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Introductory Activities to Aldous Huxley’s Brave New World: 1. In groups, discuss: What is a utopia? What is a dystopia? Try to give some examples. utopia - the perfect world where everyone gets along and obeys the laws and rules of that given place; a perfect world where everyone lives in harmony; an ideal world. dystopia - the opposite of utopia; the opposite of perfection; an imaginary, dysfunctional where people live a wretched life. e.g. the US's war on drugs and terror: it's an attempt to create a utopia, but it's causing more problems (e.g. tons of money is spent on stamping out drug use, but many people continue to use, sell, and die from drugs every day. Look at Main and Hastings; look at Mexico. e.g. Hitler tried to create a utopia (e.g. the superiority of the "Aryan" race; obviously major atrocities were carried in this quest for a Aryan utopia.) e.g. Shakespeare's The Tempest : starts off as a beautiful utopia on an island, but eventually terrible creatures (like Caliban) do awful things and smaller roles start to plot the murder of Prospero e.g. Lord of the Flies - group of little boys crash onto a deserted island; they try to create a society on the island; power struggle arises between Jack and Ralph; boys die; a once-beautiful utopia becomes a dystopia. e.g. Scott Westerfield'sUglies, Pretties, Specials trilogy - no war, no discrimination e.g. The Hunger Games by Suzanne Collins From Wikipedia: Utopia – an ideal community or society possessing a desirable perfection. The word was coined in Greek by Sir Thomas More for his 1516 book Utopia, describing a fictional island in the Atlantic Ocean. The term has been used to describe both intentional communities that attempt to create an ideal society, and fictional societies portrayed in literature. It has spawned other concepts, most prominently dystopia. Source: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Utopia Dystopia - the idea of a society, generally of a speculative future, characterized by negative, anti-utopian elements, varying from environmental to political and social issues. Dystopian societies, usually hypothesized by writers of fiction, have culminated in a broad series of sub-genres and is often used to raise issues regarding society, environment, politics, religion, psychology, spirituality, or technology that may become present in the future. For this reason, Dystopias have taken the form of a multitude of speculations, such as Pollution; Poverty; Societal collapse or Political repression and Totalitarianism. Famous depictions of Dystopian societies include Nineteen Eighty-Four, a totalitarian invasive super state; Brave New World, where the human population is placed under a caste of psychological allocation and Fahrenheit 451 where the state burns books out of fear of what they may incite. The Iron Heel was described by Erich Fromm as "the earliest of the modern Dystopian"[1]. Source: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dystopia 1. Create your own utopia or dystopia. In particular, explain: its government, its different social groups, how people live (e.g. what do they do for work), its ideology (or value system – may or may not include religion), its physical environment, etc. What is key to maintaining your utopia? How should rebels of your utopia or dystopia be dealt with? 2. Respond to ONE of the following quotes in writing: “In a world where anything is available, nothing has any meaning’ (xxiv, Atwood in Huxley). “A really efficient totalitarian state would be one in which the all-powerful executive of political bosses and their army of managers control a population of slaves who do not have to be coerced (forcibly persuaded), because they love their servitude…The greatest triumphs of propaganda have been accomplished, not by doing something, but by refraining from doing. Great is the truth, but still greater, from a practical point of view is silence about the truth” (Huxley, xxiii-xxiv).