Brave New World by Aldous Huxley
So, i'm quite upset because I left my book in my CT's room over the weekend and I had carefully highlighted and made notes in the margins of things to discuss, so i'm going off script.
What kind of person do you feel the author is? What makes you feel this way?
I know it's a very popular (and boring) method of teaching literature to teach first through a biographical lens by explaining the life and times of the text's author before jumping into a book--this is great for shakespeare is you want to bore students to death before they even start reading. This can be useful for certain historical pieces, adapting the theory of New Historical Criticism, though i suppose it's still all about how you teach it. I digress, I have honestly never researched Huxley before, nor do I know anything about his life despite his best works. just speculating here, but I would assume that perhaps in his late 1800s/early 1900s lifespan that he was perhaps negatively influenced by some sort of technological aspect. The Model T automobile obviously played a role in Brave New World. While I'm unsure if it was negative, experiencing a medical or scientific mishap, or he was simply just fascination at the changing of the times after the industrial revolution and the automation that came with it, he definitely felt some type of way.
I might also speculate about his love life, because why not? the character of Lenina Crowe is intriguingly unorthodox: she defies her culture’s conventions by dating one man exclusively, is drawn to Bernard, and is violently enthralled with John. Lenina is unable to share Bernard’s troubles or to understand John's value system. Lenina exclusively relates through sex alone. Another similar female character (John's mother i believe), Linda also is seen as morally tainted because of promiscuity. While this can easily be read with a feminist lens, putting Huxley in the fedora-friend-zone group, perhaps Huxley was simply painting the mentality of his time period-the religions and customs that oppressed women in the early 1900s.
I would also venture to assume that Huxley was a well-read scholar. All of this not based on the incredibly complex and, i'm assuming purposefully choppy narration and dialogue that help to mimic the characters' disconnectedness and feeling of neutrality, but specifically the detail of John very heavy-handedly being known for his ability to recite Shakespeare quotes by heart. This supposedly demonstrating that the western philosophies of that era are what equate to correct and just living according the Huxley. Perhaps he was just finding a way to make known all the Shakespeare he had memorized over the years himself--typical English guys.
So are you saying you would not teach the biographical info first? I try to withhold author biographical info until after the student has read the book, especially if I think it will shed a negative light. For example, I am starting a unit using The Outsiders, and I think if I tell them the author is female and that she started the book when she was 16, it may make them prejudiced against it. Thus far, I have felt it works best to study the writer after the reading.
ReplyDeleteI did not think of the technology aspect as much as Huxley maybe having been influenced by WWI, and then seeing the fascist, nazi, and communist movements growing and insisting on complete uniformity among their citizens. I was thinking the Ford thing was more out of reverence for the assembly line itself, rather than the actual products that come off it. I could be wrong as well, because I have not researched him either.
It seems you know more about the book than I; didn't you say you had read it before this class? I have not read past chapter 4 and am a little confused. Did you say that Lenina is tainted because she is exclusive while John’s mother is tainted because she is not? Huxley does seem very well read on the classics, or at least well researched.
It's fun to imagine an author and his life and times without knowing the details--believe me, I am not anti-biographical or anti-historical--I just think we need to have a reason for viewing the text through these lenses--there needs to be relevance--I have never found relevance for he fact that Shakespeare had twins? The life and times do matter to this novel and I would love to have different groups view the text through varied lenses throughout their reading--like we did only once--students might inquire into the text through these lenses and make quite a lot of interesting discoveries.
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