BRAVE NEW WORLD & NIGHT – ESSAY
The representation of political perspectives/acts and motivations are predisposed by the composer’s personal agenda to expose the destructive interplay between autonomy and control. Aldous Huxley’s satirical novel Brave New World (1932) examines the competing perspectives between individuality and control. Elie Wiesel’s memoir Night (1958) criticises the relegation of Jewish society behind impersonal political regimes. Ultimately, composers manipulate their chosen representational medium to forewarn the loss of [Q] through politics.
Political perspectives/acts are inherently representations of the motivations of those in control. This conflict between individuality and social stability reveals BNW’s ultimate …show more content…
Huxley’s representation of the varied responses to totalitarian control is politically motivated to satirise enchained future society. The delineation of the World State as a bureaucratic system of economic rationalism is camouflaged within an overtly utopian portrayal through the propagandist maxim ‘community, identity, stability.’ So, the satirical construction of totalitarian control as an allusion of USSR’s communist and Europe’s fascist ‘utopias’ asserts Huxley’s fear they threatened man’s innate freedom by fostering a false perception of the common good built on the subservience of the individual to the state. Hence, the primitive characterisation of John, a biblical allusion to John the Baptist, as a metonym for individuality is undermined by the agonised tone ‘forgive me… I’m bad,’ which evokes disgust at = ‘sins’ committed under oppressive governments. In juxtaposition to the individual perspective offered through John, the hypnopaedic epithet ‘glad I’m a Gamma’ depicts the conditioned suppression of otherness by dominant political regimes. Yet, Huxley also characterises Lenina as unwarranted damage, uplifting the veneer of civilisation to cast ‘anomalies’ as victims of the utopia’s …show more content…
Night reveals that political perspectives are fluid, reshaped by maturity and personal experiences. Wiesel’s representation of his oscillations in piety through the recurring motif of God evokes empathy for his destroyed innocence by his Auschwitz experiences. The fragmented narrative style portrays the unreliability of memory, alluding to tensions between individual views and Nazi propaganda to subjugate political scapegoats. Initially, Wiesel’s parallelism of politics to an ‘emanation of the divine’ depicts his unwavering faith in God’s goodness. However, after witnessing the hanging of a child, which Wiesel uses to symbolise the ‘murder’ of society’s innocence, the accusatory hypophora ‘Where is God? Not here’ is juxtaposed with his earlier rhetorical question ‘Why did I pray?’ This accentuates his later cynicism regarding his youthful gratefulness for God, representing the spiritually degrading impact of politics on society. Thus, Wiesel’s dismissal of Jewish culture through the hellish imagery ‘my soul has been devoured by black flames,’ symbolises his poignant recognition of how faith facilitated survival, arousing empathy for his politically obliterated
The representation of political perspectives/acts and motivations are predisposed by the composer’s personal agenda to expose the destructive interplay between autonomy and control. Aldous Huxley’s satirical novel Brave New World (1932) examines the competing perspectives between individuality and control. Elie Wiesel’s memoir Night (1958) criticises the relegation of Jewish society behind impersonal political regimes. Ultimately, composers manipulate their chosen representational medium to forewarn the loss of [Q] through politics.
Political perspectives/acts are inherently representations of the motivations of those in control. This conflict between individuality and social stability reveals BNW’s ultimate …show more content…
Huxley’s representation of the varied responses to totalitarian control is politically motivated to satirise enchained future society. The delineation of the World State as a bureaucratic system of economic rationalism is camouflaged within an overtly utopian portrayal through the propagandist maxim ‘community, identity, stability.’ So, the satirical construction of totalitarian control as an allusion of USSR’s communist and Europe’s fascist ‘utopias’ asserts Huxley’s fear they threatened man’s innate freedom by fostering a false perception of the common good built on the subservience of the individual to the state. Hence, the primitive characterisation of John, a biblical allusion to John the Baptist, as a metonym for individuality is undermined by the agonised tone ‘forgive me… I’m bad,’ which evokes disgust at = ‘sins’ committed under oppressive governments. In juxtaposition to the individual perspective offered through John, the hypnopaedic epithet ‘glad I’m a Gamma’ depicts the conditioned suppression of otherness by dominant political regimes. Yet, Huxley also characterises Lenina as unwarranted damage, uplifting the veneer of civilisation to cast ‘anomalies’ as victims of the utopia’s …show more content…
Night reveals that political perspectives are fluid, reshaped by maturity and personal experiences. Wiesel’s representation of his oscillations in piety through the recurring motif of God evokes empathy for his destroyed innocence by his Auschwitz experiences. The fragmented narrative style portrays the unreliability of memory, alluding to tensions between individual views and Nazi propaganda to subjugate political scapegoats. Initially, Wiesel’s parallelism of politics to an ‘emanation of the divine’ depicts his unwavering faith in God’s goodness. However, after witnessing the hanging of a child, which Wiesel uses to symbolise the ‘murder’ of society’s innocence, the accusatory hypophora ‘Where is God? Not here’ is juxtaposed with his earlier rhetorical question ‘Why did I pray?’ This accentuates his later cynicism regarding his youthful gratefulness for God, representing the spiritually degrading impact of politics on society. Thus, Wiesel’s dismissal of Jewish culture through the hellish imagery ‘my soul has been devoured by black flames,’ symbolises his poignant recognition of how faith facilitated survival, arousing empathy for his politically obliterated