Chapter 17 - Religion

"Degrade him from what position?  As a happy, hardworking, goods-consuming citizen he's perfect."  (pg. 236)

The second sentence of the quote is an example of an anastrophe.  Writers use an anastrophe to show emphasis.  In this example, Huxley wanted us to see the descriptions of making one "perfect" before saying that one was "perfect."

In this chapter, John and Mustapha Mond get into the topic of religion.  Mustapha shows John several books including the Bible explaining God and who He is.  John asks Mustapha Mond why he doesn't tell the others about God, and Mustapha tells him that God is old and they don't like old.  God has not changed, but people have.  I feel like this can kind of relate to our society now.  Some people have given up on God for drugs, alcohol, sex, and personal pleasure.  It upsets me that people do this, but I can't do anything about it; it's their life.  John is mad that Mustapha Mond hides God from the society.

John even says, "'But I don't want comfort.  I want God, I want poetry, I want real danger, I want freedom, I want goodness.  I want sin.... Not to mention the right to grow old and ugly and impotent; the right to have syphilis and cancer; the right to have too little to eat; the right to be lousy; the right to live in constant apprehension of what may happen tomorrow; the right to catch typhoid; the right to be tortured by unspeakable pains of every kind.  I claim them all.'"

Chapter 5 - Bernard and His Loneliness... again

"He was as miserably isolated now as he had been when the service began - more isolated by reason of his unreplenished emptiness, his dead satiety.  Separate and unatoned, while the others were being fused into the Greater Being; alone even in Morgana's embrace - much more alone, indeed, more hopelessly himself than he had ever been in his life before.... He was utterly miserable, and perhaps (her shining eyes accused him), perhaps it was his own fault." (pg. 86)

Bernard's stream of consciousness is very dreary and melancholy.  He seems to get more depressed as the book goes on.  This stream of consciousness makes Bernard seem like he has no self-confidence and that he is on the edge of suicide.  His isolation is strange to me because he is not alone in the room of twelve people.  Bernard had just celebrated something religious (I think?) that should have made him feel closer to the spirit (or whatever), but it is doing the exact opposite.

I also want to point out the similarities that this religious service has to the Catholic Mass.  There is a leader who leads the worship, like a priest in a Catholic Mass.  They kept saying "Ford" which I think is like us saying "Lord."  They make the T sign like a cross in the Catholic faith, and they sing hymns like Catholics.  Even though Bernard only goes every other week, I believe that this might be his religious aspect in his life.