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Death

So the scene where the neighborhood was burned down was pretty chocking. Most of the people Lauren knew and grew up with died, yet it seems like she hasn't really addressed it. Sure she expressed shock when she first learned Zahra saw her family members dying, yet it seems like there was no grieving or anything for all the people they lost. And this makes sense - it seems like they're a little too preoccupied with not dying to even think about it. But I wonder if she'll ever come to terms with it or think about it - maybe if she finds some place North to settle down? Or is she already so accustomed to death and the people she knows disappearing that it doesn't have that big of an effect on her? I talked about this a little in a previous blogpost - this world must completely change relationships and how people see other people. Nobody's a constant fixture in anybody's life and you can't get attached to anyone for fear of them disappearing. Seeing so much bad ...
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Leaving the Neighborhood

I found the family's reaction to Keith leaving the neighborhood pretty interesting.  I think it shows something about the situation that they're in. Lauren's dad did get really mad after Keith left and they tried to look for him and everything, however it just didn't seem like they made as big of a deal about their child disappearing as I would expect, but maybe that's just from the frame of our society. Also the father dying didn't seem like that big of a shock either. That makes a lot of sense, considering there's people constantly dying and disappearing from their neighborhood. It probably kind of infiltrates your life and changes the way you think about people in your life and death. What were Lauren's dad and Cory expecting from their children? Did they want them to just stay in the neighborhood and maybe take over their jobs? Marry, have babies, etc.? Or did they think the world would go back to how it used to be? Or, more probably, were they just ...
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Teaching

 I wanted to talk about what Lauren's father said about teaching - that "It's better to teach people than to scare them." I think that scaring is one of the most effective way of teaching, especially in this situation where we're talking about survival skills and even just talking about what could happen would be enough to scare people. However I also agree with Lauren's dad that if nothing happens after you scare people they'll pretty much stop listening / believing you. I think they need to strike some sort of balance. And I'm not sure whether just teaching people things without telling them why is the solution - less people will be engaged or retain any of the information if they think it's just for fun. Maybe they could bring up the possibility of something happening to neighborhood in the future without making it seem like a pressing issue, then emphasize the fact that they should learn how to survive outside of the neighborhood anyway. This c...
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Parable - the Neighborhoods

The neighborhoods in the Parable remind me a lot so far of our ideal utopian communities we were discussing. They're almost completely separated from the outside world, and use a lot of their own resources to survive, only going leaving occasionally to do things they can't within their walls. That seems like the setup a lot of groups wanted to accomplish except surrounded by actual walls. Except that the people within the neighborhood don't have a choice on whether to stay there - they can't leave for fear of being shot or facing some other danger.  It seems like the people in the neighborhood are living a pretty good life, that is aside from the occasional deaths. Lauren talks about how in the evenings they're usually just playing games or lounging on their porches, and although they talk about some food scarcity it seems like everyone has enough to survive. At the same time most of the inhabitants don't seem happy. Is it because they're worrying about the ...
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BNW & 1984

For most of 1984 I thought that the main goal of both societies was stability. Of course they achieved this in different ways - while in Brave New World stability is achieved by keeping people happy, in 1984 it's achieved by keeping everyone under the absolute power of Big Brother. But then we get to read O'Brien's long explanation about the real point of the party and how it was actually just set up to hold onto pure power.  At least that's the gist I got from his spiel - although I don't know if I caught everything O'Brien was saying, most of it seemed to revolve around power and how anyone that says they want power for any other means than just having power is fooling themselves. This marks a pretty big difference between the two books. While Brave New World is a story about a utopia that doesn't work in practice, 1984 is a story about a totalitarian government that went too far to satisfy it's need for power and control. This means the warnings the a...
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Qs & Predictions

I'm wondering whether or not the Thought Police is going to release Winston. Doing so would mean they believe that their conditioning and torture is going to last - that there's not way his anti-party thoughts are going to resurface. This seems unrealistic. Sure in the face or torture he's willing to confess anything, and in the face of his greatest fear he's willing to give up Julia, however why would they think that'll last once he's out just living his life, safe (at least in that moment)? If somehow he does get released, would the party let him live out his life or just kill him sometime in the future. I expect they might just kill him, but then what was the point of doing this in the first place? The other option would be to kill him, and if they feel the need to do that publicly all his torture may have been worth it. Otherwise, if they're going to kill him as he's walking down the hallway as Winston suspects, I still don't understand what all ...
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The Ministry of Love

    The way the Thought Police convinces stray Party Members to fully submit to Big Brother and the Party is pretty interesting. They started about by beating Winston just to get him to confess to a bunch of crimes, some of which it was pretty clear he didn't do. I did wonder why this was a step in the process. If they're end goal is to make Winston an actual believer in the party, why make him confess to everything and anything when you know he's only doing that to stop the pain. These interrogations could be a way to break him down, physically and mentally, and make him more receptive to future torture, but I'm not sure.     After that it seems like they get Winston to submit simply by confusing him. O'Brien lays out complicated arguments about why what he sees is not actually reality and reality doesn't really exist, and at some point he's drugged so he's no longer sure about seeing four rings. This was a pretty weird approach, and I wonder how they c...
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