Analysis and Critique of Brave New World
The novel opens in the Central London Hatchery and Conditioning
Centre, in the years A.F., or After Ford. Ford is the God-surrogate, a
corruption of the name Freud, the controversial psychosexual
psychologist. The Director of Hatcheries and Conditioning is leading a
tour group of young students around a lab. He explains the scientific
process by which human beings are fertilized and custom-made, and
shows them the Social Predestination room, where workers create the
social castes. They pass onto the conditioning rooms, where they
reinforce the caste divisions by sleep-teaching.
Lenina confirms with Bernard that she would like to go on a trip with
him to The Savage Reservation. Following her departure, there is more
bitterness on the part of Bernard concerning his own inferiority.
Lenina and Henry eat dinner, go on a soma-holiday, and see a concert
of synthetic music. Later, they have sex. The next day is Bernard
Marx's Solidarity Service Day. A group of men and women sing and take
soma together, and it eventually turns into an "orgy-porgy".
Lenina and Bernard go on a date. He tries to show her the ocean, and
to express some of his subversive views to her, but she cries. She
convinces him to take soma, and they go back to his rooms and have
sex. The next day, when Lenina asks him if he had fun, Bernard is
pained at the way she seems to degrade herself.
He and Lenina go to The Savage Reservation. Lenina shudders at the
unclean conditions. They meet John, The Savage. He tells his story to
Bernard, and it turns out that he is the illegitimate son of the
Director and Linda, a woman who disappeared twenty-five years ago.
John tells Bernard his life story. He fe...
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...resented by Shakespeare’s works.
Shakespeare
Shakespeare provides the language through which John understands the
world. Through John’s use of Shakespeare, the novel makes contact with
the rich themes explored in plays like The Tempest. It also creates a
stark contrast between the utilitarian simplicity and inane babble of
the World State’s propaganda and the nuanced, elegant verse of a time
“before Ford.” Shakespeare’s plays provide many examples of precisely
the kind of human relations—passionate, intense, and often tragic—that
the World State is committed to eliminating.
Soma
The drug soma is a symbol of the use of instant gratification to
control the World State’s populace. It is also a symbol of the
powerful influence of science and technology on society. As a kind of
“sacrament,” it also represents the use of religion to control
society.
...but Otis tells him that there is also school and he will have to work hard. Vladimir realizes that he has to standup for himself. This is where Vladimir will really start his journey.
As analyzed by social critic Neil Postman, Huxley's vision of the future, portrayed in the novel Brave New World, holds far more relevance to present day society than that of Orwell's classic 1984. Huxley's vision was simple: it was a vision of a trivial society, drowned in a sea of pleasure and ignorant of knowledge and pain, slightly resembling the world of today. In society today, knowledge is no longer appreciated as it has been in past cultures, in turn causing a deficiency in intelligence and will to learn. Also, as envisioned by Huxley, mind altering substances are becoming of greater availability and distribution as technology advances. These drugs allow society to escape from the problems of life instead of dealing with reality. With divorce rates higher than ever in the past few decades, it has become evident that lust has ruined the society's sexual covenants. People are indulging in their sexual motives; lust runs rampant, thus strong, long-lasting relationships are becoming a rarity.
Since the original publishing of Brave New World, the book has stirred up a brew of controversy. It has received many reviews both positive and negative. In this paper I will provide examples of both and look at the reasons behind them.
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.
Have you ever thought what a world without children would be? Well, from comparing both “Brave New World” and “Children of Men,” it is found that a world without children is a dystopia. In other words, it is a complete disaster and everything in the world is not how it is today. By comparing the Brave New World society and the society in the film “Children of Men,” we can establish that in both dystopias there are no children, which impacts the relationship between man and woman. War, drugs, castes are common in both dystopias, as people tend to cope drugs to get away from the reality of war caused by people of different “castes.”
In this world where people can acquire anything they need or want, we have to wonder, “Is the government controlling us?” Both the governments in A Brave New World and in the United States of America offer birth control pills and have abortion clinics that are available for everyone, thus making birth control pills and abortion operations very easy to acquire. Although both governments offer birth control pills and abortion clinics, A Brave New World’s government requires everyone to take the pills and immediately get an abortion when pregnant. This in turn shows us that A Brave New World’s government is controlling the population and the development of children. China is one of the few countries that currently have control of the development of children. In controlling the development of its children, China is also controlling the population levels. In any country, controlling the amount of children a single family can have can dramatically decrease the population levels. Just by having birth control pills and abortion clinics there for anybody to take advantage of shows that the involvement of either government is already too high.
George Santayana once said, “Ideal society is a drama enacted exclusively in the imagination.” In life, there is no such thing as a “complete utopia”, although that is what many people try to achieve. Aldous Huxley’s Brave New World is an attempt at a utopian society. In this brave new world, mothers and fathers and family are non-existent. Besides being non-existent, when words of that sort are mentioned, ears are covered and faces of disgust are made. In a report to the Controller, Bernard wrote,”…This is partly due, no doubt to the fact that he heard them talked about by the woman Linda, his m-----“(106). Words of the sort cannot even be written. Art, history, and the ability to have emotions are shunned. This utopia is shown as a perfect world in which everyone is happy. If this was true, the people would not need to take soma, an equivalent along the lines of a cross between one of today’s “designer drugs” and Prozac.
"'God isn't compatible with machinery and scientific medicine and universal happiness.'" So says Mustapha Mond, the World Controller for Western Europe in Aldous Huxley's novel Brave New World. In doing so, he highlights a major theme in this story of a Utopian society. Although the people in this modernized world enjoy no disease, effects of old age, war, poverty, social unrest, or any other infirmities or discomforts, Huxley asks 'is the price they pay really worth the benefits?' This novel shows that when you must give up religion, high art, true science, and other foundations of modern life in place of a sort of unending happiness, it is not worth the sacrifice.
She was just another casualty of the war. The nurse turned to me. ‘Since her survival depends on you, let's see how you are doing’ ” (“Salt to the Sea”). This shows that even other characters, including the nurse named Joana, can realize the clear bond and protection that Florian offers Emilia by protecting her physically and mentally during the crisis that is the Second World War.
Those fears where the expectations of Aldous Huxley for a not too far future. His predictions got close of what is doing today science, clones... Those are predictions that are getting fulfilled as prophecies and we should warned all this, because who knows if one day some of us become Alphas and others Betas and so on...
Blumenthal, Marjory S., and David D. Clark. "Rethinking the design of the Internet: the end-to-end arguments vs. the brave new world." ACM Transactions on Internet Technology (TOIT)1.1 (2001): 70-109.
Brave New World is a remarkable journey into the future wherein mankind is dehumanized by the progress and misuse of technology to the point where society is a laboratory produced race of beings who are clones devoid of identity only able to worship the three things they have been preconditioned to love: "Henry Ford, their idol; Soma, a wonder drug; and sex" (Dusterhoof, Guynn, Patterson, Shaw, Wroten and Yuhasz 1). The misuse of perfected technologies, especially those allowing the manipulation of the human brain and genes, have created a pleasure-seeking world where there is no such thing as spiritual experience, just pleasures of the flesh. In the face of a transcendent religion, the inhabitants (genetically engineered to exist in one of five classes and condition to believe that the class within which they fall is the best one for them) lose their will to rebel against the capitalistic class-divisions of their society. Psychological mottoes and rigid class divisions have replaced traditional societal values such as family, religion and freedom. A wonder drug that removes all psychological pain, the pursuit of carnal pleasures, and the replacement of identity and soul with idol worship of a Henry Ford type savior serve to create a dystopia that is frightening as well as the path already being forged in society when he wrote the work in the early 1930s.
Ever since I was created, I have been mining here at Sector C-88 for coal. Sector C-88 is a monumental quarry with up to ten-thousand workers in a 10-kilometer by 15-kilometer area. Surrounding the massive quarry is an extensive network of processing and extracting factories and centers. Beyond that is, well, I don’t know. It’s just called the Beyond here, and it’s said to have something called “society”, but there’s probably nothing interesting like coal or anything. I looked up at the polluted beige sky and observed the curious shapes from the factory smokes. What could be above the smog? Infinite emptiness? I wondered. Suddenly, a familiar voice broke my course of thoughts.
The future is a star, shining bright and hopeful. Welcoming everyone with the promise of a better tomorrow. The world is joyous for tomorrow is a new day. However, that glimmering star can only shine for so long before it dims and the mask of hope lifts. This is exactly what happens in Aldous Huxley’s Brave New World the future is grand and everyone is happy, or so everyone has been told. Critic Dawn B. Sova explains that Brave New World “depicts an orderly society in which scientifically sophisticated genetics and pharmacology combine to produce a perfectly controlled population whose entire existence is dedicated to maintaining the stability of society”. Overall Huxley entrances the reader with a seductive world filled with dysfunction to