Brave New World and Wall-E Shed: Oblivious to Life
Annmarie Gaither
October 5th, 2012
Egan
Literary Analysis paper
Oblivious to Life
The impact that technology has on the contemporary world is often a great topic of debate and is shown often in literature. Both Brave New World and Wall-E shed light on the fact that technology can make anyone oblivious to life and their surroundings. In Brave New World, a book by Aldous Huxley written in 1932, the people are oblivious to life because starting as babies they are given only certain information, and conditioned how to act. They are genetically conditioned to hate the outdoors and nature, as well as to look forward to death and dying. They are conditioned to hate physically looking old, such as Linda in Brave New World. They are conditioned and created based on social classes, each social class only wears a certain color, to distinguish who is who, and also do certain work based on their social class. Whenever they feel angry or stressed they don’t have to deal with those emotions like we do today, instead they have soma which is a drug that suppresses those negative emotions. There use of soma is like people in our societies use of marijuana, the difference is that soma is legal and marijuana is illegal otherwise they have the same essential effect. Not having the ability to feel things is like being oblivious, because you don’t understand things. In Wall-E, a Pixar film created in 2008 by Andrew Stantion, Pete Docter, and Jim Reardon, the people are also oblivious to life. This is because they are distracted by all of the technology around them, and how technology makes life so easy. A person does not need to think about doing simple tasks, such as walking, eating, dressing, and other day to day activities because the robots do this for them. This is something that is apparent in today’s society. There is no actual food like home cooked meals, instead there is only food in a cup. This compares to
October 5th, 2012
Egan
Literary Analysis paper
Oblivious to Life
The impact that technology has on the contemporary world is often a great topic of debate and is shown often in literature. Both Brave New World and Wall-E shed light on the fact that technology can make anyone oblivious to life and their surroundings. In Brave New World, a book by Aldous Huxley written in 1932, the people are oblivious to life because starting as babies they are given only certain information, and conditioned how to act. They are genetically conditioned to hate the outdoors and nature, as well as to look forward to death and dying. They are conditioned to hate physically looking old, such as Linda in Brave New World. They are conditioned and created based on social classes, each social class only wears a certain color, to distinguish who is who, and also do certain work based on their social class. Whenever they feel angry or stressed they don’t have to deal with those emotions like we do today, instead they have soma which is a drug that suppresses those negative emotions. There use of soma is like people in our societies use of marijuana, the difference is that soma is legal and marijuana is illegal otherwise they have the same essential effect. Not having the ability to feel things is like being oblivious, because you don’t understand things. In Wall-E, a Pixar film created in 2008 by Andrew Stantion, Pete Docter, and Jim Reardon, the people are also oblivious to life. This is because they are distracted by all of the technology around them, and how technology makes life so easy. A person does not need to think about doing simple tasks, such as walking, eating, dressing, and other day to day activities because the robots do this for them. This is something that is apparent in today’s society. There is no actual food like home cooked meals, instead there is only food in a cup. This compares to