This thread is a focused discussion group. Please see the first post below for the current topic and upcoming book discussions. While natter will inevitably happen, we encourage you to treat this like a virtual book club and try to keep your posts in that spirit.
By consensus, this thread is reopened specifically to discuss Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows. It will be closed again once that discussion has run its course.
***SPOILER ALERT***
- **Spoilers for Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows lie here. Read at your own risk***
Point to "the condition of life is extremely bad" or "deprivation, oppression, or terror" in Huxley's novel.
Show me where there wasn't oppression?!? It may have been kinder, gentler oppression through drugs and conditioning, but it was oppression, just the same, wasn't it? Heck. Human reproduction (natural pregnancy) was a grand disgrace, wasn't it? People were genetically engineered to be mentally deficient, so that they would be happy performing menial tasks.
I think I read BNW in tenth grade, and I'm 37 now, so I may be off. But even though on the surface everything was smooth in BNW, wasn't the whole point that these people were oppressed. Their fertility was not their own. Their genes and fates (that which they received from their parents, so that the government developed different socio-economic classes in the lab, to serve different purposes) were controlled by the government. Their moods were not their own (they were all on happy pills as a matter of course, and were conditioned to believe they were happy, weren't they?). They couldn't speak out. Didn't the choices amount to conformity or death?
Nope. Conformity or exile to the Island.
But the point is that they were happy (though not free). Yeah, to us - as to the Savage - it looks like an oppressive hell, but how can you call a society where 99.99% of the populace is blissfully happy, and the remaining .001% get to live in peac on a tropical island, anything but utopia?
As fascinating as the utopian discussion is, we haven't picked a book to discuss yet. Literary might be a good place to discuss dystopia/utopia as expressed in Orwell's books, though.
One person's oppression is another person's attempt to get a thread with a very specific purpose onto its feet without too many problems.
The dystopia/utopia discussion is making me think
Brave New World
and
Those Who Walk Away From Whileaway
could be read together.
I think we've consensed that Wolfram should do the first pick honors if he's up for it , which I think he said he was. Sound right?
Thanks for getting that all together, -t and Cindy.
Well you can't argue with a bs consensus.
I'll pick a book from the list at some point today. And we'll set the discussion to start on August 15.
I'll pick a book from the list at some point today. And we'll set the discussion to start on August 15.
Sweet! Except I won't have Net access on August 15. Don't exhaust all the interesting discussion in two days, 'kay?
