I'm the slowest quote finder in the world

WELL in a video I watched called RSA Animate - Changing Education Paradigms I discovered a few similar ideas present in the video and in Brave New World.

          One parallel is when Sir Ken Robinson talks about how society says when a person is smart or stupid. This person who is labeled as stupid might be brilliant but nobody gave them the chance to be. In Brave New World, they condition and forcibly make babies into whatever they want them to be, ‘“We decant our babies as socialized human beings, as Alphas or Epsilons, as future sewage workers or future… directors of Hatcheries”’ and the babies don’t get a choice. So if you’re an Epsilon, you can’t do jobs that need intelligent because you’ve been made to be too stupid to work it.

          Another parallel is about the topic of ADHD. Robinson states that because kids can’t concentrate on the almost pointless subject the teacher is explaining that they should be given drugs to help them concentrate. If they’re not given these drugs that means they are not sociably acceptable which is just like taking soma in Brave New World.  If someone does not want to take soma when they are upset, society thinks there is something wrong with them. The medicine for ADHD is supposed to make a person focus and soma is supposed to make a person feel happy. They are both not good for you and suppress a human’s natural trait.

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            The world in Brave New World thinks it’s perfect. They make all the babies in little test tubes and decide what the babies will be before they’re actually born. If they will grow up to work a boring job that uneducated people usually work, they will put alcohol in their test tubes to make the person be exactly the right amount of dumbness to work the job. Then, so the dumb person actually will like the job they’re working they condition them to like it. For example, when the babies are born, they sleep teach them. There are little speaker things that whisper things like “You love to do the boring jobs” over and over and over. Now because everyone is conditioned to be happy they now live in great society. Or at least that’s what they think.

            By raising children straight from the tube, they demolished the family structure. By assuring everyone’s happiness, they demolished any form of deep emotion. When Mustapha Mond is telling students how impractical emotion is, he relates it to a pipe, “’Think of water under pressure is a pipe…. I pierce it once, what a jet!’ He pierced it twenty times. There were twenty piddling little fountains.” The first jet is supposed to represent when society was still able to have emotions. They believe that emotions used to be prominent and that they would control they human mind. Like if a close relative dies, would you be able to work that day? Of course not because the emotion would hold you back. That is the one thing this new world does not want. But if you have twenty holes in a pipe, the loss of your relative won’t be such a big deal and you can work without error. That is the one purpose of this Brave New World. With productivity, the goal of a ‘perfect’ world draws ever nearer

I must be a weirdo, because I liked The Tempest.

In the discussions of The Tempest, one controversial issue has been focused mostly on Shakespeare’s interpretation of the play. On one hand, views on post colonialism argue that Shakespeare wrote against imperialism and had sympathy for the character Caliban. On the other hand more traditional readers contends Shakespeare did intend to write for his audience and encourage imperialism. Others even maintain an opinion in the middle because they can’t decide which point they agree with more. However, my own view is that Shakespeare had two mind sets for righting his plays. He would please the audience but also subtly writes against the universal beliefs of the Elizabethan world.

There are a lot of different characters in Shakespeare’s plays that I think relate to Caliban’s debatable situation. One character I’ve mentioned in a recent blog was Shylock. In The Merchant of Venice, Antonio was the Christian character that Europeans would most likely side with and Shylock was supposed to be hated because he was Jewish. Another play that can prove that Shakespeare had sympathy towards minorities is Othello. Othello is African and of course back in Shakespeare’s days people of that race were usually used as slaves or known as ‘savage’. Othello is the main character (duh) and you wouldn’t expect anything to be written about an African in those times. A lot of the Caucasian characters didn’t like Othello and they tried to ruin his marriage (he was married to someone white) and then they also took him to court. Something that I found interesting was that when Othello got to court, the Duke let him speak and actually listened to what he had to say. This might be how Shakespeare wants people to be treated and not to be stereotypical. Or maybe not, but I want to believe that’s how Shakespeare was. So Shakespeare could have easily wrote Caliban with two mind sets: To please the audience and to please himself.   

The script of A Tempest takes on a slightly different point of view of Shakespeare’s play. The author Aime Cesaire seems to believe that Shakespeare was a post colonist. I didn’t really agree with this interpretation. When I read The Tempest, I didn’t see Prospero as a bad guy, but he just tried to do what he thought was right by teaching Caliban his language. Aime Cesaire’s take on the play made Prospero’s character a horrible person. Shakespeare did not intend for Prospero’s character to be hated, he was supposed to be loved. The viewpoint of the author was opposite from the viewpoint of Shakespeare. In A Tempest, Ariel hates Prospero just as much a Caliban. In the play though, Ariel is actually quite fond of Prospero and does not mind working for him as long as Prospero promises his freedom, and this promise he does keep.