this may be hard for you to hear but...

So a time when I felt like I couldn’t be myself. Or was myself…
Okay
Go.

I used to be really good friends with this girl. We did just about everything together. I’m pretty sure we both thought nothing was going to break us up. We laughed, we had fun, we joked around, we sang, we danced, we experienced life together. We were there for each other. Or, I was there for her. I soon realized that for this friendship to work I had to be fully aware and conscience of her feelings. (duh Jordan you are supposed to do that in friendships , right? Yes you are right, but I am talking about OVERLY sensitized feelings) The slightest thing would set her off. She would be upset. I found that we were no longer having fun, but that I was constantly altering what I did or said or how I acted in order to keep her happy. My extreme sarcasm bothered her, because it hurt her feelings. (sarcasm wasn’t her thing) She always thought I was making fun of her. I wasn’t. And she thought I wasn’t considerate of her feelings, when that’s what our entire relationship was. So I wasn’t really being myself. I was being the version of me that tended to someone else’s every emotion. Now try to tell me that’s not emotionally draining. haha

the fool.

Sooo I lost my short stories. And I knew one was one by Kate Chopin. So I read Beyond the Bayou. And I really really hope that’s it. But if it isn’t, its still by Kate Chopin so I will still compare it.

Okay so here we go. This story is similar to The Awakening because it is about a woman who is out of the ordinary. She is big and stronger than any man. They even call her “La Folle’, the fool, because they think she is crazy. She has lived almost all of her life in fear of what was beyond the bayou, and would never cross it. But when she is faced with the fact that she has to cross it or her beloved Cheri will die, she does it almost blindly. She closes her eyes and lets her senses guide her, out of fear. The fear is what drives her forward. The fear of what will happen to Cheri and the fear of what is ahead. This is a lot like when Edna swims out into the ocean because its empowering and no woman has done it before. She just keeps swimming. They are both very similar in that regard, but Edna dies as a result, and La Folle, conquers a fear.

lame.

So basically, she leads him to the tiger. Now I know that it doesn’t really matter which one he picks because he is going to be screwed over in the end. The point of this story is that you wont be happy either way. But anyway, she sends him to the door with the tiger. She knows that the lady is someone she despises and wont let her lover ever be with her. She would rather him die than let him be with her.
She also wants to punish the lady and have her be rejected.

This story was ridiculous. Not a fan. I don’t understand how it was six pages long. It could have been condensed into just one page. It isn’t that the story is so bad. It isn’t even that the message is that bad. Its just that they write what the message is at the end of the story. THAT RUINS THE MESSAGE. Saying what the message is ruins the message. That is soooooooo lame.

ocean complexity

So basically this is how my mind is. Its not a storm. Its not even a calm before the storm and then a storm. Its not calm either. Its like, the ocean I guess. It comes in waves. Not that my mind works in waves, but that sometimes it is stable, like the middle of the ocean. And when nothing disturbs it and there is nothing but sunshine it its calm and smooth on the surface. Underneath, under the surface of the water there are fifty different currents going fifty different ways that no one ever really sees or thinks about.

Then it starts to rain, and the rain screws everything up because it messes with the surface, and brings the currents up and the waves start to crash, and its no longer calm and smooth.

The rain just drains the ocean. It is water that has been collected from the ocean in the first place, and has been waiting up in the clouds and now, it all comes back down and adds to the volume of the ocean. And then it can’t do anything else but crash on the shore at high tide.

cordelia the best child in the world.

Oh little Cordelia. Her dad banished her from the kingdom and now she is stuck being the queen of France. What a hard life that must be! I’m sure she has heard of the news that her father is being basically overthrown entirely by her sisters. Because she is disgustingly loyal she would probably want to help her father and let him know that she is still there for him and that he could stay with her if he wanted. She will still support him and recognize his Kingship, even if he really isn’t the king anymore. Why is she so loyal? I don’t know. I think its has to do with the fact that she is fairly naïve and young. She just wants to please her father.

She would tell her sisters that they were betraying their father and that they should be more respectful to him and that he doesn’t deserve to be treated that way. She is very protective of her father. Basically I jus think that Cordelia needs to get some guts and stand up to her father, and tell him to get over himself and do things for herself, but she wont ever do that.

oh hey 'dad' im just going to take your kingdom now...

Personally, I would say that the reason these girls have turned against their father is because he wasn’t really a father to them. The back-story that I made up basically goes like this. The first two girls are born. Lear is like, “oh cool I have daughters.” But in reality he really just is into being king, so the girls just see him as king. He is also probably more controlling and protective of them because they are his daughters, but there isn’t the love and the bond of father and daughter between them. So then when they are older and greedy and want the kingdom for themselves, they have no emotional attachment to Lear and don’t feel badly when they take over all of his power and take his knights and kick him out of their houses.

Then Cordelia comes along and she is the baby and is favored by her father and has a ‘normal’ relationship with her father and its treated like a daughter and not just some random girl that hangs out in the kingdom. The other girls are jealous that she gets this attention and then when they get their part of the kingdom they become greedy. And then they want power because they have been denied any sort of power before. And now they have a little bit and are going to stretch it as far as they can. And they have no real connection with their father as a true father so they have no guilt in doing this. So actually if you think about it, its all Lear’s fault. He could have prevented this in his early years as king if he would just have paid attention to his daughters.

oh daddy you're the best.

Cordelia and Lear have the relationship that most girls have with their fathers. They love each other because they are supposed to, but it is still genuine. Cordelia knows she is adored by her father and wants to express this to him as honestly as possible. But considering her father is so crazy obsessive with himself and his pride, he cant see past her lack of words to her love. He thinks that if she really loves him she should be able to say all the things she means, because everyone else does. But what he doesn’t realize is that no one else actually loves him and that is why they can say all those great things about him.

When people want something, especially someone like the other sisters, they will do anything they can to make sure it happens. People act out of their own self interest. They aren’t thinking about their father and his feelings or pride, they are thinking about what they can get out of him, and that is why they do not have a hard time lying to him. Lying comes naturally to a person who is that desperate and power hungry.

Everyone ‘plays the game.’ Even if you are just changing the tone of your voice, or the wording of a question to get what you want you are playing the game. If I know that if I yell something I wont get what I want, I will speak in a calm voice. Something as simple as that is playing the game. At least that’s what I would consider to be playing the game. Everyone also loses the game at some point because if they are talking to you like that, and tell you what you want to hear, you are of course going to give into it. Its human tendency.

ohh edmund. silly little boy. you cant kill your father...

Ohhh, poor Edmund. His dad had a fling with some woman and he was the product of it. In these times this is frowned upon and makes him a bastard son. Obviously when society even tells you that you are an illegitimate child, and the second child anyway, you aren’t going to get any inheritance. So he is distraught about that. What you have is everything. What you own makes you. He isn’t going to have anything, which makes him nothing, and he is already nothing because he is a bastard child.

He embarrasses his father. When a parent is embarrassed by their child and the child realizes it, it makes the child feel inferior. And in this case, he already feels inferior because he isn’t legitimate. Now he is freaking out and trying to overpower his father to compensate for the inferiority. He will feel accomplished or legitimate if he does that. It would somehow prove that he was superior or good enough to be the heir of his father’s fortune.

What I personally respect about Edmund is his creativity. I mean Edgar and his father are pretty stupid, but those are some pretty elaborate lies. I give him some credit for that. His ability to lie his way around to get what he wants is pretty impressive. I also would give him credit for taking charge of what he wants. I mean, killing your father and tricking your brother might not be the best way to go about it, but at least he has a plan for his life. And if it wall works out for him, he is going to have a pretty good life- minus the guilt of how he got there.

I guess I would say a modern equivalent is stepchildren. Having a child out of wedlock, is no longer thattt taboo. But stepchildren often seek the approval of the stepparent and may or may not receive it.

are you KIDDING ME HUXLEY? jk. i love him.

Honestly, It really isn’t that bad at all. The reason we think its so bad is because of the way we were raised and what we are taught and the way we allow our human race to develop. We allow ourselves to develop naturally. We do allow our parents to ‘condition’ us if you want to think of being raised as conditioning. If we were conditioned like in Brave New World, nothing would be wrong with the world. There would be a few people once in a while like Bernard, but you just either get rid of them in the embryo stage or exile them to an island.

Especially if the entire world has the same thought process, it just makes it more right. If you can even say more right? The world can’t really be labeled right or wrong I don’t think because it is all based off the way we were raised and our morals. If we were conditioned and whispered things to believe, this brave new world would be perfect.

Now in reality, our reality, right here right now, this truly is a horrifying concept. For us, a people that believes in individuality, and feeling and thinking for yourself, it is a nightmare. Its everything we are told not to believe.

But because I don’t really think the world can be right or wrong, I don’t think either our world or Huxley’s fictional world are right, or good or bad, or evil, or wrong, or lovely.

But the other part I wanted to mention was that whenever Lenina repeats a prethought phrase, and Bernard responds with the amount of times it was repeated and the years it was repeated. I thought it was.. beautiful? Can I say that? Because I think that is the only word that really works.

ALSOOOO. The ending is ANNOYYYYYYING. I understand that things have to play out a certain way to convey the right message, but I kinda felt like it was a cop out. But I know its not so don’t JUMP DOWN MY THROATTTTTT. Okay. See you tomorrow.
Im sure the first thing I will say will be “THIS BOOK IS CREEPER” or something to that effect.

you cannot understand your existence

Their conversation I feel is not really that of civilization. I feel like is more about what is old and new and what progress means. They talk about God and why they don’t teach of him or of something like him. They teach of Ford, but he is a known real man. He does not have any power. He is just the milestone and a way of thinking that makes him their ‘god’. They don’t talk about God, or of Shakespeare because they are old. They keep people in the past. They also know that people will continue to like them and that will keep them in the past. If they like things of the past, they cant move forward. Without moving forward, there is no consumption, and the entire purpose of life is consumption, and stabilization.

“What you need is something with tears for a change. Nothing costs enough here”
I think what John means is that because no one feels anything they are getting nothing out of life. Their soma takes them out of reality and the never have to deal with anything. To John the purpose of life is to survive. He feels pain and love and fear. He cant understand why no one else can, and why no one else would want to.

“But I don’t want comfort. I want God, I want poetry, I want real danger, I want freedom, I want goodness. I want sin.”
John doesn’t want the stability that this world provides. The stability inhibits him from feeling anything. Having extremes and having to deal with those extremes are what make life, life to John. Because John knows the feeling of ‘uncomfort’ he knows what it feels like to live. Without more than one feeling you cannot truly know you are alive, and can’t understand your existence.

control is more than just force

Sex is used as a method of control because the condition people as children to believe it is nothing more than something for pleasure. By letting them play ‘erotic games’ they leave them believing that the only point is for fun. It is there for a man to have a woman. (im sure this is where dooley is going to go into the fact that this book is sexist. Which it is, but I think it helps the book have meaning. But I am also sure we will talk about this in class) By letting them believe this, they will no longer have the desire to have sex to reproduce. They condition the women to take contraceptives without even thinking, to control their reproduction. They also let them believe it to be unethical to become pregnant, and be a mother.
Games control people because they are made so complex, so that they are more expensive and cause more consumption. The soul purpose of recreation is to enhance consumption.
The same goes for phrases like ending is better than mending. If they throw their clothes away, they have to buy new ones, and then they are not wasting time.
Also something while I am on the issue of time, one of the ‘best’ I guess you could say, lines is when Lenina asks what time if for if not for wasting. I’m sure there are plenty of quotes that professional literary analyzers will pull out to summarize the novel, but this is what I would say summarizes it perfectly. Everything they do is to waste time. They don’t really do anything. They don’t even really think. They just think prethought thoughts. Bernard has some of his own thoughts, but that is what hurts him in the end. When he tries to get Lenina to think the same things he does, she gets scared and upset and has to repeat her prethought thoughts, and take soma.
Also soma was one of the main things that controlled them. First I just thought it was something they there just conditioned to take so they didn’t have to deal with reality, even their reality. Then I realized it was a religion substitute. Weirdest thing ever. Except its really not the weirdest thing ever because it pretty much is the same thing is religion. But again I’m sure we will talk about this in class.

really? this is ridic...

What are you talking about ‘its hard to predict the future’? Obviously, no one has asked me about my thoughts on the future. It’s quite easy to predict what is going to happen in the future. You decide what is going to happen, and then you personally have to make sure its going to get done. It’s that simple.
Anyway, the thing that I think is most relevant and no so far fetched, is the idea of abortion, and choosing and conditioning embryos. Technology is not too far away from allowing parents to choose the sex of their baby and what traits to pass on. This might be a while away, but I wouldn’t say its unreasonable.
Pretty much everything else is unreasonable. I don’t think we are ever going to condition everyone to think the same things and never rise in class systems. Especially in America, where we thrive on individuality and rising through the class systems. The most important people in our culture are the most ‘individual’ or ones who fought the hardest to find the ‘American Dream.’ We are too obsessed as a culture, and as people about being individuals. Now, we might not really all be individuals, but we like to think we are.
Also, as a culture, not just our nation, but I would say the rest of the world too, we feel that knowledge brings power. Brave New World, uses knowledge as power too, but it restricts knowledge for power. Now, we all want to learn as much as possible and want to know more than someone else to get ahead. We are too competitive to let others become in charge of us, and tell us what we are allowed to learn and not learn.
But I think the most ridiculous thing that wont happen is the loss of concept of parents. That was one of the most creeper concepts I thought. But I realty don’t think that will ever happen. It might become less personal, but I think the concept will always remain.