Entry #4

* Please choose one passage from the novel that
is significant to you.Why is this passage meaningful? Please type it into one of your entries and comment on what you think about the passage.

(These passages are parts of a sociology professor’s speech to the survivors in this dystopian world of its situations and actions that the new society should take.)
Pg. 99

“The conditions which framed and taught us our standards have gone with it. Our needs are different now, and our aims must be different.”
“With the old pattern broken, we have now to find out what mode of life is best suited to the new. We have not simply to start building again; we have to start thinking again – which is much more difficult, and far more distasteful.”
“We must have the moral courage to think and to plan for ourselves.”


These lines were the most powerful words that struck me in the whole novel. They gave me a whole new world of perspective. For the first time in my life, I pondered what it meant to be a human and about our standards of being one. Would all our morals and patterns matter in a dystopian world? I thought the human experience would be quite hollow without today’s conditions of well-being. This brought me to another question. “Is this the moral state of people in extreme poverty, with no hope, filled with loneliness and confusion? This question widened my focus on people who are the same as me but just unfortunate. I’ve always thought of these people as if they lived in a different world, but these passages have brought me to realization that this failure of patterns and moral standards could happen to anybody.

Why did God make so much more unfortunate people? Why is everyone only knowledgeable to these people who may be going through a totally frightening world where their aims and moral standards have diminished? These questions went through my head as I read this passage. I believe the “moral courage” to change is not only for those who must adapt but even for us. For us to be challenged by these people, to act upon our moral standard as we are fortunate enough to have them. Now I’ve put these ideas in writing and read them, these questions seem to shoot arrows at me too. I feel a need for change, a need to have moral courage. Everyone fortunate needs courage to get rid of the greedy ignorance of those who live in the same, but so vastly different world. That is what I believe is the hidden key in these passages to stop modern day dystopia for those living in a world we only imagine.