Area of Focus

Poem: “Digging” by Seamus Heaney

Book: “Brave New World” by Aldous Huxley

Concept of Family

“By God, the old man could handle a spade./  Just like his old man”(ll.1-2).

“’..No, it really won’t do.  And you know how strongly the D.H.C objects to anything intense or long drawn.  Four months of Henry Foster, without having another man-why he’d be furious if he know…’” (Huxley 30)

Concept of Working for Happiness

“Vends low, comes up twenty years away/ Stooping in rhythm through potato drills/ Where he was digging”(ll.2-4).

“To scatter new potatoes that we picked,/ Loving their cool hardness in our hands”(ll.4-5).

“The worlds stable now.  People are happy; they get what they want, and they never want what they can’t get…And if anything should go wrong, there’s soma” (Huxley 220).

“From time to time he stretched out his arms as though he were on the Cross, and held them thus through long minutes of an ache that gradually increased till it became a tremulous and excruciating agony”(Huxley 244).

Conformation/Social Class

“Through living roots awaken in my head./  But I’ve no spade to follow men like them”(VII.3-4).

“‘Alpha children wear grey.  They work much harder than we do, because they’re so frightfully clever.  I’m really awfully glad I’m a Beta, because I don’t work so hard…’”(Huxley 27).

Individuality

“Between my finger and my thumb/ The squat pen rests.  I’ll dig with it”(VIII.1-3).

“‘If one’s different, one’s bound to be lonely. They’re beastly to one. Do you know, they shut me out of absolutely everything?”(Huxley 137).

“He spent the hours on his knees praying, now to that Heaven from which the guilty Claudius had begged forgiveness”(Huxley 244).