Family In Brave New World

Is the push for a perfect utopia enough to siphon motherhood, family, and love? As in Brave New World, Aldous Huxley illustrates the destruction of the idea of family in this ’perfect world‘. People in the world today have the ability to express love and obtain a family. Huxley explores the futuristic outlook on a world (in many ways similar to ours) that would not allow such humanistic traits. Science is so called the ’father of progress’ and yet the development of Fordism and the evolution of artificial fertilization deteriorates the social value of science. Brave New World offers incites on an innovative world trying and, even more frightening, succeeding to create a utopia while destroying family and erasing the humanity in people.

To get a full understanding of family theory one must first have the understanding of what is theory. Theory is a systematic collection of concepts and relations. Family however can mean a broad range of things to a person. One person may consider family to be father, mother, sister and brother; however, to someone else family could be just one parent with one child; and to another it could their friends. Family systems theory however defines the family as a system. Family consist of interrelated parts, each impacting the other and adding to each other’s growth (or detriment) of the other. And because family is always changing, growing, self-organizing, and becoming accustomed to each other and the exterior environment (White & Klein, 2008). Now let’s take a look at the

Everyone has a heritage, where they came from, where they developed into who they are today. Your family stems from your heritage and definitely forms you into the person you become. Barbara Kingsolver goes into depth on the concept of family in her essay, “Stone Soup,”. Throughout this essay, Kingsolver specifies how despite some families have gone through broken places and had to overcomes struggles and had to restructure their life, they are still a family, regardless they are not the common “traditional family” that everyone expects to see. Kingsolver describes how each family is positioned into these “family of dolls” with specific roles for each member and then goes on to explain how the “traditional families” in society put these negative labels and break down “nontraditional families” simply because they are not the same.

In today’s society, family is often attempted to be organized within a social structure. Within this structure family typically is consisted of mom, dad, daughter, and son. However, many families do not fit into this configuration. These families may include same sex couples, separated or divorced families, extended families, or even blended families. Even though these families may be happy and healthy, to many they are not considered real families. Going along with the topic of imperfect families, both Barbara Kingsolver and Richard Rodriguez try to break down the traditional family structure through their writing. While Kingsolver’s “Stone Soup” and Rodriguez’s “Family Values” explore the ideas of different family structures and traditional American values, “Stone Soup” breaks down what an actual family is like while “Family Values” expresses the value of family in different cultures.

Family is the first structure that one becomes a part of and it has a huge impact on people’s life. Parents play an important part on a child’s development. Jess’s family had a significant impact on Jess’s emotional state. Hir parents did not give the love that a child would require from the beginning. Leslie Feinberg states, “My mother admitted she was afraid to touch me, except to pin on a diaper or stick a bottle in my mouth” (Feinberg 14). They treated hir as ze was different (?) .Another significant experience that Jess had in hir childhood was when

Spending time with each other, having strong morals and giving a lot of love are a few of the things that give families hope and happiness. In the novel A Death in the Family (1938) by James Agee, a family has to use these advantages in order to make it through a very difficult time. During the middle of one night in 1915, the husband, Jay, and his wife, Mary, receive a phone call saying that Jay's father is dying. Ralph, the person who called, is Jay's brother, and he happens to be drunk. Jay doesn't know if he can trust Ralph in saying that their father is dying, but he doesn't want to take the chance of never seeing his father again, so he decides to go see his father. He kisses

“Family is not an important thing it’s everything” -Michael J. Fox. In the book Brave New World family is avoided and is an obscenity. The film Gattaca they have a way of showing family as the ultimate success through life.

creates a family, even with no blood relation. In the novel, The Outsiders by Hinton, S.E,

Brave New World, Aldous Huxley’s most famous novel, and other similar pieces of literature, focus on a dystopian society where “progress” no longer benefits the the people. Instead, it oppresses them, they are subjugated to the will of the society for the benefit of those at the top of that social system. Those whose only goal is to perpetuate themselves. Individuals within that system whose actions and beliefs match the will of the society are know as being orthodox, while those who don’t fit into the rigid hierarchy established by the society are considered outsiders, who must be forced back into line. Huxley saw this occurring in his society and it has grown even more dramatic today. In order to illustrate his pessimistic thoughts on the trends of society, Huxley created a series of outsiders, primarily Bernard Marx, Mustafa Mond, Helmholtz Watson, John the Savage, and Linda, and uses them to demonstrate how the system uses various methods, chiefly, conditioning and the power of institutions to force the outsiders back into Orthodoxy even to the expense of their lives.

How does one define family? Throughout our readings, we find ourselves learning the ideas of theorist, concepts, and definitions to help us define and describe what family is. The family could possibly be what or who we say they are, or in simpler Bozett’s term, who the patient says it is! (Plumer, 2010). A family could consist possibly of values, roles, communication, environment, and relationships. Families may transition through all of these principles that either unites them or tears them apart. For instance, the movie Mrs. Doubtfire portrays these perceptions of what family is when family processes are shifted within a household. We will now discuss in more detail of the family assessment found throughout the movie starring the Hillards.

There are several instances Brave New World where people have different opinions about several different things. One example of this how the different characters views on Parents. Another example is how the different characters view history, and how it is taught in the BNW and on the Reservation. Old age is another example that shows the different views of the characters in Brave New World.

Family is not through blood but rather through personal connections and trust. Family are the people that surround others with positivity, family can be chosen. An example of family being chosen or accepted that is not blood related from the play ODACTTT is when Tonto and Janice were talking about her biological family and how important true family really is, and how her name is Grace Wabung. contreversely, Janice has a different opinion on family and says, “... my name is Wirth”(Taylor 57). In particular, Janice feels her family is her adopted family more so than her birth family because of personal connection, as well as who cared for her over her childhood years and what became accustomed to her. Another example from the play ODACTTT is when Rodney, Tonto and Janice are talking about Amelia Earhart. They are talking about how she is family within the reserve. They continue talking about Amelia Earhart and how her being alive is a secret kept among the community for her safety and protection from the rest of the world. The topic of discussion was Amelia Earhart, a little old lady that lives on the reserve when Rodney says, “Yeah the village. Because we’re her family now, it’s her secret but it’s also ours”(Taylor 44). Which is very significant and important because Rodney, Barb, and Tonto continuously keep telling Janice that blood relatives are family and how it is more important than

The mother in “The Other Family”, by Himani Bannerji, has numerous static traits. Perhaps one of her most dominant traits being affection. It is clear various times in the text that she is affectionate when she felt “sorry that she was putting such a heavy burden on such young shoulders” (Bannerji 2). Before, she had also said that she did not want “frighten [her daughter]”(Bannerji 2). She even manifests panic just from thinking of potentially losing her daughter. Her second most evident trait is loneliness. The mother displays loneliness when she sometimes is “unsettled” with the news contained in “letters that [arrived] from home”(Bannerji 1). This could most likely be that the letters may be about certain people or things she misses from

Additionally, the family of choice consists of people one feels as obligated to as if one was of blood relation. These self-constructed families are no less real or less meaningful than conventional families. In fact, they are known as one’s fictive kin. The bond of this type of family can be formed through several ways. Natalie writes, “for some people, voluntary kinship filled a void left by death or estrangement from biological family, while for others the relationships were supplemental or temporary.” It can be a friendship that turns into a family or a group that one relates to as a family. Either way, the fictive kin family is a blossoming family type. Increasingly, people refer to this as their second family. Some choose it to be their first family when they feel

Thirty years later, parents are semi-reformed hippies whose children were conceived in a commune. For many, our definition of “family” is learned through what society tells us. Being born means we are somehow connected to someone whether we are the most famous person or the poorest beggar on the street (Shields 559). In its most basic form, everyone has a family.