Death In Aldous Huxley's 'Brave New World'

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In Mexican cultures, November 2nd is “El Dia de los Muertos,” or the Day of the Dead. This celebration lasts a weekend and lets families honor their fallen relatives. The reason I mention the event is because I have always found it ironic that on a day where so many honor their dead mothers, fathers, brothers, and sisters, I celebrate my birth. In a way, it has actually shaped my beliefs knowing that so many celebrate the afterlife on my birthday. In fact, it humbles me to share a date with this event because, for me, it teaches that death is the end of your life, but it is not the end of your memory. “Brave New World,” by Aldous Huxley, introduces the concept of people living in a bottle. The bottle is a metaphor of what a person’s life …show more content…
I have never been one to listen very well which often got me into quite a bit of trouble. When I was in the 6th grade, my English teacher was insistent that we turn in cursive handwriting sheets. I had two older siblings, one in middle school and the other in high school, who never wrote in cursive, so I told her, “Ma’am, my brother and sister our much older than me, and they don’t use cursive. Why do I have to do this?” She said to me, “I assigned it, so you have to do it.” At this time, I was fairly puzzled by the concept of authority, and I never really understood why someone would have power over me. In an act of defiance, I refused to complete my cursive assignments. Needless to say, this affected me far more than it did her, and I failed writing on my progress reports with a zero. I was legitimately confused by this. How could I fail? I had only failed to turn every handwriting assignment, but I understood the concept of failure as well as I understood the idea of authority. Although my grade was atrocious, I was far more worried about how my mother would react to the news that her son had failed to turn in a single writing assignment. After receiving my punishment, I learned that if assigned a task, even one as futile as practicing cursive, it is my duty to complete it. This helped me develop a sense of responsibility for myself and my actions, but to this day, I still have some trouble with …show more content…
For instance, my adopted brother has been a massive source of ideological beliefs. He moved in with my family halfway through my 8th grade year. He isn’t truly adopted seeming as he moved in when he was 18 years old, but he is family nonetheless. He and I would stay up into the early hours of the morning talking about anything. We spoke about our family, our lives, our favorite foods, our favorite games, etc. Although these topics are non complex, we often touched on the subject of life and death, morality, and religion. He was my moral compass and, in most situations, I would think about what he would do in my position. He is a fairly light hearted individual, and we genuinely enjoy each other’s company. Whenever he had first moved in, he and I were at home alone. We pondered for quite sometime about what we could possibly eat. Our main conundrum was that neither of us knew how to actually cook. I was only 14 years old, and he had only cooked very few times before. We sat in a state of perplexity as we pondered what we could possibly eat. Then, he came up with a perfect idea, “Let’s just make sandwiches.” It was simple, yet the idea completely changed our night and saved us from the brink of death. Until, we realized we had run out of bread. In panic, we foraged for a solution, and we were saved by the only kind of bread we had: blueberry bagels. We made sandwiches

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