Boom! Just in the blink of an eye, all the biological functions that sustain an organism shut down. Death is a petrifying stage of life that over 250,000 people in Canada experienced in the past two years. In the novel Brave New World by Aldous Huxley, death is meaningless, and is a natural and tolerable process, which is the optimism today’s society is trying to establish. Nobody looks forward to the end of life, but the BNW is an example of where death is accepted and no one fears it anymore, especially through this society’s method of conditioning.
Some are so consumed by grief and agony that they nearly succumb themselves, while others take a moment to reflect on life. It takes a brave person to see the face of death, however, today’s …show more content…
Many people's fear of death is tied into their religious beliefs, believing that the path to demise is very straight and narrow, and fear that any deviations or mistakes may cause them to be eternally condemned. This is very indistinguishable to the Savages’ theory in the Brave New World. Since what happens after death cannot be unequivocally proven, people who are highly intelligent and inquisitive and those who question their own philosophical or religious beliefs are more likely to fear death, so many today try to live to their best before they are moribund. In chapter 11, as Linda is overdosing on cocaine, John asks Dr. Shaw if he is “Shortening her life by giving her so much?" Dr. Shaw responded with "Cocaine may make you lose a few years in time, but think of the enormous, immeasurable durations it can give you out of time.” (P. 134). This shows how cocaine made the dying something of a dream, which is something that is similar to what doctors can do here, called a physician-assisted suicide or Euthanasia. Linda was content as she died as she had soma in her blood. Meanwhile, John, who is a Savage, had not been conditioned. He treated death as something sad, and found the intrusion of the children being conditioned offensive and “disgraceful”. (P. 178) The BNW and the Savages are total opposites, but the present society is doubtlessly heading towards the more buoyant way of seeing the end of
Some are so consumed by grief and agony that they nearly succumb themselves, while others take a moment to reflect on life. It takes a brave person to see the face of death, however, today’s …show more content…
Many people's fear of death is tied into their religious beliefs, believing that the path to demise is very straight and narrow, and fear that any deviations or mistakes may cause them to be eternally condemned. This is very indistinguishable to the Savages’ theory in the Brave New World. Since what happens after death cannot be unequivocally proven, people who are highly intelligent and inquisitive and those who question their own philosophical or religious beliefs are more likely to fear death, so many today try to live to their best before they are moribund. In chapter 11, as Linda is overdosing on cocaine, John asks Dr. Shaw if he is “Shortening her life by giving her so much?" Dr. Shaw responded with "Cocaine may make you lose a few years in time, but think of the enormous, immeasurable durations it can give you out of time.” (P. 134). This shows how cocaine made the dying something of a dream, which is something that is similar to what doctors can do here, called a physician-assisted suicide or Euthanasia. Linda was content as she died as she had soma in her blood. Meanwhile, John, who is a Savage, had not been conditioned. He treated death as something sad, and found the intrusion of the children being conditioned offensive and “disgraceful”. (P. 178) The BNW and the Savages are total opposites, but the present society is doubtlessly heading towards the more buoyant way of seeing the end of