Brave New World Identity Quotes

977 Words2 Pages

“A human soul is always a mystery”. (Unknown) The soul is a mysterious part that sets humans apart from one another. By coercing individuals to conform to particular ideologies,society poses a peril to one’s individuality. The only way for a person to keep their individuality is to preserve their soul. Aldous Huxley’s novel, Brave New World, depicts a dystopian universe wherein each person’s individuality is eradicated through conditioning and arrangement into castes. Among these individuals, Huxley presents his audience with characters who experience a glimmer of a soul. Characters in Brave New World, though conditioned to particular mannerisms, retain their identity by exhibiting a glimmer of a soul.
Citizens of the World State are discouraged …show more content…

It is described as being, “Euphoric, narcotic, pleasantly hallucinant.”(Huxley 53). Soma is used as an instrument of stability, as it makes users void of their feelings and emotions. It makes them happy, yet the happiness an individual experiences is a false happiness and distorts them from reality. Soma is symbolizes the amount of control the World State possesses over the emotions of their citizens. Nearly everyone takes soma, but there are some who do not. Bernard Marx is among the few who refuses to take soma. His refusal to take it displays a glimmer of a soul. When offered soma, he says “I’d rather be myself. Myself and nasty. Not somebody else, however jolly”(Huxley 89). He is rather skeptical of soma and questions it. While soma creates an illusion of happiness, it does not allow for its users to experience “true happiness”. Bernard wants to be able to feel feelings of unhappiness, something that citizens in this society do not experience. Furthermore, he says how he wants to be himself, which in itself proves that he wants to retain aspects his own individuality. Bernard’s refusal to take soma differentiates him from the rest of the people in his …show more content…

Society dotes on the fact that having strong feelings lead to individual instability. Individual instability then leads to social instability.By ridding people of strong feelings, individuals will then become stable and therefore, society will be stable. Even so, some characters in society have strong feelings towards The Director exhibits a glimmer of a soul when he remembers on a time where he brought a beta-girl to the reservation.When meeting with Bernard, he gets lost in thought and tells Bernard that some days he ‘Dream of being woken up by that peal of thunder and finding her gone; dream of searching and searching for her under the trees’ He lapsed into the silence of reminiscence” (Huxley 97). The Director expresses feelings of guilt about losing the girl in the reservation.Though this occurrence happened in the past, he still feels bad and wishes he could have saved her.The way that he describes these feelings shows how he felt strongly about her He quickly realizes what he has just blurted out and defends his story by saying that there was no emotional attachment or relationship that went on betwixt the two, as emotions and relationships were not a norm for society. The Director’s nostalgia on the girl he left at the reservation indicates a glimmer of a

Open Document