then when it was written there was lots of fascism and propaganda and some increasing technology which Huxley used to show that with developmenting technology and science the world changes. This is the warning to show the dangers that ideas and beliefs can bring to a society.
Question 5:
I agree with Max about science and technology, how soma and conditioning are used to control society. Also Mond says that science is limited. Another motif is self and society. these are very big in the World State how they do not want you alone but in one with society to blind you of the truths of life. However, Bernard and John both confess they feel alone and tend to keep to themself. This shows how even with the "perfectness" of the new society and World State things still go wrong and few can still find the truth in all the wickedness.
Question 6:
I agree with Samah about the motivation of people and reading it through psychoanalytic lense. A big theme is motivation through differences of society and forced motivation through conditioning and compare to John's free will motivation.

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Agree with Joshua: John was granted free will in his actions with the world state. Had John acted differently, then he might not have resulted in such a way. His demise is derived of the world state from the competing societal views. The insanity and lunacy part relate to one another and describe John's free will.

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question 1 - john's choice between solitary confinement/living in the World State is similar to insanity/lunacy-both are bad choices. i think free will could also be related to john's choice of suicide (which is completely voluntary) as it shows that he chooses a third route instead of insanity or lunacy
question 2 - i think there isn't really an antagonist, it's mainly the way humans have built the society itself that conditions individuals like Mond; in fact, he relates to Bernard/John in many ways but shows how the State has changed his views. and the individual himself could be at fault
question 3 - agree with akshay, john has been reduced to a smaller self and that death is the only solution. the ending with the feet going in circles, pointing in all directions, might show how he (and society itself) has lost direction and purpose. good connection to things fall apart, john and okonkwo use suicide as a means to escape society
question 4 - appeals to the future in ways that weren't present in that time, materialism, destroyed individuality, drug abuse, and other topics in the present

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1- I completely agree with Joshua, John is the greatest example of the question. For example, in this situation, John used his free will to ask for removal from the World State and go to Iceland with Bernard and Helmholtz. This is his choice of free will, even though his request was denied. Also, like Justin said, both choices kinda suck so making this choice is limited but still shows free will of choice.
2- Society and the mindless members of society are the antagonists in this novel. even though people are controlled through hypnopaedia, people can still be skeptical of society like Bernard.
3- I agree with Bella, it truly shows John's free will and choice to not let society win. Instead of having a long drawn out death like his mother, he kills himself in a way were society can't control him, just like how society controlled the final days of his mother.
4- Fascism ruled over many of the strongest countries of the world at the time, this book tries to teach a lesson and prevent society from reaching states that world powers were before.

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1. Agree with Joshua- both insanity and lunacy were chosen to be synonyms/ and John's free will led to his demise
2. Maayown  makes a good point when he says the World State is the antagonist
I think it's important to point out that the self could also be of interest; John relies too much on superego and kills himself when he can't forgive himself for taking part in an orgy
3.  Huxley portrays John's death in a despondent way
short, choppy sentences
-loss of self/identity in an oppressive society ruled by the government
4. techniques employed to  repress it
citizens had technology that was realistic and nonexistent
5.

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1. John is one of the characters we see most openly show these symptoms of lunacy. The World State was supposed to be his perfect world but it turned out different from what he expected. So much so that he developed a dramatic shift in character.
2. i agree that society is the antagonist in this novel. I agree with Joshua as how Mond is only a representative of their society.
5. Self and society is also a motif seen all around the novel. The people of the World State most people are aware that they are a singular person but are conditioned to seek the welfare of the society and throw away all their individuality for stability.
6. I agree with Max as how through this novel we see how this novel is best shown through a Marxist lens even though the lower caste does not go through a rebellion because they don't feel as if they're being oppressed.

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1. I agree with Katie. Bernard's shift in characterization from an internal insanity to an external lunacy is a good example.
And it is clear that throughout the book, John also presents these shifts especially in the last chapter.
2.  I think that the antagonist is also Mond because he is one of the few people in society that is knowledgeable about the past, but chooses to accept the society for how it is and dismissing the past as corrupt. It makes him kind of a hypocrite, because he also made mistakes and was almost sent away to an island as well, yet he's one of the present Ten World Controllers.
3.  I think Bella brings up a good point. The fact that John chose his own demise goes against the World State's entire idea of predestination. Micah's relation of the novel to Things Fall Apart was a good addition, as well.
4.

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John is the most obvious candidate for someone who reaches his demise. He continuously gets closer and closer to finally breaking and exercising his own free will. John goes insane, he is forced to do everything he never wanted to.

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1. John was once pure because he hadn't experienced civilization. When he started throwing up, he tried to purge himself of civilization. When he started to beat himself, he was trying to remove his impure thoughts. he realizes that he cannot remove these feelings, thoughts, and memories, so he hangs himself as his only escape. Lunacy vs. insanity: i agree that insanity and lunacy are used as synonyms. John is the only person who grew up with free will and he went crazy, so he matches up with the quote
2. I agree with Maayown. The whole world state is the antagonist. Mustapha mond may seem like the antagonist, but in the end, Mond and everyone else is controlled by the world state.
5. I agree with Erin that materialism is fake happiness, and as long as the citizens are happy, they are controlled
6. I agree with Allison that Marxism is the lens which we should examine this novel through. Everyone has a place in society but everyone is "equal". These statements contradict each other because t

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Question 1:
I agree with both Joshua and Katie. The demented free will of society causes insanity for both Bernard and John. This insanity that they both develop leads to their demise throughout the novel.
Question 1 Continued:
Joshua is also correct in his description of how Helmholtz is slowly driven insane. The given quote relates to how the demented free will of the world state society leads to the demise of Helmholtz
Question 2:
Mond, character wise, is most definitely the antagonist of the novel. In his conversation with Helmholtz and John, he agrees with both of their beliefs, but still tries to highlight how his society is perfectly engineered to operate smoothly. Rather than fix the common societal problems and establish unity, Mond would rather take pride in his engineered society and become a prominent leader of the world state.

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What about god and religion. Please talk about Mustapha Mond's view on god and how he thinks god is futile. God and religion is a motif that can be seen throughout the book: Ford's replacing of Jesus, sacrifice for rain, god has no use in areas of no conflict.

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I think the quote shows that there really isn't a choice and that people will end up crazy no matter what, and this is shown in John's inevitable demise in the world state, a place he doesn't belong in and that he will never understand

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i agree with isabel. The people in the world state think that they are constantly progressing in society, but they are doing the same messed up stuff. I agree with joshua. although we dont really see helmholtz in the novel too much, he is also different in a way, since he rebels against society a little bit. I agree with maayown, because all the people in the world state are just acting how they were conditioned. one could argue the director would be an antagonist, but he left too early.

i agree with salma, it is shown (unless you are someone of high class like mond) if you show any individuality, you are seen as different.

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I agree with Isabel that the World State itself is insane. The people exercise insanity every day. With soma and just with the way the citizens treat others.

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I agree with Maayown and I think that the idea of the world state itself is the antagonist because as a book of ideas, the novel is warning about the idea of complete control and giving up everything that makes us human for" happiness"and stability. I don't think Mond is the antagonist because mustapha is simplu a way to convey the idea and philosophies of the state

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I agree with both Maayown and Ansli. I also thought that there was not just one antagonist, the World State's society all together are one big antagonist. I also think that Mustapha Mond is probably the main antagonist. Lastly, I think that Bernard could be the antagonist as well. He is the reason that John came to the World State, he changes against John and Helmholtz. And in a sense, Bernard caused John to evidently take his own life.

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Q'mero numero twomero: Yes, World State is Antagonist; but Mond can also be an antagonist because of his political views and his beliefs as a world controller of what belongs in this  society

Q3: Agree that John has been stripped of his former self. You can also interpret how John is escaping unlike everyone else, who just is predestined to die, and does not feel anything.

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I agree with Isabel, Joshua, and Maayown because society is revealed to be the antagonist. Joshua saying there are representatives is accurate in saying that figures represent the negative ideas of the world state.

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Yusuf Khan

Question 1- John’s madness reflects this quote in its entirety. Huxley wrote, “Human beings are given free will in order to choose between insanity on one hand and lunacy on the other” (Question 1). As the novel progresses, John originally maintains a sense of freedom in that he remains distant from the conforms of society. In essence, he intends to avoid such decisions in regard to morals and values. However, his free will turns to insanity as he becomes “Savage” like his name states. In Chapter Fourteen, John reacts negatively to Linda’s soma dream that he “… actually caught her by the shoulder and shook her” (Huxley 205). John loses his morality in that moment of free will as he plunges into insanity.

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Question 3:

It appears the reporters and rest of the society, vultures essentially, have finally found their meal, a cow beaten of its value hanging like the meat Marx described bitterly early in the novel to compare how people treated objects of beauty. Marx snarled how they were " Talking about her [Lenina] as though she were a bit of meat" (Huxley 122).  We see his feet and body twisting almost endlessly, and this is exemplified once Huxley selects the direction if the setting sun to close the novel. After so much connection between John and the light of God, how John has grown beneath the sun and its teachings despite lacking a sacred text. This shows the light of God to have finally left both the World State's people and John, and savagery being inevitable, tying into the quote of the first question.

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3) Huxley has showed that John has degraded himself from his true personality after he joined the World State. After John realized that the World State robbed from his true self, John decided to take his life as a punishment to himself and it was his only way to escape from this living nightmare.
4) I agree with Bella and Jullie, because since the World was in depression, there was nothing that could be done to save it, but when soma was introduced, it helped create a false sense of happiness to help motivate the World to help the society prosper

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Question 3. Akshay has an interesting idea that only showing the feet shows John in a reduced state, and I completely agree that Huxley was trying to characterize John this way one final time. One thing I'd like to add is that usually when a protagonist represents an idea, they usually win somehow. Yet, Okonkwo from Things Fall Apart and John both lose and both end up killing themselves.
Question 5. I agree that Science and Technology plays a large role in the society but ends up having very little in the realm of science due to lack of experiments or expansion. I also agree that Soma is a very repetitive representation of material happiness, or materialism.
Question 6. While I agree that psychoanalytic lens would be a good way to look at the novel, I think marxism better analyzes the book as a whole and not just individual characters. The question states that this book is a novel of ideas. Rather than characters, Marxism better analyzes the society: the main driving idea of the novel.

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I agree with Akshay and that society has broken John and degraded him to only a shell of his former self. The West his feet are portrayed show how in this society even this action is unimportant and that the people will move on to some other distraction within a few days. John's death also fulfills his promise in chapter 18 that he will escape the society no matter what, and after the orgy he realizes that there is no real way to escape except for death.

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1) I agree with Bella because John's situation is unique and tragic. Nonetheless, John does kill himself even though it goes against everything he believes in unlike the others. His situation is unique to the novel and does indeed show how he is such an outsider in the novel. Overall, Bella's explanation is good.

I also agree with Ravi. Good explanation and relation to Huxley's overall opinion of the novel.

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#3 : I agree with Bella he takes control of his own life and has no outside opinion and it goes against everything, because he believes it is the only way escape the BNW. It relates to the 2nd question because you can argue that Mond ultimately pushed John to this extreme point.

#4 : I agree with the idea that the conditioning (slogans and soma) relate to BNW and the Depression

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I agree with those who declared Mond as the main antagonist of the novel. Clearly, the World Controller orchestrates the downfall of both the Director and Benard in that he approved John's arrival and continued experimentation. In addition, Mond does not follow the rules of society himself and actually read forbidden books with knowledge of the past. "There were those strange rumors of old forbidden books hidden in a safe in the Controller's study" (Huxley 35). At the book's end, it is Mond who benefits most of all from the inevitable downfall of John.

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Question 3:
I agree with Akshay and Bella in that John's death is, in his mind, death is his only escape from the torture he lives in. Ravi does well to highlight that society doesn't care about John's death in the larger scope of the novel, he is merely a small piece of a large, complicated puzzle.
Question 4:
I agree with Akshay, specifically in terms of his relation of hypnopaedic slogans with communist propaganda slogans. In BNW, people are repeated these messages for the majority of their childhood, ingrained with these messages. In the old Stalin regimes, there were posters everywhere painting simple, strong pictures of the government. Children were shown and saw these posters themselves, causing them to have these certain propaganda messages ingrained into their minds over time.

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3. Throughout the novel John deteriorates as a character, slowly becoming something that he hates, and beginning to resent himself. We see this at the end of the novel when he does something that he hates, and goes against his values and takes his own life.
I agree with Ravi, as he pointed out that Huxley wrote the ending in a way that makes death seem insignificant and desensitized, relating to how the people who discovered him didn't really see him as a person, but more as a character.
4. I agree with Tyler, as he points out that there are examples (thought not proven) of how in more recent times drugs have been used to try and control a community, similar to the use of soma in the book.
5. I agree with Max and Cheran when they said that science was a major theme and part of society in the novel as everything is controlled through technology and science.  Through science and technology they are able to control the different aspects of society, whether it be exposure to the outside world, the education of its people, and the way their attitudes are towards life.

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#3- The final page of Brave New World shows how death is truly seen in their society and how no one really cares for it. I also like how Ravi pointed out how they never explained how he looked but how he was swinging.'

#4-

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3. I think that the way that johns death is described shows how little the world thought of him as a person. I agree with what Ravi said about how they didnt describe him, they mostly described his body.
4. I agree with Bella and Julie because I think Huxley was trying to show a future of the wants that people had at the time. During the great depression, people wants and needs intertwined. They wanted and needed food/ money. I think in Huxley's world, he filled it with the things that people during the depression wanted. They wanted happiness again. they wanted money and jobs and anything to make their lives so much easier than it was. Huxley's world had that, and i think he was trying to warn the people that there having too much of the things you want is bad.
5. One of the biggest motives that can be seen at the end of the novel is god and religion, just like what Max is saying. Mond talks a lot about religion. He is one of the few people who have read about it, and he still chooses to worship Ford. Religion on the novel (in terms of Ford) is used to keep stability. If everyone worships a different God, then it will be harder to control them.
6. I think the best way to look at the book is through a Marxist lens. The idea of classes and a caste system is very obvious and the question as to "who benefits?"I agree with what Yusef said about it because the way the caste system is set up, not everyone can benefit even though the world state thinks they can.

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I think the way that Huxley portrays science and technology is far ahead of any actual technology of his time, but things that seem a lot less crazy today, such as birth out of the womb. The use of soma is also an idea that is much more relevant today, which can be seen with the number of prescription ads on television and the huge opioid crisis throughout the society, and it encourages the thing Huxley was warning is about that, that we are running from our problems and instead of trying to fix the problem, we try to hide the with drugs

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Huxley warns against the rise of oppression within society. He argues against the marginalized and outcast individuals as reflected in today's society.

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1. Jackson's explanation is valid.
2. Samah's explanation is very good and accurate.

Individuality is a necessity. In Brave New World, individuality doesn't exist. "Everyone belongs to everyone."

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Question 5: Human  Impulsiveness

Throughout the novel, readers are met with a society lacking in moderation; the mass majority of the World State (Linda, namely) consumes endlessly Soma as means of escapism, John consumes pain in a way identical, and Bernard feeds from popularity. This suggests that the World State and all societies feed from addiction, to success, to drugs, to happiness, and that, regardless of benefits in the moment, one should not allow themselves to be consumed by their benefits. Ergo, the novel suggests it is necessary to take a step back from our vices, our addictions, to retain moderation, a balance within oneself.

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6) I agree with Cheran because the society's primary question is what is the motivation for the characters, but in the novel, the entire society's main motive is to grow and gain strength. I think the book is also following a Marxist lens because the the novel has also split the people into different classes.

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#5: I agree with Max and Cheran because science is a huge theme and part of this novel. The science is what actually does control society, without the scientific advances, there would be free will and no way for the World State to produce the exact society they want. I also agree with Erin, in the novel one of the things society cares about most is materials. The World State fixed the problem of having to fix anything, so everything they have is new and not broken. Just how society is.
#6: Not that it is more important to look at the book in a Marxist lens, but this is the best and most obvious way to look at it. This is one of the bigger problems in the book, and society in real life was dealing with that as well at the time.

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#5: I agree with Max with how science and technology are related to the overall theme of BNW. The science behind the conditioning and the creation of Soma are the true controls. Without those the entire society would fall apart because the majority of the population is dependent on soma and would fall apart without it. EX( the hospital when John throws the soma out the windows and the people go insane )

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#5
I agree with Cheran: science and technology are the main descirptors of their society. This is seen at the beginning of the novel and remains consistent throughout. The theme can be revealed that certain things that cause for a loss of freedom are forms of corruption. These are "representatives" of the theme. By having clones, loss of individuality is highlighted.
#6
It is important to look through the Marxist lens because  of the caste system.