Brave New World †Individual Needs :: Brave New World

Brave New World – Individual Needs Brave New World Sometimes very advanced societies overlook the necessities of the individual. In the book Brave New World, Aldous Huxley creates two distinct societies: the Savages and the Fordians. The Fordians are technologically sophisticated, unlike the Savages. However, it is obvious that, overall, the Savages have more practical abilities, have more, complicated, ideals, and are much more advanced emotionally, which all help the individual to grow. The Savage Reservation provides more opportunities for personal growth than does the Fordian society. Throughout the story, it is shown how the Fordian society is much more advanced technologically than the Savage Reservation. Because the Reservation is not fully equipped with well-developed machinery to do all their work for them, they must learn to do it themselves. Unlike the Fordians, the Savages are taught functional skills, such as stitching up simple tears and weaving. In the story Mitsima, an old man from the reservation, teaches John the Savage how to make a clay pot, using nothing but a lump of clay and his own two hands. This is a very practical and useful tool. The Savages are taught to cook for themselves, and to clean for themselves. These teachings help the individual to grow practically. The Savages also bestow good ideals in their people from which they can learn, understand, and grow. One of the most important things that the Savages are taught is self-control. The Whipping Ceremony is a good example of this. In this ceremony a young man was whipped to death in front of a large audience and throughout it he "made no sound†¦[and] walked on at the same slow, steady pace" (97). The man is taught that to show his strength he must use the uttermost limits of his self-control. They are also taught self-control in how they are prohibited free sex. They must learn restraint through their lust and desires. It is shown how capable the Savages are when controlling themselves in chapter 13. Lenina, whom John loves and desires more than anything in the world, is proclaiming herself to John, and yet he restrains himself because they are not married.     The Savages are also taught

Moral Education Essay

Moral education can be given better by parents at home, than by schoolmasters and professors in schools and colleges. Parents have numberless opportunities of guiding their children by pre ¬cept and example, opportunities denied to the teacher. Who generally meets his pupils in large classes, and seldom has the means of becoming intimately acquainted with their several char ¬acters and the faults, other than intellectual faults, to which each of them is particularly prone. The first point of importance to notice with regard to moral instruction is that, in the words of the proverb, example is better than precept. This is too often forgotten by parents, especially in the case of young children. Many parents are emphatic in incul-cating truthfulness, but, on very slight occasion think it advisable to escape the importunity or curiosity of children by deception, if not by actual falsehood. They fondly hope that the deceit will pass unnoticed; but children are keener observers than they are generally supposed to be, and very quick to detect any discrep ¬ancy between preaching and practice on the part of their elders. It is therefore imperative that parents in all cases should them ¬selves act up to the moral precepts that they inculcate upon their children. Another important point in the home training of children is careful selection of associates of their own age who will not teach them bad habits. For the same reason, especially in rich houses, great care must be taken that the servants do not exert an evil influence on their moral character. Bad servants teach a child to be deceitful and disobedient by secretly helping him to enjoy forbidden pleasures, which of course they warn him he must on no account mention to his parents. They may also render a child rude and overbearing by servile submission to his caprices and bad temper. If we now pass from home to school life, we see that the first great disadvantage that the school-master labours under is that it is very difficult for him to gain the affections of his pupils. A father can generally appeal to filial love as an inducement towards obeying the moral rules he prescribes. But a school-master ap ¬pears to boys in the position of a task-master, and is too often without reason regarded by them as their natural enemy, particu ¬larly by those whom he has to punish for idleness or other faults, that is, by the very boys who stand most in need of moral instruction. Even when a school-master has got over this hostile feeling, he finds that the large amount of daily teaching expected from him leaves him little leisure to give his pupils friendly advice in the intervals between lessons. It has been proposed in India that formal lessons in morality should be given in schools and colleges. But it is to be feared that lessons so delivered from the school-master’s desk or the professor’s chair would produce little more effect than is obtained by the writing of moral sentences in copy-books. In the great public schools of England the masters have opportunities of de ¬livering moral lessons under more favourable conditions, when they preach the weekly sermon on Sunday in the sacred precincts of the school chapel. The Indian teacher has no such opportunity of using his eloquence in guiding the members of his school towards moral enthusiasm. Yet he can do much by the power of personal example, and by creating in the minds of his pupils admiration for the great English writers, who in prose or verse give expression to the highest moral thoughts. In addition to this, all intellectual education is in proportion to its success a powerful deterrent from vice, as it enables us to see more clearly the evil effects that follow from disobedience to moral rules.

Pre 1914 Poetry William Blake Essay

These poems ‘Holy Thursday (experience)’ and Holy Thursday (innocence) are set on Ascension Day in a service in St. Paul’s church. This was a special occasion for the orphans who came from London Charity Schools. The ‘Holy Thursday (innocence)’ poem can be interpreted in two different ways. The impression we get at first is that the orphans are treated well and they lead happy lives but after reading ‘Holy Thursday (experience)’ you start to realise that there is a negative way of understanding the same poem. This view shows the orphans to be mistreated and very unhappy. The phrase ‘their innocent faces clean’ suggests children that are being well looked after rather than being abandoned and roaming the streets of London. There is a suggestion that the children have companions, are well behaved and have a sense of order by the line ‘the children walking two by two’ This is further added to by the phrase ‘In red, blue and green’ which implies that they were dressed in bright, smart uniforms rather than rags. The children have angelic guardians to nurture and protect them, as implied by the lines ‘Grey-headed beadles walked before’ who have ‘wands’ are described ‘as white as snow’ which makes us feel that these are enchanted guardians who are pure and magical. Another phrase that adds to this is the sentence ‘Wise guardians to the poor’. There is further reference to the good work that the guardians are doing when William Blake uses the term ‘Multitudes of lambs’ implying the guardians are shepherding and guiding innocent creatures. The idea of lambs conjures up the image of animals all grouped together making sure that they are all safe. The orphans are referred to as flowers in the second paragraph, implying delicate, natural and beautiful. Flowers signify peace implying that the children are good-natured. ‘Seated in companies they sit’ like good well-behaved pupils in a school, to say their nature is calm and peaceful rather than loud and rowdy. Their god-fearing nature is implied by the words ‘raising their innocent hands’ probably referring to prayer as they are hopeful and eager. In the last paragraph William Blake is saying the children enjoy going to church, praying and singing hymns as †like a mighty wind they raise to heaven the voice of song.Overall the poem has a lively rhythm with pace to give it a beat and fluidity. Now I am going to analyse ‘Holy Thursday (experience)’ poem. In the first stanza Blake describes England as a country which is ‘rich and fruitful’. This would appear to be his own experience of life in England but this statement can be interpreted in different ways. Blake could have meant that England is rich in that there is fruit and food but it is poor because of the amount of orphans. He uses ‘holy’ to infer that England is a Christian Country and asks why babies should be reduced to misery and fed and looked after by people who don’t care for them ‘Cold and usurious hand?’. In the second stanza he asks three rhetorical questions. We know ‘the trembling cry’ isn’t a song and that whatever is crying is probably alone and maybe crying out for help. ‘Can it be a song of joy?’ Perhaps it could be a song of joy for the favoured few who live in the rich and fruitful land but for the many poor children roaming the streets of London it isn’t. ‘It is a land of poverty’. In the previous poem ‘Holy Thursday (innocence)’ he says that the children ‘raise to heaven the voice of song’. He obviously believes that songs can lift a spirit and in ‘Holy Thursday (experience)’ it hurts him, that there are no songs of joy going heavenwards form children who are so pure. Normally to see how rich a country a country is you measure the amount of wealth the country but here Blake is measuring the happiness by asking if their singing which is usually a sign of happiness from children. The third stanza describes their happiness in terms of the climate. Their lives are like a place where the; ‘sun does never shine. And their fields are bleak and bare.’ In the third line he contrasts their journey through life with that of Christ’s crown of thorns. The image that this reflects is of a painful way through life. And the next line is echoed in a later work by C.S Lewis who uses the term eternal winter to mean a place, like Siberia, that is unbearably sad and where happiness does not exist. This metaphor makes us aware that there is never any joy of warmth in their lives and that emotionally they are completely bereft and emotionally starved of love. In the last paragraph he again refers to the environment and the weather to describe a situation where everything would be all right and ‘Babe cam never hunger there’. This completely fails to show the real reason why those children are poor. Rain and sunshine won’t get them out of the grinding poverty that they are in. It is simply used as a metaphor to change the children’s situation from eternal winter to dry warm summer in which they would appear to be happy. Throughout the poem there is a lack of colour and description so it is difficult to conjure up any image other than of a grey bleak landscape, where grey people and grey children exist in a society that doesn’t value them. In ‘Holy Thursday (innocence)’ he uses descriptive words such as ‘clean’, ‘two by two’, ‘red’,’ blue’, ‘green’ and ‘as white as snow’ to conjure up a picture of London that is quite different. Blake also appears to be attacking the church in other poems for its splendour and wealth but also its lack of humanity and awareness of the ‘multitudes of lambs’ which could be led to the slaughter and misery of poverty. Reading the ‘Holy Thursday (experience)’ makes you reconsider the poem ‘Holy Thursday (innocence) and its approach. In a negative this is my interpretation.In the first stanza it is implied that the thousands of orphans are being made to scrub their faces clean so much that it hurts. This cleanliness of the children is only a faà ¯Ã‚ ¿Ã‚ ½ade to give a good impression when the phrase ‘their innocent faces clean’ appears. This implies that the children are disciplined and regimented. This makes a good impression on the carers. This is also show ‘in red and blue and green’ because it shows that they are being made to wear a uniform. Being forced to wear uniforms means that the orphans also lose their individuality. ‘Grey-headed beadles walked before’ could show that these ‘carers’ are bad people who order the children around and make them walk ‘two and two’ like in the military. This also implies that these bad people are egotistical because they only look after themselves and they might only be looking after the children for extra money. These military officers have canes to beat the children with as it says ‘with wands as white as snow.’ This idea of the children being part of a military force is backed up by the quote ‘seated in companies they sit.’ Because the army is sectioned off into companies, they stand in a certain order and they are very obedient. ‘These flowers of London town’ implies that the children are innocent and pure but like flowers they will eventually die. Flowers are also vulnerable and easily ruined. The comparison between the groups of children and the ‘multitudes of lambs’ implies that the orphans like the lamps, group together like pure innocent creatures. The image of the lamb also stands for the idea of vulnerability and sacrifice. Like the lambs the orphans are forced to do what the carers tell them to do, and may face an early death as victims of a cruel world. ‘Thousands of little boys and girls’ suggests that there are any poor orphans who are homeless. This shows that there is a large scale of poverty. The orphans plead for help by ‘raising their innocent hands.’ ‘Like a mighty wind†¦voice of song’ implies that the wind is like a destructive hurricane ready to sweep their lives away. Ironically the ‘wise guardians of the poor’ are there to look after the orphans for the money and are not concerned about the orphans at all. The rhythm of the poem in this negative view is a like a strict military march.