Ignite Talk

My masterpiece is about art and I love doing it. I have been watching animations from “Avengers: Endgame” and Youtube. I learned about the effects and quality as I was looking over the animations. The connections that I have seen between me and this course is the details of how authors love to do special details in their stories, but I don’t care about those special details because I’m not like them. I want to show you all that I love do to my art in my own way.

Brave New World Chapter 18

"Now I am purified," said the Savage. "I drank some mustard and warm water."

John drank some warm water and mustard to make himself throw up, and thereby purify himself.

"Yes, we're off to-morrow," said Bernard on whose face the Savage remarked a new expression of determined resignation. "And by the way, John," he continued, leaning forward in his chair and laying a hand on the Savage's knee, "I want to say how sorry I am about everything that happened yesterday."

Bernard and Helmholtz are shocked. Still, they say goodbye: they're heading to the island the next morning. Bernard apologizes for his behavior.

"He said he wanted to go on with the experiment. But I'm damned," the Savage added, with sudden fury, "I'm damned if I'll go on being experimented with. Not for all the Controllers in the world. l shall go away to-morrow too."

John asked if he could go with them, but Mond refused. Mond wanted to continue the "experiment."

“Between Grayshott and Tongham four abandoned air-lighthouses marked the course of the old Portsmouth-to-London road.. John had received for his personal expenses, most had been spent on his equipment. Before leaving London he had bought four viscose-woollen blankets, rope and string, nails, glue, a few tools, matches (though he intended in due course to make a fire drill), some pots and pans, two dozen packets of seeds, and ten kilogrammes of wheat flour..”

Some days later, John settles away from any city, in an abandoned lighthouse. He brings a few supplies can grow a garden.

“He realized to his dismay that, absorbed in the whittling of his bow, he had forgotten what he had sworn to himself he would constantly remember–poor Linda, and his own murderous unkindness to her, and those loathsome twins, swarming like lice across the mystery of her death, insulting, with their presence, not merely his own grief and repentance, but the very gods themselves. He had sworn to remember, he had sworn unceasingly to make amends. And there was he, sitting happily over his bow-stave, singing, actually singing. …”

When he catches himself being happy, which he considers offensive to the memory of his unkindness to his mother, he whips himself.

“Half an hour later, three Delta-Minus landworkers from one of the Puttenham Bokanovsky Groups.. After the eighth, the young man interrupted his self-punishment to run to the wood's edge and there be violently sick.”

Some Deltas passing on a nearby highway see him. The next day reporters show up. The Savage abuses them verbally and physically, and soon is left in peace.

"Sweet!" and "Put your arms round me!"–in shoes and socks, perfumed. Impudent strumpet! But oh, oh, her arms round his neck, the lifting of her breasts, her mouth! Eternity was in our lips and eyes. Lenina … No, no, no, no! He sprang to his feet and, half naked as he was, ran out of the house.”

John started to have lustful thoughts for Lenina.

“From his carefully constructed hide in the wood three hundred metres away, Darwin Bonaparte, the Feely Corporation's most expert big game photographer had watched the whole proceedings.. Menacingly he advanced towards them. A woman cried out in fear. The line wavered at its most immediately threatened point, then stiffened again, stood firm. The consciousness of being in overwhelming force had given these sightseers a courage which the Savage had not expected of them.”

He whips himself more viciously than ever, and a Feelie photographer who had been hiding nearby catches the whole thing on video. This cause a massive number of sightseers come to watch the Savage. They beg him to whip himself again.

"Strumpet!" The Savage had rushed at her like a madman. "Fitchew!" Like a madman, he was slashing at her with his whip of small cords.”

Lenina steps from a helicopter behind the crowd. John rushes at her, screaming "Strumpet!" He whips her, and himself. The crowd goes into a kind of ecstasy.

"Kill it, kill it, kill it …" The Savage went on shouting.
Then suddenly somebody started singing "Orgy-porgy" and, in a moment, they had all caught up the refrain and, singing, had begun to dance. Orgy-porgy, round and round and round, beating one another in six-eight time. Orgy-porgy …

He chants "Kill it, kill it" (meaning "kill fleshy desire"), as Lenina writhes at his feet. An orgy of beating possesses the mob and becomes an orgy-porgy.

“It was after midnight when the last of the helicopters took its flight. Stupefied by soma, and exhausted by a long-drawn frenzy of sensuality, the Savage lay sleeping in the heather. The sun was already high when he awoke. He lay for a moment, blinking in owlish incomprehension at the light; then suddenly remembered–everything.
"Oh, my God, my God!" He covered his eyes with his hand.”

The next morning John wakes. He sees that the crowd has gone, but he remembers the orgy of the night before.

“Slowly, very slowly, like two unhurried compass needles, the feet turned towards the right; north, north-east, east, south-east, south, south-south-west; then paused, and, after a few seconds, turned as unhurriedly back towards the left. South-south-west, south, south-east, east. …”

When new sightseers arrive the next day hoping for a repeat performance, they find that the Savage has hanged himself.

Brave New World Chapter 17

ART, SCIENCE–you seem to have paid a fairly high price for your happiness," said the Savage, when they were alone.

The Savage, alone with Mond, asks if anything else beyond art and science has to be sacrificed to happiness.

“The Savage took it. "The Holy Bible, containing the Old and New Testaments," he read aloud from the title-page.. "A whole collection of pornographic old books. God in the safe and Ford on the shelves." He pointed with a laugh to his avowed library–to the shelves of books, the rack full of reading-machine bobbins and sound-track rolls.”

Mond answers, and shows the Savage old forbidden books about God, including the Bible.

"us, the modern world. 'You can only be independent of God while you've got youth and prosperity; independence won't take you safely to the end.' Well, we've now got youth and prosperity right up to the end. What follows? Evidently, that we can be independent of God. 'The religious sentiment will compensate us for all our losses.' But there aren't any losses for us to compensate; religious sentiment is superfluous. And why should we go hunting for a substitute for youthful desires, when youthful desires never fail? A substitute for distractions, when we go on enjoying all the old fooleries to the very last? What need have we of repose when our minds and bodies continue to delight in activity? of consolation, when we have soma? of something immovable, when there is the social order?"

Mond reads from a passage written by Cardinal Newman, which argues that men move toward religion as they age, because the distractions of youth fall away.

"Call it the fault of civilization. God isn't compatible with machinery and scientific medicine and universal happiness. You must make your choice. Our civilization has chosen machinery and medicine and happiness. That's why I have to keep these books locked up in the safe. They're smut. People would be shocked it …"

“The Savage interrupted him. "But isn't it natural to feel there's a God?"

“..People believe in God because they've been conditioned to.”

Mond says that God is not compatible with machines, medicine, and universal happiness, to which the Savage responds that it's natural to believe in God. Mond disagrees. He says people were once conditioned to believe in God.

“You'd have a reason for bearing things patiently, for doing things with courage.. If you had a God, you'd have a reason for self-denial.. But chastity means passion, chastity means neurasthenia. And passion and neurasthenia mean instability. And instability means the end of civilization. You can't have a lasting civilization without plenty of pleasant vices.”

John has a belief about God that gives a reason for self-denial, chastity, and courage.

"civilization has absolutely no need of nobility or heroism.”

Mond has they about civilization towards John’s belief.

“Quite apart from God–though of course God would be a reason for it. Isn't there something in living dangerously?"

“Violent Passion Surrogate. Regularly once a month. We flood the whole system with adrenin. It's the complete physiological equivalent of fear and rage.”

The Savage asks isn't there a value to living dangerously? Mond says yes, it's biologically important. That's why they've made V.P.S. mandatory for all citizens every month. V.P.S gives all the value of real rage and sorrow, without the inconvenience.

"Not to mention the right to grow old and ugly and impotent; the right to have syphilis and cancer; the right to have too little to eat; the right to be lousy; the right to live in constant apprehension of what may happen to-morrow; the right to catch typhoid; the right to be tortured by unspeakable pains of every kind." There was a long silence.

"I claim them all," said the Savage at last.

Finally, Mond asks if the Savage is claiming the right to be unhappy, to grow old and ugly. The Savage says yes.

How does art tell a story? (My Big Question)

The career that I would like to achieve after high school is becoming a major in illustration. As an illustrator, I would love to explain and teach myself how art can tell story towards the audience. I am learning to create more different scenes how a story can good along well so the story can make sense. I hope to teach the features of different kinds of art style that people use.

April 17 (Journal)

It makes sense to keep quiet and act like you know what's up (even if you don't) because you don’t want to feel dumb from what you are doing something important. It make sense to ask for information that will help you understand because you wants to make sure that you can do it right so you don’t have to worry about later in the process.

Brave New World Chapter 16

“Mustapha Mond shook hands with all three of them; but it was to the Savage that he addressed himself. "So you don't much like civilization, Mr. Savage," he said.
The Savage looked at him. He had been prepared to lie, to bluster, to remain sullenly unresponsive; but, reassured by the good-humoured intelligence of the Controller's face, he decided to tell the truth, straightforwardly. "No." He shook his head.”

When Mustapha Mond enters, he shakes hands with all three men, and asks John if he likes civilization. John says no.

“Sometimes a thousand twangling instruments will hum about my ears and sometimes voices."

This quote is from Shakespeare.

“The Savage's face lit up with a sudden pleasure. "Have you read it too?" he asked. "I thought nobody knew about that book here, in England."
"Almost nobody. I'm one of the very few.”

John ask Mond if he has read Shakespeare and He is one of the people who have read about him.

"Because our world is not the same as Othello's world. You can't make flivvers without steel–and you can't make tragedies without social instability. The world's stable now.”

“The Savage shook his head. "It all seems to me quite horrible."

People think that their world is stable and okay what it is right now, but John doesn’t feel like their world is stable. He thinks it’s going into the other direction.

“Actual happiness always looks pretty squalid in comparison with the over-compensations for misery.”

This quote means that Mond just want to be happy their world, too.

“The Controllers had the island of Cyprus cleared of all its existing inhabitants and re-colonized with a specially prepared batch of twenty-two thousand Alphas.”

“Within six years they were having a first-class civil war.”

Mond wanted to make the island of Cyprus only fill with Alphas because of the war.

“Technically, it would be perfectly simple to reduce all lower-caste working hours to three or four a day. But would they be any the happier for that?”

Mond just wish that all Alphas can be happy of what they want to do.

“Unrest and a large increase in the consumption of soma; that was all. Those three and a half hours of extra leisure were so far from being a source of happiness, that people felt constrained to take a holiday from them.”

Mind doesn’t want the leisure to only increases the chance to think and results in misery and increased soma consumption.

"Yes; but what sort of science?" asked Mustapha Mond sarcastically. "You've had no scientific training, so you can't judge. I was a pretty good physicist in my time. Too good–good enough to realize that all our science is just a cookery book, with an orthodox theory of cooking that nobody's allowed to question, and a list of recipes that mustn't be added to except by special permission from the head cook. I'm the head cook now. But I was an inquisitive young scullion once. I started doing a bit of cooking on my own. Unorthodox cooking, illicit cooking. A bit of real science, in fact."

This means that Mond went through science training and he learn deep thoughts about it.

“Very nearly what's going to happen to you young men. I was on the point of being sent to an island."

Mond also almost went to through fate about going to an island.

“And in a paroxysm of abjection he threw himself on his knees before the Controller.”

"Bring three men," he ordered, "and take Mr. Marx into a bedroom. Give him a good soma vaporization and then put him to bed and leave him."

Bernard decides to get onto his knees because he was afraid by going through the fate that Mond was almost going through. Mond decides to make Bernard to another room so he can calm down.

Brave New World Chapter 15

“Menial”

This means the support staff, or the lower level.

“One hundred and sixty-two Deltas divided into two Bokanovsky Groups of eighty-four red headed female and seventy-eight dark dolychocephalic male twins, respectively.”

This is talking about the history of psychology.

"Soma distribution!" shouted a loud voice. "In good order, please. Hurry up there.. Linda had been a slave, Linda had died; others should live in freedom, and the world be made beautiful. A reparation, a duty. And suddenly it was luminously clear to the Savage what he must do; it was as though a shutter had been opened, a curtain drawn back.. "Stop!" called the Savage in a loud and ringing voice. "Stop!"
He pushed his way to the table; the Deltas stared at him with astonishment.”

When the Alpha yelled, "Soma distribution!" John thought the Alpha was talking about his dead mother.

Lend me your ears …" He had never spoken in public before, and found it very difficult to express what he wanted to say. "Don't take that horrible stuff. It's poison, it's poison."

"Throw it all away, that horrible poison."
The words "Throw it all away" pierced through the enfolding layers of incomprehension to the quick of the Delta's consciousness. An angry murmur went up from the crowd.”

When John told the Deltas to throw the soma away because he thinks it’s poison, but this cause anger towards the Deltas.

"A fellow I know at the Park Lane Hospital," said Helmholtz. "The Savage is there. Seems to have gone mad. Anyhow, it's urgent. Will you come with me?"
Together they hurried along the corridor to the lifts. "I'll teach you; I'll make you be free whether you want to or not." And pushing open a window that looked on to the inner court of the Hospital, he began to throw the little pill-boxes of soma tablets in handfuls out into the area.”

Bernard and Helmholtz get a phone call telling them what the Savage is doing. They hurry to the hospital. They arrive just as the Savage starts dropping soma out the window, causing the Deltas to riot.

"Men at last!"

“Howling, the Deltas charged with a redoubled fury.”

Helmholtz shouts "Men at last!" and runs to help the Savage.

“The policemen pushed him out of the way and got on with their work. Three men with spraying machines buckled to their shoulders pumped thick clouds of soma vapour into the air.”

“Even Helmholtz and the Savage were almost crying.”

"Well …" said Bernard, and hesitated. No, he really couldn't deny it.”

Bernard tried not to get caught from the policeman his plan fail while Helmholtz and John got caught.

My Big Question Research

Some people think research is boring because they have to do it for a class, and it's usually about something that's not interesting.  But today I did research and it was awesome. Here's how I did connecting new ideas learned from the tour to prior knowledge and experience.

Brave New World Chapter 14

“THE Park Lane Hospital for the Dying was a sixty-story tower of primrose tiles.”

John rushes to the Park Lane Hospital for the Dying for his mother, Linda.

“He shook his head. "She's my mother," he said in a scarcely audible voice.
The nurse glanced at him with startled, horrified eyes; then quickly looked away. From throat to temple she was all one hot blush.”

John wanted to know where Linda was at in the hospital, and John told the nurses that Linda was his mother. The nurses gave a disgusting expression about Linda towards John.

"Isn't she awful?" came the whispered comments. "Look at her teeth!"
Suddenly from under the bed a pug-faced twin popped up between John's chair and the wall, and began peering into Linda's sleeping face.”

The nurses were saying mean comments about Linda.

“His yells brought the Head Nurse hurrying to the rescue.
"What have you been doing to him?" she demanded fiercely. "I won't have you striking the children."
"Well then, keep them away from this bed." The Savage's voice was trembling with indignation. "What are these filthy little brats doing here at all? It's disgraceful!"
"Disgraceful? But what do you mean? They're being death-conditioned. And I tell you," she warned him truculently, "if I have any more of your interference with their conditioning, I'll send for the porters and have you thrown out."

John was really frustrated about the nurses talking about mean comment towards his mother related to him. The nurses wanted him to calm down because the children were also in the hospital, too.

“Her voice suddenly died into an almost inaudible breathless croaking. Her mouth fell open: she made a desperate effort to fill her lungs with air. But it was as though she had forgotten how to breathe. She tried to cry out–but no sound came; only the terror of her staring eyes revealed what she was suffering. Her hands went to her throat, then clawed at the air–the air she could no longer breathe, the air that, for her, had ceased to exist.”

Linda was dying in this quote.

“Oh, God, God, God …" the Savage kept repeating to himself. In the chaos of grief and remorse that filled his mind it was the one articulate word. "God!" he whispered it aloud. "God …"
"Whatever is he saying?" said a voice, very near, distinct and shrill through the warblings of the Super-Wurlitzer.
The Savage violently started and, uncovering his face, looked round. Five khaki twins, each with the stump of a long éclair in his right hand, and their identical faces variously smeared with liquid chocolate, were standing in a row, puggily goggling at him.”

John was starting to be afraid about Linda being dead because he doesn’t want her to be dead.

Brave New World Chapter 13

“A V.P.S. treatment indeed! She would have laughed, if she hadn't been on the point of crying. As though she hadn't got enough V. P. of her own! She sighed profoundly as she refilled her syringe. "John," she murmured to herself, "John …" Then "My Ford," she wondered, "have I given this one its sleeping sickness injection, or haven't I?" She simply couldn't remember. In the end, she decided not to run the risk of letting it have a second dose, and moved down the line to the next bottle.”

John thinks Lenina was acting strange in this quote.

“An hour later, in the Changing Room, Fanny was energetically protesting. "But it's absurd to let yourself get into a state like this. Simply absurd," she repeated. "And what about? A man–one man."
"But he's the one I want."

Lenina feels passionate that her heart belongs to John. She wants to have him, only him.

"Don't think of him."
"I can't help it."
"Take soma, then."
"I do."
"Well, go on."
"But in the intervals I still like him. I shall always like him."
"Well, if that's the case," said Fanny, with decision, "why don't you just go and take him. Whether he wants it or no."

Fanny was getting jealous of Lenina saying that she needs John, but Fanny wants Lenina to take John for herself.

“The bell rang, and the Savage, who was impatiently hoping that Helmholtz would come that afternoon (for having at last made up his mind to talk to Helmholtz about Lenina, he could not bear to postpone his confidences a moment longer), jumped up and ran to the door.
"I had a premonition it was you, Helmholtz," he shouted as he opened.
On the threshold, in a white acetate-satin sailor suit, and with a round white cap rakishly tilted over her left ear, stood Lenina.
"Oh!" said the Savage, as though some one had struck him a heavy blow.”

This quote explains that John was hoping that Helmholtz will come over to his house, but it turns out that Lenina was in front of the door instead of Helmholtz which cause John to be in shock.

“Half a gramme had been enough to make Lenina forget her fears and her embarrassments. "Hullo, John," she said, smiling, and walked past him into the room. Automatically he closed the door and followed her. Lenina sat down. There was a long silence.
"You don't seem very glad to see me, John," she said at last.
"Not glad?" The Savage looked at her reproachfully; then suddenly fell on his knees before her and, taking Lenina's hand, reverently kissed it. "Not glad? Oh, if you only knew," he whispered and, venturing to raise his eyes to her face, "Admired Lenina," he went on, "indeed the top of admiration, worth what's dearest in the world." She smiled at him with a luscious tenderness. "Oh, you so perfect" (she was leaning towards him with parted lips), "so perfect and so peerless are created" (nearer and nearer) "of every creature's best." Still nearer. The Savage suddenly scrambled to his feet. "That's why," he said speaking with averted face, "I wanted to do something first … I mean, to show I was worthy of you. Not that I could ever really be that. But at any rate to show I wasn't absolutely un-worthy. I wanted to do something."

In this quote, John was finally able to speak out to Lenina that he wants to be worthy of her and be with her because he think he was the most beautiful girl that he ever seems, but he doesn’t want to do everything to her bad.

"Why should you think it necessary …" Lenina began, but left the sentence unfinished. There was a note of irritation in her voice. When one has leant forward, nearer and nearer, with parted lips–only to find oneself, quite suddenly, as a clumsy oaf scrambles to his feet, leaning towards nothing at all–well, there is a reason, even with half a gramme of soma circulating in one's blood-stream, a genuine reason for annoyance.”

Lenina was starting to feel annoyed why John would be thinking about her by being worthy.

“Confused, "I'll do anything," he went on, more and more incoherently. "Anything you tell me. There be some sports are painful–you know. But their labour delight in them sets off. That's what I feel. I mean I'd sweep the floor if you wanted."

This is when John confess his love towards Lenina.

"It's like that in Shakespeare too. 'If thou cost break her virgin knot before all sanctimonious ceremonies may with full and holy rite …'

And suddenly her arms were round his neck; he felt her lips soft against his own.”

After John tells his confession to Lenina, she wants to feel real love towards him.

“But when she unbuckled her white patent cartridge belt and hung it carefully over the back of a chair, he began to suspect that he had been mistaken.”

This is when Lenina was starting to take off her clothes, but John is starting to feel terrify of what ya about to happen next.

“The Savage pushed her away with such force that she staggered and fell. "Go," he shouted, standing over her menacingly, "get out of my sight or I'll kill you." He clenched his fists.
Lenina raised her arm to cover her face. "No, please don't, John …"
"Hurry up. Quick!"
One arm still raised, and following his every movement with a terrified eye, she scrambled to her feet and still crouching, still covering her head, made a dash for the bathroom.
The noise of that prodigious slap by which her departure was accelerated was like a pistol shot.”

When Lenina is naked but for her hat and shoes, he screams at her to get out of his sight or he'll kill her. She runs, terrified, and locks herself in the bathroom.

"Hullo."
. . . . .
"Yes."
. . . . .
"If I do not usurp myself, I am."
. . . . .
"Yes, didn't you hear me say so? Mr. Savage speaking."
. . . . .
"What? Who's ill? Of course it interests me."
. . . . .
"But is it serious? Is she really bad? I'll go at once …"
. . . . .
"Not in her rooms any more? Where has she been taken?"
. . . . .
"Oh, my God! What's the address?"
. . . . .
"Three Park Lane–is that it? Three? Thanks."

John got a phone call and I think something bad happen to Lenina.

Brave New World Chapter 12

"But the Arch-Community-Songster of Canterbury is there to-night." Bernard was almost in tears.”

“In the end Bernard had to slink back, diminished, to his rooms and inform the impatient assembly that the Savage would not be appearing that evening. The news was received with indignation. The men were furious at having been tricked into behaving politely to this insignificant fellow with the unsavoury reputation and the heretical opinions. The higher their position in the hierarchy, the deeper their resentment.”

This is when Bernard decides to create a meeting, or party for guests meeting John as known as Savage because he doesn’t want to disappoint them from meeting him at Arch-Community-Songster.

"Mend your ways, my young friend, mend your ways." He made the sign of the T over him and turned away.”

A friend of Bernard was giving him a warning about someone.

"I shall be seeing him, talking to him, telling him" (for she had come with her mind made up) "that I like him–more than anybody I've ever known. And then perhaps he'll say …" What would he say? The blood had rushed to her cheeks. "Why was he so strange the other night, after the feelies? So queer. And yet I'm absolutely sure he really does rather like me. I'm sure …"

In this quote, I think that Lenina is thinking about another person besides herself. Lenina is thinking about John from why he isn’t doing anything to her. I think she actually wants to be loved from him.

“Lenina suddenly felt all the sensations normally experienced at the beginning of a Violent Passion Surrogate treatment–a sense of dreadful emptiness, a breathless apprehension, a nausea. Her heart seemed to stop beating.

"Perhaps it's because he doesn't like me," she said to herself. And at once this possibility became an established certainty: John had refused to come because he didn't like her. He didn't like her. …”

Lenina was starting to have negativity about her feelings about John because she feels like that she getting love from him.

“Upstairs in his room the Savage was reading Romeo and Juliet.”

Another Romeo and Juliet part about love and relationship between John and Lenina.

“Lenina and the Arch-Community-Songster stepped out on to the roof of Lambeth Palace. "Hurry up, my young friend–I mean, Lenina," called the Arch-Songster impatiently from the lift gates. Lenina, who had lingered for a moment to look at the moon, dropped her eyes and came hurrying across the roof to rejoin him.”

This is when Lenina is starting to have a heartbreak from John so she decides to leave with Songster.

"A New Theory of Biology" was the title of the paper which Mustapha Mond had just finished reading. He sat for some time, meditatively frowning, then picked up his pen and wrote across the title-page: "The author's mathematical treatment of the conception of purpose is novel and highly ingenious, but heretical and, so far as the present social order is concerned, dangerous and potentially subversive. Not to be published." He underlined the words. "The author will be kept under supervision. His transference to the Marine Biological Station of St. Helena may become necessary." A pity, he thought, as he signed his name. It was a masterly piece of work.”

Mustapha Mond wanted to create a story about John about how he became a excellent creation their world.

"Oh! she doth teach the torches to burn bright.
It seems she hangs upon the cheek of night,
Like a rich jewel in an Ethiop's ear;
Beauty too rich for use, for earth too dear …"

I think in this quote that John thinks that Lenina is a beautiful angel that he sees towards the light.

“Bernard's other victim-friend was Helmholtz. When, discomfited, he came and asked once more for the friendship which, in his prosperity, he had not thought it worth his while to preserve. Helmholtz gave it; and gave it without a reproach, without a comment, as though he had forgotten that there had ever been a quarrel. Touched, Bernard felt himself at the same time humiliated by this magnanimity–a magnanimity the more extraordinary and therefore the more humiliating in that it owed nothing to soma and everything to Helmholtz's character.”

Helmholtz accepted Bernard apology, but Bernard felt humiliated just like when Linda accept the Director apology by being John’s father.

"But what were your rhymes?" Bernard asked.
"They were about being alone."
Bernard's eyebrows went up.
"I'll recite them to you, if you like."

Helmholtz decides to write a poem about being alone.

“Helmholtz had been restless throughout the entire scene; but when, pathetically mimed by the Savage, Juliet cried out:
"Is there no pity sitting in the clouds,
That sees into the bottom of my grief?
O sweet my mother, cast me not away:
Delay this marriage for a month, a week;
Or, if you do not, make the bridal bed
In that dim monument where Tybalt lies …"
when Juliet said this, Helmholtz broke out in an explosion of uncontrollable guffawing.”

Helmholtz and the Savage like each other immensely, and Helmholtz is mesmerized by Shakespeare. Romeo and Juliet, however, makes Helmholtz laugh. The entire plot strikes him as ridiculous.

"I know quite well that one needs ridiculous, mad situations like that; one can't write really well about anything else.

Helmholtz realizes that what he needs are exactly these "ridiculous, mad situations" to make his own writing more powerful.