Afraid New World
Aldous Huxley’s “Brave New World” highlights the theme of society and individualism. Huxley uses the future world and its inhabitants to represents conflict of how the replacement of stability in place of individualism produces adverse side effects. Each society has individuals ranging from various jobs and occupations and diverse personalities and thoughts. Every member contributes to society in his or her own way. However, when people’s individuality is repressed, the whole concept of humanity is destroyed. In Huxley’s “Brave New World”, the concept of individualism is lost through hyperbolized physical and physiological training, the artificial birth and caste system, and the censorship of religion and literature by a suppressing government.
The government in the future world uses various techniques to make sure the citizens of the World State are kept in check and conformed. Each citizen is imprisoned within his or her own mind, through the use of several psychological and physical devices. They are conditioned to act a certain way or have certain thoughts and ideas. People who fail to fall in line are deported to far away locations. Before the artificial birth of each child, it has already undergone its conditioning to make sure it conforms. The director of hatcheries and conditioning states, “All conditioning aims at that: making people like their inescapable destiny”(Huxley 87-8). People’s minds are programmed to love their assigned jobs and lifestyles. Even after birth they continue to follow the motto of the World State: “Community, Identity, Stability”(21). This motto is extremely ironic having the words identity and stability in it as the World State has sacrificed identity for stability. Shock thera...
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...ressed through various techniques in the World State. The citizens unknowingly conform and are prisoners of their own minds, trapped inside by regulation and control from the government. Massive batches of clones are effortlessly artificially birthed, all requiring the same drugs and proxies to survive. Even clothing is regulated making it impossible to distinguish between individuals, only the castes they are placed in. Censorship of the World State places the iron curtain between individuality and conformity by essentially erasing all expression or free thought. Society is truly blinded by its own ego, as the system created is not a society, but mindless followers of a tyrannical government. In the midst of all of the disillusionment created by the façade of social stability, there is no way for individualism or freedom to prevail in the Brave New World.
Christian Nestell Bovee, a famous epigrammatic New York writer, once said, “No man is happy without a delusion of some kind. Delusions are as necessary to our happiness as realities.” This quote ties in wonderfully with the book Brave New World by Aldous Huxley and the concept of control. In the novel Brave New World, Aldous Huxley captured the true essences of a perfect dystopia. With people living seamless happy lives, and not knowing they are being controlled. How does one control entire nation? The World State does this by hatching, conditioning, and a synthetic drug called soma.
Brave New World, a novel written by Aldous Huxley, can be compared and contrasted with an episode of The Twilight Zone, a fantasy, science-fiction television series, called “Number 12 Looks Just Like You.” Brave New World is a highly regarded and renowned work of literature as The Twilight Zone is considered one of the greatest television series of all time. Brave New World and The Twilight Zone’s episode “Number 12 Looks Just Like You” can be compared and contrasted on the basis of science, youth, and the government.
Science and Technology have a strong influence on the daily lives of the citizens in the world state. The first influence is through the use of drugs and in particular, soma. Soma is a drug that is used in the world state by everyone to create false happiness. When john, Bernard and Helmholtz meet Mustafa mond the leader of the world state, Mond explains the beneficial effects of simply consuming one drug on a daily basis. “Now, you swallow two or three half-gramme tablets, and there you are. Anybody can be virtuous now. You can carry at least half your mortality about in a bottle. Christianity without tears-that’s what soma is.” (Helmholtz, 162) In the world state, there is only praise for the drug known as soma, as there are no side effects the members of society fear of. Science and technology has reached a point where it allows a simple tablet to relieve its citizens of any sort of problem that they may encounter. Furthermore Soma is produced in large quantities for consumption in order to suppress understanding of what is around the members of society. Secondly, along with the Soma consumption, the citizens are also influenced by science in everyday life by not being able to gain knowledge. methods of gaining knowledge include: reading books or anything that promotes an idea. Using technology, the world state prohibits any type of reading. When small children are being conditioned to keep away from books, the procedure is presented, “Crumpling the illuminated pages of the books, the director waited until all were happily busy. Then, ‘Watch carefully,’ he said. And, lifting his hand, he gave the signal... There was a violent explosion... The children screamed; their faces were distorted with terror.” (16) even at a young age...
Aldous Huxley’s Brave New World introduces us to a futuristic technological world where monogamy is shunned, science is used in order to maintain stability, and society is divided by 5 castes consisting of alphas(highest), betas, gammas, deltas, and epsilons(lowest). In the Brave New World, the author demonstrates how society mandates people’s beliefs using many characters throughout the novel.
In Aldous Huxley's novel, "Brave New World" he introduces a character named, Bernard Marx an alpha part of the upper higher class who does not quite fit in. Bernard is cursed by the surrounding rumors of something going wrong during his conditioning that he becomes bitter and isolates himself from those around him in the World State. Huxley's character experiences both alienation and enrichment to being exiled from a society that heavily relies on technology and forms of entertainment with little to no morals.
Brave New World, by Aldous Huxley is a novel about a hidden dystopian society. Huxley describes a perfect dystopia where scientist breed people to be in a certain social class. This is accomplished through conditioning. There are many similarities in today's society that collide with the society in Brave New World. The society of the World State is similar to today’s society in these ways. First, technologies prevent us to think or feel real emotion, second the truth is hidden from us. Finally, objects and people distract us from real life.
In his novel Brave New World, Aldous Huxley illustrates ways in which government and advanced science control society. Through actual visualization of this Utopian society, the reader is able to see how this state affects Huxley’s characters. Throughout the book, the author deals with many different aspects of control. Whether it is of his subjects’ feelings and emotions or of the society’s restraint of population growth, Huxley depicts government’s and science’s role in the brave new world of tomorrow.
There were quite a few changes made from Aldous Huxley’s, Brave New World to turn it into a “made for TV” movie. The first major change most people noticed was Bernard Marx’s attitude. In the book he was very shy and timid toward the opposite sex, he was also very cynical about their utopian lifestyle. In the movie Bernard was a regular Casanova. He had no shyness towards anyone. A second major deviation the movie made form the book was when Bernard exposed the existing director of Hatcheries and Conditioning, Bernard himself was moved up to this position. In the book the author doesn’t even mention who takes over the position. The biggest change between the two was Lenina, Bernard’s girlfriend becomes pregnant and has the baby. The screenwriters must have made this up because the author doesn’t even mention it. The differences between the book and the movie both helped it and hurt it.
In Brave New World, Aldous Huxley deftly creates a society that is indeed quite stable. Although they are being mentally manipulated, the members of this world are content with their lives, and the presence of serious conflict is minimal, if not nonexistent. For the most part, the members of this society have complete respect and trust in their superiors, and those who don’t are dealt with in a peaceful manner as to keep both society and the heretic happy. Maintained by cultural values, mental conditioning, and segregation, the idea of social stability as demonstrated in Brave New World is, in my opinion, both insightful and intriguing.
Aldous Huxley’s Brave New World portrays a society in which science has clearly taken over. This was an idea of what the future could hold for humankind. Is it true that Huxley’s prediction may be correct? Although there are many examples of Huxley’s theories in our society, there is reason to believe that his predictions will not hold true for the future of society.
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 World State’s intent to control their society through medical intervention, happiness, and consumerism, which has similarities to modern society. Designing life from conception is an intriguing concept. Brave New World’s World State is in control of the reproduction of people by intervening medically. The Hatchery and Conditioning Centre is the factory that produces human beings.
Social restriction robs individuals of their creative personalities by preventing freedom of thought, behavior, and expression; but is vital to the World State for maintaining complete control over the society. Social restriction’s purpose is to enforce obedience conformity and compliance out of people. The World State achieves this through two methods; hypnopaedia and shock therapy. Hypnopaedia is sleep-teaching where morals are taught on on repeat during the infant years of children while they are asleep, these messages become permanently embedded in their mind and become their permanent, new, artificial personality. This is proven in the quote “... drops of liquid sealing wax, drops that adhere, incrust and inc...
In a dystopian society where a government has the power to remain unquestioned as it rules with an iron fist, conformity prevails. While societies suggest that burning books and taking daily intervals of drugs will cure the world of all of its problems, those who comply are instead blindly supporting their government’s beliefs while being stripped of their freedoms and identities. Without the ability to express individuality through thoughts and opinions and experience emotions, people live in a society where their knowledge is fueled by propaganda and where they are unaware of reality and what it means to be an individual. The society controls what its people see and believe; without a way to revolt, many learn to tolerate the lives they have.
In Aldous Huxley’s Brave New World, the author depicts a collective society in which everyone has the same values and beliefs. From a young age, the people in the World State’s civilization are conditioned to believe in their motto of “Community, Identity, Stability.” Through hypnopaedia, the citizens of the World State learn their morals, values, and beliefs, which stay with them as they age. However, like any society, there are outsiders who alienate themselves from the rest of the population because they have different values and beliefs. Unfortunately, being an outsider in the World State is not ideal, and therefore there are consequences as a result. One such outsider is John. Brought from the Savage Reservation, John is lead to conform to the beliefs of the World State, thus losing his individuality, which ultimately leads him to commit suicide. Through John and the World State populace as an example, Huxley uses his novel to emphasize his disapproval of conformity over individuality.
In Aldous Huxley’s Brave New World, truth and happiness are falsely engineered to create a perfect society; the belief of the World Controllers that stability is the the key to a utopian society actually led to the creation of an anti-utopian society in which loose morals and artificial happiness exist. Huxley uses symbolism, metaphors, and imagery to satirize the possibiliy of an artificial society in the future as well as the “brave new world” itself.