IOP Journal #2

I've finally decided to start working my IOP now. Seeing that it is due in a little over a week, I figured it was probably a good idea.

First I need to come up with a thesis. I already have my topic which is something about individualism so now I have to figure out what to say about that topic. I was thinking of saying how Huxley demonstrates that we need to be individuals or else our lives would turn out to be like the people in the book and then connecting it back to how our world is. But then after thinking about that, I though that it would make my presentation too much like some of the dystopian presentations were.

I am going to continue with individualism but I am only going to be showing how different characters show their uniqueness or lack there of. This book has a rather wide variety of how much the people assimilate to one another. I am thinking about using Lenina, Bernard and John as my examples that way I show the farthest extremes of the types of people there are in this dystopian world.

Lenina is the type who does everything the way these people are conditioned to do. She is perfect in every way to how the World Controllers want their citizens. She thinks and acts in all the ways that they have chemically and physically conditioned her to be. Bernard is only partly satisfactory to them. He acts and for the most part like everyone else, but he does not think like them and often his thinking will influence his actions. He often tries to rebel against what he was taught to be right and tries to get others to think the same way as him. John, who does not live in this same society at all, has the total opposite character as Lenina. He is different from every single person. Because he lives in a reservation he is different from the civilized world of London, but then he was also born to a woman from outside the reservation making him different to the other Savages as well. Each one of these characters show their individual thoughts and actions as being through assimilation or by choice.

Seeing that a thesis has to have an insight to human nature/experience I will have to add in why Huxley decided to have this issue of individualism in his book. So when I speak about this I will have to mention how he connects it to our reality. I figure if I do not have my whole presentation based on this concept it will be OK. Even though I do not really want to mention it because it was already stated several times through the dystopian presentations last month.