Monday, July 4, 2011

Brave New World - Eighteen

"'They're well off; they're safe; they're never ill; they're not afraid of death; they're blissfully ignorant of passion and old age; they're plagued with no mothers or fathers; they've got no wives, or children, or lovers to feel strongly about; they're so conditioned that they practically can't help behaving as they ought to behave'" (pg 220).

In the above passage, Mustapha uses an anaphora (I think this counts?) through repeating the word they.  I find it ironic that he refers to the different castes as they, and never as we, as if he does not have the same luxuries.  This chapter really seems to characterize Mustapha as a totalitarian aimed at not letting the stability of his carefully calculated civilization.  I support this by the demeaning connotation I usually connect with calling a group of people they as opposed to a more suiting grouping term.  This anaphora portrays the various castes as actual people as opposed to just machines like had earlier been supposed by me.  Most of all, I feel like this repetition is Mustapha's way of reassuring himself that what he is doing is actually the correct path.  This hypothesis seems supported by the Controller who tells us that he even wanted to leave for a short time.  Mustapha appears to have all the support of his loyal followers, but people do seem, at this point in the novel, to be more opposed to several of the regulations.  Again though, his repetition in the above passage seems to be him reassuring himself that people will continue to follow these rules.

Also in this chapter, I realized the correlation between "Fordship" and a bishop, but that is another story.

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