INTRO INTO
DYSTOPIAN UNIT
LEARNING TARGETS WE WILL BE
FOCUSING ON THIS QUARTER:
I CAN ARTICULATE MY POSITION ON THE CURRENT STATE OF MORALS IN
SOCIETY.
I CAN IDENTIFY AND ARTICULATE HOW THEMES IN BRAVE NEW WORLD & 1984
OCCUR IN OUR SOCIETY TODAY.
I CAN USE RESEARCH STRATEGIES TO OBTAIN RELEVANT INFORMATION THAT
SUPPORTS MY CLAIM.
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Research Paper connecting themes of Brave New World or 1984 to today’s society
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Research notes
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Outline
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Rough Draft
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Individual Conferences
I CAN BUILD BACKGROUND KNOWLEDGE
ON THEMES AND CONTEXT OF BRAVE
NEW WORLD & 1984
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Position constructed responses
“Harrison Bergeron” by Kurt Vonnegut
“On Morality” by Joan Didion
“It Feels Right…” David Brooks
“Our Great Moral Decline” The Economist
“What is considered morally acceptable?” Washington Post
“The Moral Instinct”
Annotations
I CAN USE CLOSE READING
STRATEGIES TO MAKE MEANING
OF COMPLEX FICTION TEXTS.
• Brave New World & 1984 chapter quizzes
• Annotations
GUIDING QUESTIONS
• How are the morals of Brave New World & 1984 applicable to
today’s society?
• To what extent are individual’s impulses controlled by morals?
• To what extent should morality be included in deciding what to do
with scientific discoveries and developments
YOU WILL GET TO CHOOSE FROM 2
DIFFERENT NOVELS
SUMMARY OF BRAVE NEW WORLD
BY: ALDOUS HUXLEY
• The novel opens in the year 632 A.F. (which means After Ford, the god of the
New World). All of civilization has been destroyed by a great war. Then there
is another war, the Nine Years War, which ushers in the era of Ford, ensuring
stability through dictatorship. The society depicted in the novel is based on a
rigid caste system. The higher of the five castes enjoy superior tasks, while the
lower ones perform menial roles. Ten Controllers hold all the power in this new
world and peace is maintained by conditioning infant minds and by soothing
adults with the tranquilizer, soma. The population is further controlled through
scientific methods; marriage is forbidden, and children are not born but
produced in an embryo factory.
1984 BY: GEORGE ORWELL
In George Orwell's 1984,Winston Smith wrestles with oppression in Oceania, a place
where the Party scrutinizes human actions with ever-watchful Big Brother. Defying a ban
on individuality, Winston dares to express his thoughts in a diary and pursues a
relationship with Julia. These criminal deeds bring Winston into the eye of the
opposition, who then must reform the nonconformist. George Orwell's 1984 introduced
the watchwords for life without freedom: BIG BROTHER IS WATCHING YOU. The
setting of 1984 is a dystopia: an imagined world that is far worse than our own, as
opposed to a utopia, which is an ideal place or state., the year that gives the book its
title was still almost 40 years in the future. Some of the things Orwell imagined that
would come to pass were the telescreen, a TV that observes those who are watching it,
and a world consisting of three megastates rather than hundreds of countries. In the
novel, the country of Eastasia apparently consists of China and its satellite
nations; Eurasia is the Soviet Union; and Oceania comprises the United States, the
United Kingdom, and their allies.
NOW TIME TO
CHOOSE YOUR
NOVEL…