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. Research Paper connecting themes of Brave New World or 1984 to today’s society Research notes Outline Rough Draft Individual Conferences

I CAN BUILD BACKGROUND KNOWLEDGE ON THEMES AND CONTEXT OF BRAVE NEW WORLD & 1984 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.George OrwellWinston SmithBig BrotherJuliaBIG BROTHER IS WATCHING YOU

NOW TIME TO CHOOSE YOUR NOVEL…