The Lost of Independence & Emotions Imagine if the world you lived in made you decide to sacrifice your own independence and emotions just to be part of its society, wouldn’t it be horrendous? In Brave New World, published in the year 1963 by Aldous Huxley, he covers a society where humans are genetically bred and brainwashed into living a certain lifestyle. Many citizens of this society have certain expectations and limits which they must follow. For example, they can’t be committed to long term relationships and they are required to consume soma, which is a type of drug. I believe in Brave New World the citizens lose all of their independence, happiness, and emotions which isn’t worth praying for. While reading the book, you can observe how at a young age, they are socially …show more content…
It is important to take this quote into consideration because no one is supposed to feel pressured into doing something which in the real world we live, it’s bad. Aldous Huxley explains, “There’s a love scene on a bearskin rug; they say it’s marvellous. Every hair of the bear is reproduced. The most amazing actual effects” (Pg.35). In this quote, you can notice there’s a conversation between Henry and the Assistant Predestinator on how there’s a new sexual film to watch. To take into consideration, these citizens of the World State are required to attend a feelie and in another scene you can see how Bernard was uncomfortable when it came to this. To understand this paragraph, it’s more on how you shouldn’t be pressured into attending or taking part in a sexual act. In addition, Soma is used on a day-to-day basis which makes them think it can solve any problem and make them feel better. Citizens of this society have been manipulated into believing they must consume soma to live a better
Further along there becomes more insight of the society and the readers can see that this society lives under a totalitarian government that controls every aspect of people's lives with just a handful of people that make up the leaders of a certain region of earth. This challenges our societal structure by showing how good they have it with all of their technological advances that are controlled by the government and they have become so advanced they can even do selective production and they create humans in test tubes. This is done to brainwash people to be happy with the caste they are placed into at birth from the lowest being Deltas, Gammas, Betas, and the highest caste being Alphas that have the best of the best. So, this working of a society brings up plenty of moral questions about whether this is wrong to take away all free will in exchange to give the people a completely stable society where everyone gets along, if they don’t know that there is a a different way to live? With our capitalist government that is fueled by the people there will be rich people and poor but with it all being controlled by a powerful government all of these problems can be taken away. In Brave New World every citizen is created by the government is what they see as a perfect image without disease,
The tone during the whole plot of in Brave New World changes when advancing throughout the plot, but it often contains a dark and satiric aspect. Since the novel was originally planned to be written as a satire, the tone is ironic and sarcastic. Huxley's sarcastic tone is most noticeable in the conversations between characters. For instance, when the director was educating the students about the past history, he states that "most facts about the past do sound incredible (Huxley 45)." Through the exaggeration of words in the statement of the director, Huxley's sarcastic tone obviously is portrayed. As a result of this, the satirical tone puts the mood to be carefree.
How does one achieve happiness? Money? Love? Being oneself? Brave New World consists of only 3 different ways to achieve happiness. Each character of the brave new world will have his or her different opinion of the right way to achieve happiness. In his novel Brave New World, Aldous Huxley explains many people achieve happiness through the World State’s motto – “community, identity, stability”, soma, and conditioning.
The period of rebuilding after the Civil War was termed the Era of Reconstruction. During this period the government was supposed to help build back the South and strengthen the Union. The government, however, failed to help the South complete the transition into life without slavery. The government disregarded the treatment of African Americans and allowed the South to continue to treat them badly. The government also failed to help stabilize the economy for the South, and the political situation was filled with distrust and corruption.
Imagine a world where everything is controlled by the government. Imagine a world where science, literature, religion, and even family, do not exist. Imagine a world where citizens are conditioned to accept this. This is exactly how the world is portrayed in Brave New World by Aldous Huxley. The focus of the World State is on society as a whole rather than on individuals. Some characters from the novel have a harder time accepting the conditioning. Through these characters, we learn the true cost of a government-dominated society. In Brave New World, Huxley conveys that a totalitarian government will provide happiness and peace by abolishing individuality and free thinking.
Aldous Huxley’s Brave New World illustrates a colorful, fantastic universe of sex and emotion, programming and fascism that has a powerful draw in a happy handicap. This reality pause button is called “Soma”. “Take a holiday from reality whenever you like, and come back without so much as a headache or a mythology.” ( Huxley 54 ).
What if there was a place where you did not have to, or rather, you could not think for yourself? A place where one's happiness was controlled and rationed? How would you adapt with no freedom of thought, speech, or happiness in general? In the novel Brave New World by Aldous Huxley, there are many different attitudes portrayed with the purpose to make the reader think of the possible changes in our society and how they could affect its people.
Brave New World, by Aldous Huxley, portrays a future society where people are no longer individuals but are controlled by the World State. The World State dominates the people by creating citizens that are content with who they are. Brave New World describes how the science of biology and psychology are manipulated so that the government can develop technologies to change the way humans think and act. The World State designs humans from conception for this society. Once the humans are within the society the state ensures all people remain happy. They program these humans to have needs and desires that will sustain a lucrative economy while not thinking of themselves as an individual. Huxley describes the Worlds State’s intent to control their society through medical intervention, happiness, and consumerism which has similarities to modern society.
Human beings have a tendency to avoid problems and suffering in their lives, searching for the “perfect world” in which every individual may constantly feel happy. However, is this “perfection” ascertainable by any individual or mankind as a whole? In Brave New World, Aldous Huxley offers his ideas and interpretations of a utopian society in which each person has the ability to always be happy. In Huxley’s vision, pain and suffering are completely avoidable through the use of a drug called soma. Soma functions as an opiate, allowing its consumers to escape all of life’s hardships almost instantaneously by entering into “another world.” People of the World State heavily depend on soma to live their daily lives each day without
As the Director is giving students a tour of the facility, they watch as children are electrocuted while playing with books and flowers. He explains it is so that they are more happy when they are not around nature or books, “‘And that,’ put in the Director sententiously, ‘that is the secret of happiness and true virtue - Liking what you’ve got to do. All conditioning aims at that: making people like their inescapable social destiny” (Huxley 16). This passage reveals how little freedom the people of the World State truly have. This passage describes the reasoning behind the conditioning process, and how it is supposed to make people truly happy. This relates to the theme because it forces the reader to face the question of whether it is better to be happy with little freedom, or to have the freedom to choose without the promise of happiness. The children of different social castes are conditioned into believing they are happy in their social status, but they do not get to choose for themselves if they like to read, write, or draw. The people of the World State do not get to choose what they want to do with their lives, and they do not get to experience passion of loving a job that they choose. Also, they do not get to choose who they are in the world, because someone else decides their place
Brave New World is a novel about a dystopian society named “The World State” set in A.F. 632 (632 years after Henry Ford’s Death). In this society, advanced technology is used to mass produce people and condition them into only wanting and doing certain things, creating a caste system. However, doing so takes away people’s freedom to think for one’s self. Certain people are able to step back from the monotony of this society and because of this they feel detached. This scenario adds an element of alienation, this scenario poses as a question, is it better to be happy or individualistic.
Many individuals wonder about whether using artificial pathways to happiness, through drugs, yields more positive or negative results for society. People enjoy the fact that they can easily escape from their stress by using these drugs. However, these drugs also can lead to terrible consequences, such as becoming more oblivious to reality or overdosing. In the novel Brave New World by Aldous Huxley, Huxley criticizes society’s reliance on drugs to provide citizens with artificial happiness. By writing about soma, a made-up drug that the government distributes in order to ensure that their citizens remain happy, Huxley implies that the allowance of similar drugs can lead individuals to become dependent on them and fine with their lack of freedom,
Imagine living in a society where there is no sense of independence, individual thought or freedom. A society where the government uses disturbing methods that dehumanize people in order to force conformity upon them. Taking away any sense of emotion, It would be very undesirable to live in a society with such oppression. Such society is portrayed in Aldous Huxley's novel Brave New World. The World State uses social restrictions to create permanent artificial personalities for people within the society. The World State also uses controlled groupings of people to brainwash them further to be thoughtless people with no sense of individualism. Lastly, the World State uses drugs to create artificial happiness for people, leaving no room for intense emotion which causes people to revolt against the World State. Within the novel Brave New World, it is seen that the World State eliminates individuality through social restrictions, government controlled groupings and the abuse of drugs to maintain control of the population.
For years, authors and philosophers have satirized the “perfect” society to incite change. In Brave New World, Aldous Huxley describes a so-called utopian society in which everyone is happy. This society is a “controlled environment where technology has essentially [expunged] suffering” (“Brave New World”). A member of this society never needs to be inconvenienced by emotion, “And if anything should go wrong, there's soma” (Huxley 220). Citizens spend their lives sleeping with as many people as they please, taking soma to dull any unpleasant thoughts that arise, and happily working in the jobs they were conditioned to want. They are genetically altered and conditioned to be averse to socially destructive things, like nature and families. They are trained to enjoy things that are socially beneficial: “'That is the secret of happiness and virtue – liking what you've got to do. All conditioning aims at that: making people like their inescapable social destiny'” (Huxley 16). Citizens operate more like machinery, and less like humans. Humanity is defined as “the quality of being human” (“Humanity”). To some, humanity refers to the aspects that define a human: love, compassion and emotions. Huxley satirizes humanity by dehumanizing the citizens in the Brave New World society.
This is a very scary society because everything is being controlled even before someone is born, in test tube, where they determine which class they are going to fall under, how they are going to look like and beyond. Therefore, the society of Brave New World is being controlled by society from the very start by using technology which affects how the people behave in this inhumane, unrealistic, society. The people in this community act like they do not have any emotions or feelings at all. This is because from the very start, they were structured in such a way that they could not feel if something is sad or if something is happy. The only thing that they are allowed to enjoy is soma.