Late last week and early this week, my English class participated in Socratic Seminars about different themes from the book Brave New World. One of the groups I was in discussed the irony of John the Savage's name and the significance of the names of the various characters. The other discussed the power of language in the book, and the power of the word to influence thought and behavior.
I really did not feel as though I encountered any striking new ideas (or at least ones that would stay with me through the weekend and other school work). I felt as though much of what was said were confirmations of many of my own thoughts. The idea that John was more civilized than the "civilized" world and John's emotional understanding but not comprehension of Shakespeare were already thoughts to me. There were not very many challenging of ideas during our talks (though I think that is mainly due to people being respectful to one another and not wanting to have a bad grade). Even though I did not find drastically different points of view from my classmates, I did found out a little background about background such as character name origins when preparing for the seminars. Interestingly, Bernard Marx somewhat exiles himself from society by going to the Savage Reservation. Similarly, Karl Marx (who Bernard is partially named after) is expelled from Paris at the end of 1844 but then returned when a revolution first broke out (or Bernard returned to society). Also, the name Lenina Crowne is said to come from Vladimir Lennin, who supported Karl Marx. I tie this to Lenina trying to understand Bernard and supporting him.
In retrospect, I think I did fairly well on my parts of the conversation. The most difficult part, I would say, would be trying not to interrupt someone who is speaking when an idea pops into your head that feels as though it must absolutely and positively be said at that moment. Even though we had eight minutes to discuss our topic, I felt as though I hadn't said all I wanted to during that time. During the conversation about the power of words to influence thought and behavior, we did not get to talk about Newspeak from the book 1984 by George Orwell. Nearly all of my research for that discussion was about Newspeak (which included quotes from 1984). Even with my negative comments, I enjoyed sitting down with a group of my friends and mutually being aware that we were about to engage in serious and deep conversation. I would invite people into the conversation more often who weren't given much of an opening during the conversation to speak if I had a do-over. Overall, I enjoyed our Socratic Seminars though I would give a little more time to discuss than eight minutes to let everyone say what they wanted to and cover most everything.
That information about Karl Marx being exiled is from http://www.historyguide.org/intellect/marx.html.
No comments:
Post a Comment