Originally Posted by Kuon

I was being mostly facetious, whilst alluding to the notion that 9/11 truth resembles a kind of postmodern parody, I suppose. In that I have the fanciful idea that in an alternative world (for the sake of argument) if a subversive postmodern group wanted to set out a narrative criticising the notion that there is objective truth, would start a 9/11 truth movement, which by its risable nature lampoons the search for objective truth, and makes it farcical. Hence the "proxy postmodern movement."

Originally Posted by Kuon

Time, the passage of, and the awareness of it's passing, is basically non-existent in both Orwell's Oceania and in the world of Huxley. There is only an ever present now, history is non-existent, the future inconceivable as nothing ever changes. Death, and especially an appreciation of such and what it means, is voided from Huxley's dystopia - man and woman, unwaxed and unwaned by the passage of time are unmourned, unmarked, and unremarked by behaviourily conditioned pups who eat chocolate sauce and play erotic games in the Hospitals for the Dying, oblivious to oblivion. Death in Orwell's Oceania is either mere statistics, no connection to reality in the eternal wars, or the exicising of unpersons from the record, into the memory hole, where their deaths are too unmarked and unremarked.

Originally Posted by Kuon

Does anyone else think that John the Savage, ostensibly free and wild, is actually as behaviourily programmed as those under the auspices of the World State? John is a hopeless romantic in thrall to the tragedies of Shakespeare, he may believe that to truly feel, doom is the predermined outcome. He's locked into a narrative of star crossed lovers and ships wrecked on alien shores, of splenetic gods and oedipal rage, and his choice to live at the lighthouse in the wasteland that acts as a limbo in the spaces between civilization outside London seems an ill choice. His constant rejection by the Indians may have further predisposed him to acting out the pariah narrative, being always other than what is around him, alienated by the social body, a figure bound for a bad end. Perhaps even wishing for it.
He's actively punishing himself, deathly afraid of sex and the female anatomy, who rejects the quite honest yearning and genuine feeling that Lenina Crowne had for him - despite this being expressed in the conventional upfront sexual manner of her world.
He could not see that she was, in her striving to connect, only trying to express what she felt via the only way she knew how to express it.
Shakespeare indoctrinated and Pope hating (the lover of his mother) was understandably unable to comprehend.
His self flaggelation and insistence on being alone so close to the populous zones of the World state may attest to his desire to be punished, to be martyred, like Jesus on the cross; which he had enacted a number of times. Did he set the scene for his own crucifixion?

Originally Posted by blacksmit049

It seems I missed out the very good book of Huxley. If I can find a hard copy in the near bookstores, I'll grab it.

Originally Posted by Queen Hecate

Great thread, I love both novels, jewels of science fiction and both are very scary. I read them when I was in middle high and they really scared me because of how real they felt. Have to say though, of both I love Aldous Huxley's Brave New World best.