“Community. Identity. Stability.” These three words constitute the planetary motto of the characters of Aldous Huxley’s dystopian fiction Brave New World. (7) Theirs is a carefully structured post-modern society which managed to overcome political and social unrest through genetic engineering, strict social conventions, exhaustive conditioning, hypnosis and dependency on a drug called soma. In order for the stability of this world to be achieved, inhabitants are stripped of independent thoughts and emotions. This work is an exploration of the disturbing effects of homogeneity, control of technology and loss of personal autonomy on the members of the Brave New World.
There are no families in the Brave New World; as the Director of Hatcheries explains to a group of students at the outset of the novel, every aspect of this hyper-modernized society is designed to maximize happiness, stability and efficiency. Emotional attachment has thus become highly taboo, to the point where the word “mother” is considered an expletive and long-term relationships are forbidden. Rather than being birthed naturally, children are created in a factory; embryos are decanted on an assembly line, designed before and conditioned and hypnotized after birth to embrace their “inescapable social destiny.” (16) Due to these processes, outsiders and free thinkers are all but unheard of here, although a very few have managed to survive.
Bernard Marx is one such individual; his eccentricity stems from painful insecurities surrounding his physical inadequacy. His companion, Helmholtz Watson, shares his eccentricity but it soon becomes evident that Bernard’s is more strongly derived from lack of acceptance in the society than deep personal conviction. ...
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...y reality and the truth of his miserable and lonely existence becomes too much for him to bear.
Written and published during the economic turmoil of the Great Depression, and while the world was recovering from one World War and spiraling towards another, the novel depicts a society in which the primary objectives are satisfaction and stability. In light of these historical circumstances, the order Huxley portrayed would have seemed highly desirable, but his is clearly a cautionary tale. What should our priorities be… happiness and stability, or humanity? At what point does our dehumanization of citizens have serious consequences? And if we are happy, are we truly aware of the reality of our existence? John Savage’s tragic suicide would suggest not
Works Cited
Huxley, Aldous. Brave New World. New York: Harper Perennial Modern Classics, 2006. Print.
Alduos Huxley, in his science fiction novel Brave New World written in 1932, presents a horrifying view of a possible future in which comfort and happiness replace hard work and incentive as society's priorities. Mustapha Mond and John the Savage are the symbolic characters in the book with clashing views. Taking place in a London of the future, the people of Utopia mindlessly enjoy having no individuality. In Brave New World, Huxley's distortion of religion, human relationships and psychological training are very effective and contrast sharply with the literary realism found in the Savage Reservation. Huxley uses Brave New World to send out a message to the general public warning our society not to be so bent on the happiness and comfort that comes with scientific advancements.
Huxley implies that by abrogating dreadfulness and mental torment, the brave new worlders have disposed of the most significant and brilliant encounters that life can offer also. Most remarkably, they have relinquished an abstruse deeper joy which is intimated, not expressed, to be pharmacologically out of reach to the utopians. The magical foundation of this assumption is dark. There are clues, too, that a percentage of the utopians may feel a poorly characterized feeling of disappointment, an irregular sense that their lives are trivial. It is suggested, further, that assuming that we are to discover correct satisfaction and importance in our lives, then we must have the ability to contrast the great parts of existence with the awful parts, to feel both euphoria and despondency. As vindications go, it’s a great one.
In Huxley’s Brave New World, the lack of freedom is apparent in all aspects of society. “There was something called liberalism. Freedom to be a round peg in a square hole” connotes, through the analogy of ‘a round peg’, that freedom is a disruption to the social equilibrium; it is “inefficient and miserable”. This is ironic as the preconditioned happiness provided to the individuals is ‘miserable’ as evident in “the infinitely friendly world of soma-holiday”. In addition, “what would it be like if I could, if I were free—not enslaved by my conditioning?” subverts, through the rhetorical question combined with the personal pronoun of ‘I’, the ideals of the government and their intent to control the masses.
Huxley created a world where every individual’s freedom is taken away from them due to their pre-designed lifestyles. However, the characters from this book still believe that their own happiness lies within themselves. In a way, it does because they have not experienced life a different way due to the fact that there is so much power and direction over them. Ultimately, the people who watched over them, such as John, who was a savage delivered to the reservation for research, believed that they wanted more than the foolish happiness created for them.
In most countries in our world, society has experienced technological advances to the point of being able to accomplish what Huxley envisioned. In contrast to Huxley’s vision, the moral standards of most nations allow all humans to enjoy basic human rights that embrace family, personal relationships, and individualism. Today’s society is able to comprehend how with the technological advances Huxley’s world could be a reality, but with the privilege of a democratic society, civilization would not allow the medical intervention for reproduction, the conditioning for happiness and consumerism. Work Cited "Brave New World by Aldous Huxley : Barron's Notes" Brave New World by Aldous Huxley: Barron's Notes. N.p., n.d. Web.
1.) The Savage Reservation is similar to the Utopia world in several ways. They both have drugs that are designed to calm people down. Soma, used in the Utopia and mescal used in the Reservation. They both also have a separation within their own society. The Utopia has social castes and the reservation has separation between the men and women, the men having more power. The two worlds also both have ceremonies. The Utopia has the orgy porgy ceremony in which everyone gathers around and has an orgy, hence the name. The Savage Reservation has traditional dancing ceremonies like the many traditional Indian tribes have today. The two cultures have many similar ideas, just expressed a little differently.
The formative years of the 1900’s, suffered from communism, fascism, and capitalism. The author of the Brave New World, Mr. Aldous Huxley lived in a social order in which he had been exposed to all three of these systems. In the society of the Brave New World, which is set 600 years into the future, individuality is not condoned and the special motto “Community, Identity, Stability” frames the structure of the Totalitarian Government.
Many modern works portraying utopian civilizations expose only the positive effects of these futuristic worlds. Depending on how a society is structured and controlled, there are numerous negative effects to this type of future. Humanism, by definition, is a system of thoughts or actions in which human interests, values, and dignity are the most important. In Aldous Huxley’s Brave New World, satire exposes the consequences of rejecting humanism. Rejecting humanism creates a society where the people are unable to connect with each other emotionally, kept from feeling unhappy, and constantly avoid feelings, instead using other methods to make up for the loss. In the centralized world Huxley created, individuals are strictly restricted in knowledge and perspective to prevent them from threatening the stability of the civilization. John the Savage, a rebel utopian not conditioned like the others, does not have a restricted knowledge or perspective and clearly notices the problems with this “perfect world.” Due to a world that is strictly controlled and manipulated, the rejection of humanism leads to a society without human qualities and individualism.
There is a great deal of evidence that supports the idea that we, in the twenty first century, are headed toward the society described by Huxley in Brave New World. Such things as advances in technology, government yearning for complete control, and an uncontrollable world population are many of the reasons Huxley’s world might become our own.
Imagine living in a world where everyone is exactly the same, where there are no families, and a personal identity is regarded as a global threat. This is the futuristic society portrayed in Aldous Huxley's Brave New World. To guarantee complete happiness to its denizens, the government raises myriads of people in a single test tube, and then conditions them to conform to their assigned caste, such as Alpha, Beta, etc. and to behave in a "safe" manner. This method of upbringing creates a society full of clones completely lacking any personality, conditioned to love only three things: Henry Ford, their idol; soma, a wonder drug; and physical pleasure. Huxly tells the story through the eyes of several characters, but mainly through those of a deformed Alpha, Bernard Marx, and a young "savage" named John. The story's conflict begins when Bernard Marx becomes romantically involved with Lenina Crowne, and they travel together to a Savage Reservation.
"'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.
A Brave New World depicts a very strange world that if thought about carefully seems eerily similar to the world we live in today. The main premise of this society is to keep everybody happy. "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." With the rapid evolution of the 1st world in just the past 10 years and the addition of wireless internet, easily accessible media, and phones that have rapidly improved in such a short period of time. With all this change, the strange oddities of Huxley 's satire are becoming more apparent in everyday life.
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.
Dusterhoff, A., Guynn, R., Patterson, J., Shaw, L., Wroten, D. and Yuhasz, G. "Huxley's Brave New World: A Study Of Dehumanization." Web 11 Apr. 2015.
“‘The world’s stable now. People are happy; they get what they want, and they never want what they can’t get’” (193-4). In Aldous Huxley’s Brave New World, true happiness is impossible in the synthetic society of World State because, by conditioning their citizens, they gave up their human nature in exchange for societal stability. True happiness is one of the complexities in human nature that the simple-minded citizens cannot fathom due to their lack of variety for stimulation, self-regulation for purpose, and human connection for significance. They are only able to see everything in white, got rid of the black, however: “Human nature is not black and white but black and grey” (Graham Greene).