Corrigé de la compré : quelques possibilités inspirées de vos productions

Brave New World

  1)  Who are the different characters? What do you know about them?
There is a director also referred to as D.H.C. This director hasn't got a name. There are six nurses ("half a dozen") dressed in a white uniform and eight-month-old babies belonging to a caste called Delta. There is even a Head Nurse (there are capital letters attached to her job / function) therefore she must be important. The babies or "infants" are the objects of an experiment, a training. In this extract, the director is talking to someone. He may be addressing the reader or more probably other doctors or students…

How do the nurses behave? Can you guess why?

The nurses are really obedient. They follow every order of the Doctor even if it’s horrible. They don’t even think twice and they don’t show any kind of emotion (anger, sadness, joy…). They just obey and nothing more. They probably act like that because they also are clones who were trained to obey. Plus, they are probably used to that kind of experiment and so they don’t even react.

OR

The nurses obey the director without saying a word. They don't oppose him even though the orders they are given are totally inhumane. They seem to be afraid of him because they "stiffened to attention as the D.H.C. came in".
I think they do not show any emotions because they must have been "trained" like the babies.

2)    USE YOUR OWN WORDS to explain what sort of lesson it is.

The director is making sure those babies obey him in the future. This terrific lesson is like brainwashing: forced to endure it over and over again, those children will grow to be terrified of books and flower. It is a lesson based on trauma…

OR

It’s to be sure that, whenever they see flowers or books, they remember the pain and the horrible feeling of the electricity in their bodies and they associate this with flowers or books (which are traditionally positive things). It’s an experiment which is used on animals; that’s how the children are treated…

3)    According to you, why does the Delta group have to hate flowers and books?

The Delta group has to hate flowers and books because they are things that distract people. Flowers bring hope and beauty into the world, they have a signification most of the time. They are different, they are free and grow on their own, which isn’t an encouraged behavior in Brave New World. The books are even more “dangerous”, because they bring ideas to the world, often ideas in contradiction with the in-place regime. Books, in history, showed that they were a true weapon against regimes and monarchies. Hating them, for the Delta group, means no revolution, protests or riots...

4)    True or false? Justify with a quote from the text.

The director is self-satisfied.

Š true     Š false

Justify: “ “Observe,” said the Director triumphantly, “observe.” ”

One lesson is enough to make the children hate books and flowers.

Š true     Š false

Justify: “Books and loud noises, flowers and electric shocks- already in the infant mind these couple were compromisingly linked; and after two hundred repetitions of the same or similar lesson would be wedded indissolubly.”

5)      “What man has joined, nature is powerless to put asunder.”,

It means that human nature is stronger than Nature. When man is convinced of something he won't change his mind and nature cannot interfere. Indeed, as the lesson shows it, the human psychology is kind of complex and powerful because children who were tested automatically link books with the explosion, a situation of danger. And nature looks weak next to human nature, Nature doesn't control what humans do.

Man is actually playing God, tampering with Nature.

NB: this sentence is a reference to the bible and contradicts the bible: What God Has Put Together Let No Man Put Asunder…

6)    The title :

The title sounds like a promise from a politician. It seems like they are going to create something brand new, as if it was possible to model a kind of “perfect” world, where everyone would  be fearless. It sounds scary because it means that everything would be under scientists’control, there would be no human plurality. It is actually a totalitarian state. So the title is ironical.

7)     If you had to choose a title for THIS extract, what would it be? Why
I would call it "A Beautiful Degeneration" because it is an oxymoron which shows the optimistic vision of the director and at the same time the reality of the situation. I think it also echoes the title of the novel.                                            OR

‘‘Science is always right’’ to stress the irony…

OR

The title I would choose would actually be a sentence from the extract itself: “What man has joined, nature is powerless to put asunder.”, because I think it sums up the story...

8)             Some common points and differences between the two texts you studied :

The two texts have in common the fact they deal with scientific progress, and the role of the human guinea pig questioned by the author. They ask about whether it is good or not to permit such actions/experiments. It is science fiction where people are manipulated and the consequences will be great damages. …

However, in this extract from Brave New World, there is no animal before the human to be tested, whereas it is the case in Flowers for Algernon. In addition, the type of narration is different. In Flowers for Algernon, the narrator is internal; in the other text, there is an external point of view. Also, the number and age of people going through a scientific experiment are not the same: it is an adult with a job on the one hand, and many babies 8-months-old on the other hand.

OR

Both texts are about an unhealthy experiment on powerless victims. They both try to deal with the issues that scientific experiments can create and show how dangerous technological evolutions can be…

But, the texts also show some differences. In Flowers for Algernon, the man is chosen because he has particularities that are interesting for the scientists. The scientists don’t want to erase the man’s personality; they just want to make him smarter (they did even gave him books; a thing which is here forbidden).

The experiment is not on the whole population… In this extract, the babies are not chosen for any particular reason. They are chosen because they are babies and the Director wants to manipulate them to be as obedient as puppets…

9)  To what extent do these two texts illustrate “the World of Imagination”?

Those texts perfectly show the power of he writer’s imagination : capable of creating brand new scientific progess, thoses artists imagine the future and make us realize some issues progress might bring. Should it be to fantazise on scientific progress or bring awareness, Flowers for Algernon and Brave new World both offer the reader the possibility of getting a peak at what the future might look like : imagination can indeed often be close to reality

OR

These two texts illustrate “The World of Imagination” first, because they are both science fiction. They both create a new world, with scientific progress…
Imagination, nowadays, is not only thinking about something that doesn’t exist, it’s also making it real. Writers love to put imaginary things with a touch of reality, which makes their story not impossible to happen someday. They also belong to the world of imagination since they are considered to be dystopias, man being reduced in his capacities and possibilities…