Monday, April 15, 2013

Kurtz Starring as Ford


The creator of it all: Mr. Henry Ford. The personification of efficiency and the mechanization of society, a system created to maintain Community, Identity, and most of all Stability. Ford has become: the goal, the mystery, the man to meet, much like Kurtz becomes the holy grail in The Heart of Darkness
The Hatchery is much like the Thames. It shows the way to reach Ford or at least it symbolizes a path to uncover the mystery of Ford but it leaves doubts as to whether it is the best way of solving the mystery, just as the Thames´ waters leave an untrustworthy wake.  Ford even has "Ford´s Day"(31) a day in which kids play "erotic" games, something that "before the time of Our Ford..." was thought to be "abnormal" and such a idea is received by the Directors´ students with a "roar of laughter."(32) It becomes clear that anything before Ford is invalid and is blatantly humiliated by the future leaders (Alphas) of society. The capitalized "Our Ford" strongly correlates with "Our Father"; a term heavily practiced in the bible which starts to express not only an idea of perfection physically in society but a spiritual phenomenon. Ford has become the messiah of the world: the physical and mental aspiration,  maybe not all want to achieve it but everyone knows it and wants to meet it, just as Marlow through every station becomes even more hypnotized by Kurtz not in a physical manner but as a greater being. The difference between Kurtz and Ford is that no "alphas" support Kurtz, his ideology is not the mainstream or the ultimate goal in perspective with the leaders such as the owners of the Belgian Company; Kurtz´s bosses. Kurtz is the mystery man in Africa, a playground which no one really cares to organize. The chilling fact about Ford is that the world has been mechanized to only know and only want to be Ford, he is the ultimate goal, his spirit and ideology is what the "Belgian Owners" want. He is what the elite  (Alphas) desire and what the poor (Epsilons, Deltas, and Gammas) are genetically trained to crave. For an Alpha like his Fordship Mustapha to express "Our Ford- or Our Freud"(39) reflects a society that has built such a utopian character that it has revolutionized into a failed state. Freud; the father and pioneer of physcoanalysis has been transformed by not only one but all leaders of society,  into a shadow of Ford´s mental manipulation game. The word analysis should not even be mentioned when talking about "Our Ford. or Our Freud" because the possibility of actually thinking is non-existent. 
Even to the reader Ford  becomes an unceasing figure, in every page his name appears like a somewhat fascist governmental propaganda. Ford leaves no space for thinking nor dwelling. Not even Freud´s thinking survives. Every year; just like "632 A.F." will become a year of even more "stability" as the preachings of "Our Ford" become more engraved genetically and socially into the test tubes of the "Bokanovsky Process."

Too many Big Nurses

Alphas, Chronics, Deltas, Acutes. Huxley, just as Kesey, starts his novel by illustrating just how "perfectly organized" the Directors operate society. Huxley flashes from the very beginning the machinations of society. At first with apparent glamour but it doesn't take the reader long to remember that Chief Bromden was right to fake deaf and dumb. 
There is no need to read further than the first couple of lines to begin falling in to the suicidal trance of the utopia. Phrases such as: "World State´s Motto" begin to render flashbacks that became abundant while reading Kesey´s novel but this time "machination" is not the appropriate word to apply; homogenization is. What seems to be happening in Brave New World in contrast to OFCN is that a system has not been imposed physically but genetically. Fields trips or tours guided by Ms. Ratched were nonexistent, her ward was not depicted as the "giant leap of mankind" nor was a sense of pride dispersed throughout the civilian population on the system enabled in the ward. Huxley proposes a new; much more complex problem with the system. Students aspire to and conformation is not even an existent term because society has been genetically modified to be "mechanized", the "Chiefs" in this new world have not become deaf and dumb but have been made to be dead and dumb. The Chief had something to aspire to, he had dreams and memories he could dwell on, that sense of begin able to fight the system by thinking or even wanting to purse happiness is scientifically impossible to achieve in Brave New World. 
The ideology of the Director therefore of society seems to be expressed in one single sentence: "Not philosophers but fret sawyers and stamp collector compose the backbone of society."(Four) It is neither Stalin nor Hitler; it is Ford´s assembly line.