Brave New World Assessment

Formal Essay

Choose ONE of the essay topics from the back of this page and write a well- developed essay. At this point in the year, we should not have to review what a well-developed essay looks like…but…

*MLA Format

*Submitted to turnitin.com by 11:59pm on May 27 (if it is not on here, you can only receive half credit on your essay)

*A hard copy PRINTED out and turned in to me on May 27 (since this is the last week of classes, there is no exception here…plus, you’ll have a 3-day weekend prior to this)

*A minimum of 3 pages, maximum of 5 (excluding Works Cited page)

*Well-developed paragraphs (6-10 sentences each)

*A properly formatted Works Cited page (yes, you will need to cite the novel and AT LEAST one other source) Choose ONE of the following:

1. What is Aldous Huxley’s warning for our society about allowing the government to control our ideas? Describe and analyze the many ways in which people in the novel are controlled and explain how these are related to ways we are controlled in our current world. Ideas to consider: “history” and “literature” in the Brave New World; conditioning methods; drugs; absence of pain and discomfort.

2. Explain, in detail, how the world controllers were able to fulfill all of the base needs of the population by manufacturing pleasure. Ideas to consider: What deeper psychological and natural needs were sacrificed in doing so? Why does the savage categorically reject these pleasures?

3. The key slogan of the BNW is “Community, Identity, Stability.” Write an essay which analyzes this slogan, pointing out what is wrong with the concepts behind the words. Ideas to consider: How is the slogan ironic? In other words, how do you visualize the concepts of community, identity, and stability in the modern world as opposed to what exists in the BNW? What do you think the real slogan of the BNW should be?

4. Compare and contrast the views that at least three characters have of the Brave New World they live(d) in. What about their upbringing has led to their contrasting opinions of specific aspects of this world? Ideas to consider: How does each character view identity, disease, censorship, history, old age, drugs, brainwashing, etc. Why do some “fit in” while others don’t?

5. Write an essay in which you convincingly argue that Brave New World describes what actually could happen, has happened, or is happening. Remember to link happenings in the modern world with specific events and ideas in the novel. Idea to consider: Is any of the fantasy in the novel now reality?

6. Essay-respond to the statement made by Eric Fromm in connection with the society depicted in the novel (and with our current society): “Many people are considered normal because they are so well adjusted to our mode of existence, because their human voice has been silenced so early in their lives that they do not even struggle or suffer or develop symptoms as a neurotic does. They are normal only in relation to a profoundly abnormal society. Their perfect adjustment to that abnormal society is a measure of their mental sickness. Millions of abnormally normal people living without a fuss in a society to which, if they are fully human beings, they ought NOT to be adjusted. Their conformity is becoming uniformity, but uniformity and freedom are incompatible, and uniformity and mental health are incompatible.”