Brave New World

Chap 3 Explain how centrifugal Bumble-puppy is played. What is the Government's perspective on the purpose of games?

Chap 3 Explain how centrifugal Bumble-puppy is played. What is the Government's perspective on the purpose of games?

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The student tour goes outside where they watch some children playing a game of Centrifugal Bumble-puppy. The game is elaborate and requires complex machinery. They learn that the heavy reliance on machinery increases consumption of material goods and thus boost the economy.

Society views consumption as beneficial. The society believes that more consumption means more production of good, which will increase the number of jobs and keep the society fully employed. Examples of how consumption is increased include hypnopaedic phrases that tell people to throw away old clothes and buy new, indoctrinating Deltas to enjoy country sports so they will use the state transportation system to exit the city, and complex machinery being required for any sort of sport or game.

From the text:

The Director and his students stood for a short time watching a game of Centrifugal Bumble-puppy. Twenty children were grouped in a circle round a chrome steel tower. A ball thrown up so as to land on the platform at the top of the tower rolled down into the interior, fell on a rapidly revolving disk, was hurled through one or other of the numerous apertures pierced in the cylindrical casing, and had to be caught.

"Strange," mused the Director, as they turned away, "strange to think that even in Our Ford's day most games were played without more apparatus than a ball or two and a few sticks and perhaps a bit of netting. imagine the folly of allowing people to play elaborate games which do nothing whatever to increase consumption. It's madness. Nowadays the Controllers won't approve of any new game unless it can be shown that it requires at least as much apparatus as the most complicated of existing games." He interrupted himself.

Source(s)

Gradesaver; Brave new World