Perception In Brave New World And Grendel, By John Gardner

Everyday, what we do, how we see the world, and the things we care about are based on our own perception. According to Alboke, perception is fictional and we will never fully perceive reality. Perception played a major role in the development of the texts we have read. Specifically in Brave New World and Grendel, perception caused many issues within the different societies.the idea of perception has many negative effects on a society and can lead to control.

Throughout Grendel by John Gardner there is a major conflict, around Grendel being a monster and the lack of equal treatment he received. This conflict is due to a complete division between Grendel and the rest of society. Perception is the utter cause of this division. The outside society

Often, the way we perceive something is altered or controlled by someone/something. Like mentioned earlier, we have our more ordinary influences, like social norms/expectations. But in many cases our perception is tailored. In Brave New World, the Government had complete control over the society's perception. The Government did this by only allowing people to see what they wanted them to see, and not really supporting personal perception. On page 20 the Government says, “The mind that judges and desires and decides-made up of these suggestions. But all these suggestions are our suggestions!” By the government admitting to controlling 2 major aspects of how we perceive (desires/judging), they are not letting them think for themselves. This makes the society all feel the same way, which in many ways could be why they believe society is “perfect”. To fully understand perception, an interesting way to look at it is from an example. Continuing on with Brave New World, we know that the perception of their life is very different to them, than to us. When we read about their world, it is easy to understand all the problems within it. They themselves do not see these problems, because their society is “perfect”. This is what makes perception so difficult. From the outside world's point of view, government control is very odd. The fact that members of society are forced to take soma, to make them happy, have feelings controlled, and judgment taken away. It seems unfair. But it almost makes sense. The reason freedom is taken away is for their community to be united, and not have the types of division, perception causes. So can we blame the government for doing what they think is best? On page 3 the director says, ”the operation undergone voluntarily for the good of Society.” It is hard to look at what they are doing as good, but when you think about how many less issues the government wants, getting rid of