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| a lot of the time I am tempted to get twitter. this is something I need to resist. | | |
| I'm lonely and I don't want to do anything I want to do anymore. | | |
| These two books are always mentioned as a pair, the classics of old-school dystopian speculative fiction. (Remember that hilarious little reference in Cloud Atlas to the "Late Optimists Orwell and Huxley"?) And 1984 is one of my favorite books--but, for whatever reason, I'd never read Brave New World. So I felt just a bit...incomplete, I suppose.
Anyway, I finished Brave New World yesterday. I think, if I have to compare the two, I'd have to say that I preferred 1984. At first I thought it might just be a sort of loyalty, since I'd read and loved it first, but when I thought about it more, I decided that the real reason is more that--well, 1984 freaked me out more, I think. And I'm normally not the type who likes their entertainment to freak them out (I hate scary movies and am not really a huge fan of roller-coasters), but, in getting more into science-fiction, I've realized that that is, in fact, part of what I'm looking for from books like this.
What scares me most, I think, is the manipulation of thought. The brainwashing in Brave New World is certainly scary, but I don't know--does hypnopaedia really work? And it also seems to me that some people--the Alphas, at least--despite being conditioned, are still capable of a wider range of thought. There's Bernard, who states the number of repititions for how many years every time someone recites a hypnopaedic proverb--clearly, he recognizes the brainwashing, even though he's been brainwashed himself; there's Helmholtz, who writes a poem about being alone even though he's supposed to have learned to hate isolation; and there's Mustapha Mond, who seems, despite being raised in this society, able to question everything in the same way an outsider would. I mean, maybe it's just that the Alphas, the people at the top level of intelligence, really are intelligent, but it seems to me to be a lot is kind of slipping in through the cracks, somehow.
In 1984, on the other hand, there is this--well, it's not just a manipulation of thought, but a complete destruction of it. And it's all the worse because it's slipperier than something like hypnopaedia, which is obviously controlled and regulated by someone. I mean, the government is completely in control in 1984; that's the whole point, but no one person is deciding what's said. The controls are built into the very language, into the communication and thought. I'm talking about Newspeak. The principle is that limiting the words you can say limits the things you can think. Things can't be wonderful, or beautiful, or excellent or miraculous or anything like that. They can only be good, plusgood, or even doubleplusgood. And nothing can be bad, only ungood, and nothing can be horrible, despicable, miserable--it's doubleplusungood. (In Brave New World, books like Shakespeare are banned, but it doesn't matter because no one would care to read them or be able to understand them anyway. In 1984, even if the government hadn't destroyed them, it wouldn't matter because it would have been as good as a foreign language to the people anyway.) It's this inability to even communicate that freaks me out. And then there's doublespeak, doublethink, which is even stranger to read about in this context because it's familiar. At least, it was to me. Doublethink, at least. I doublethink. Not in the same way that the people of Oceania do, but I once wrote an essay about my insecurities in which I explained them in terms of doublethink--though I won't go into that now. The point is that what's really terrifying about these worlds is when you can recognize your own in them--that's why the eternal question is, will the world as we know it turn into either of these dystopias?
Additionally, the end of Brave New World was...frankly, kind of lame. So the Savage couldn't stand to live in that world. Big surprise. And guess what? Anyone who's not happy with the world order can get tranferred to an island, where they'll be happier hanging out with all the othersubversives, anyway. The moral of the story is, everyone is brainwashed, but if you're a little less brainwashed than everyone else, you can either drug yourself into oblivion or get transferred to a place where the people are just a little more freethinking--which is exactly what you wanted, anyway. Unless you're John the Savage, in which case you kill yourself, but who didn't see that coming from the moment he was taken to see civilization? The only legitimately scary thing about the second half of that book was that, when Mustapha Mond was explaining how stability and happiness are the only goals, and if greater suffering produces greater beauty, well then, that needs to be sacrificed--I found myself seeing his point. I wouldn't go so far as I say I found myself agreeing, but I saw the logic. But then, whether it's worth it to choose suffering for beauty over happiness and blandness is a question that's asked in so many works of fiction, but it wasn't even really addressed all that interestingly here, because society had already made the choice.
The truth gets revealed at the end of 1984, too, but it's far, far more sinister. Which is exactly what I want when reading this type of book--I want to see the scary side of the future. You see where their subversives get sent: not to some island where they can all gripe together, but to Room 101, where they learn to love Big Brother. And you learn about how the regime keeps control--how War is Peace, Freedom is Slavery, Ignorance is Strength--about Emmanuel Goldstein and his book. What happens to Winston is--well, it's awful, truly horrific. And that's exactly what makes it as good as it is.
Incidentally, it's sort of funny--quaint, almost--to read these books now. Orwell didn't realize that Big Brother-esque technology for keeping an eye on the populace would be cheap enough for pretty much anyone to afford. It's so easy to spy on people--it's hardly just the government that does it. And it's strange to read about the techniques in Brave New World for modifying an embryo--depriving it of oxygen? Really? That's all?--but then, the book was published more than twenty years before Watson & Crick made their famous discovery. No genetic manipulation for these Alphas, Betas, Gammas, etc.
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| I do not prepare for college, at all.
This is what a typical day is like for me:
I get up at noon, eat something, shower, sit around my house (read/go on the computer), go out for a bike ride, shower again afterward (because I always shower in the morning and then forget that I get all sweaty and gross when I bike...), read/go on the computer, eat, read/go on the computer.
This is what every day is like for me.
I don't mind, except that my mom comes home and makes me feel guilty about the fact that I am basically useless. I should go out and see my friends (what friends? They're all gone or going) like Jacqueline does (oh, she doesn't say that, but the comparison is there anyway. Embarrassing, really, to be compared to your little sister like that). If I don't go out and see my friends, I should at least clean my room, start sorting things, throwing things away, etc.
I only ever feel like cleaning my room, sorting things, throwing things away, etc., at one AM. I do, sometimes, then. But most of the time I just go to bed instead.
There's less than a month until I leave. My whole mindset is that this summer is endless, since I start so late, I've got plenty of time to prepare, but really, soon enough I'll realize that I don't. I don't even have a computer. Which is fine, I hate using laptops, and now that it's late August it's cooling down and this room with the desktop in it is no longer five hundred degrees. I kind of need one, though. A computer, I mean.
Also, bed linens and storage things and stuff.
Whenever I think about packing, all I think about packing is sweaters.
I don't really think about packing too often.
There is an unopened 40 in the back on my closet that I should either drink or throw away before my closet actually gets cleaned out and someone (my mom) finds it. (Would she find it?) I'm probably just going to throw it away; all my friends are going, going, gone. I don't want it, anyway.
I haven't really talked to any of my friends who are already at college, except for Lara. So I don't know how anyone but her is doing. She sounds like she's having a lot of fun. Does that make me wish I were going sooner?
A little bit.
Not too much.
It'll come soon enough, anyway.
Oh, boy.
My birthday's kind of soon-ish. Two weeks? How will I celebrate? With everyone that's still around. That's Glenn, and Jamila, and Emma, and Caritas, and Tim.
See, there are people I like that are still around.
Except, I haven't even seen them. Not everyone is gone yet and I've been wasting these days-where-people-are-still-around by seeing no one. And somehow I don't even care that much. I'm going to see Brittany today and I care about that, obviously, but the panic I felt before that everyone was going to leave and I wouldn't get to see them all is gone.
Thiviya says it's a defense mechanism. She's probably right.
But maybe, just maybe, I just like bumming around my house and riding my bike and not seeing anyone more than I'd previously realized.
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| I.
today my mother and i went to century 21 (the bay ridge one, of course, which despite being smaller is vastly superior to its manhattan counterpart) to begin College Shopping in earnest.
an inventory of items now scattered (folded, or maybe not) across my bed:
seven shirts (three thermal), three sweaters, one dress, many pairs of socks (ankle- and knee-high) and tights, one pair pajama pants, sneakers, boots (fuzzy-lined, warm and comfy), a fall coat, a vest, a winter coat, one hat, one pair gloves, one scarf, a small backpack
II.
i'm not ready for this. i don't mean leaving for college; i mean sitting around here watching everybody else go.
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