The Loss of Meaning and Purpose in Dystopia
Fact (Attempt 1) Though Brave New World and Player Piano were originally written in 1931 and 1952 respectively, they, along with dystopia on the whole, remain immensely well-read to this day as thought experiments of societies gone awry. These fictitious accounts continue to be relevant because of their foresightful warnings about the future of reality, each one distinct and thought-provoking. While the two authors formulate their warnings using similar plot structures and techniques, Aldous Huxley writes of societal conformity in Brave New World, and Kurt Vonnegut writes of the consequences of automation in Player Piano.
Misconception (Attempt 2) Some only see dystopia as a fictional account of
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a negative society, limited to the world of the imagination. However, dystopia authors offer insights on the future and incorporate negative trends that exist in the real world into their works. Additionally, authors of dystopia often have distinct insights to share. While Aldous Huxley and Kurt Vonnegut form their warnings using similar plot structures and techniques, Huxley writes of societal conformity in Brave New World, and Vonnegut writes of the consequences of automation in Player Piano. To begin, both authors introduce and flesh-out their novels’ settings to observers that function as the reader. This is masterful because both authors must introduce the reader to worlds which are, in some ways, vastly different from reality. In Brave New World, Huxley skillfully utilizes a tour of a Centre of Hatcheries and Conditioning led by the Director, which informs his pupils and the reader. One of the critical elements, cloning via the Bokanovsky Process, is given purpose through the Director’s tour. When one of the students innocently asks about the advantage of the process, the Director explodes at him, “Can’t you see? Bokanovsky’s Process is one of the major instruments of social stability!” (Huxley 5). The Director is infuriated at what can only be ignorance on the part of the pupil, thereby cleverly establishing an essential process of life under the World State. Bokanovskification, as the reader later learns from the Director, is meant to “stabilize the population at this moment, here and now” by creating scores of lower caste identical twins to accomplish the real work, while the higher castes enjoy free and easy social lives (Huxley 6). The tour also explores the various methods of conditioning used to instill certain morals in society and to, in the Director’s own words, “[make] people like their unescapable social destiny” (Huxley 15). Altogether, the Director’s tour establishes many of the crucial elements of Huxley’s dystopia. In Player Piano, Vonnegut also makes use of a tour for plot exposition, this time given to the leader of a fictional country visiting America, the Shah of Bratpuhr. The Shah’s tour first demonstrates a sizeable gap in quality of life between the engineers and the commoners. When travelling through the streets of Ilium, New York, a translator relays this question from the Shah: “[W]ho owns these slaves we see[?]” (Vonnegut 20). The American leader of the tour, Doctor Ewing J. Halyard, hastily attempts to resolve the misconception by correcting the Shah that they are citizens and not slaves, but the fact that the Shah―an outside observer―makes this connection indicates a self evident socioeconomic disparity between the classes in Ilium. The Shah’s tour remains as a critical subplot for the duration of the novel and later corroborates the emphasis on automation in Ilium. As part of the tour, the Shah requests to see the house of an average American. Instead of having a person solve this problem, the tour guide Halyard defers to the supercomputer EPICAC XIV, which, as the reader comes to understand, controls everything in Ilium. By drawing upon significant data such as age, education, I.Q., number of children, favorite pastimes, and war record, “the personnel machines [consider] the problem and [eject] the card of Edgar R. B. Hagstrohm, who was statistically average in every respect” (Vonnegut 161). Vonnegut here demonstrates a society of automation gone rampant, complete with a supercomputer at the top, which has displaced countless jobs that were once done by real people. Vonnegut continues to expand upon this theme of displacement with central literary devices and plot details as the novel progresses, in a comparable way to how Huxley develops his own distinct warning. As the novels progress, both authors use powerful allusions that exemplify moral debates of the plots. In Brave New World, John the Savage frequently alludes to Shakespearean works and values that have become lost in Huxley’s dystopia. This is first evidenced soon after John is introduced, and after Bernard has offered to take him to the Other Place, the World State. In his surprise and glee, John asks Bernard, “Do you remember what Miranda says?” (Huxle 141). The direct reference to Shakespeare’s The Tempest is wasted upon Bernard as he questions, puzzled, “Who’s Miranda?”, but the Savage continues eagerly in direct quotation, “O brave new world that has such people in it. Let’s start at once” (Huxley 141). This significant encounter goes to establish John’s peculiar nature and foreshadow his incompatibility with society, as seen by his incoherence to Bernard, a man of that very society. John’s Shakespearean values shine later in the novel when Lenina desires him, but John resists, dutifully quoting, ‘If thou dost break her virgin knot before all sanctimonious ceremonies may with full and holy rite…” (Huxley 195). In Huxley’s dystopia, Shakespeare’s ideals of marriage, commitment, and restraint are obsolete, so Lenina is left frustrated and confused: “For Ford’s sake, John,” she demands, “talk sense. I can’t understand a word you say” (Huxley 195). To her, John’s Shakespearean values are foreign and absurd, later inspiring his violent rejection that ends their brief relationship. Thus, John’s old values confirm his irreconcilable differences with the Brave New World society. Likewise, the old values are equally emphasized in Player Piano. The rebellion takes the name Ghost Shirt Society as an allusion to Native Americans in crisis in the late nineteenth century. As Reverend James Lasher, one of the society’s leaders, explains, “The world had changed radically for the Indians. It had become a white man’s world, and Indian ways in a white man’s world were irrelevant...” (Vonnegut 288). The Natives of the west began one last defense of their ways with the Ghost Dance religion, and armed themselves with magic shirts that the bullets of the Americans would not be able to penetrate (Vonnegut 289). Lasher aptly synthesizes the relevance of their endeavor, saying, “The machines are to practically everybody what the white men were to the Indians” (Vonnegut 289-290). Just as the Native Americans were displaced rapidly after the arrival of the Europeans to America, so too were the people of Ilium after the evolution of automation. Vonnegut cleverly ties the current struggle of his novel to a similar struggle in the past as a powerful contribution to his central warning, just as Huxley imbued John’s character with Shakespearean values to shape his own. While Huxley and Vonnegut use comparable techniques, they diverge at their warnings to society.
Huxley applies the above techniques to warn against the loss of meaning in a world of societal conformity. For the first movement of the novel, Bernard acts as an outsider who does not take pleasure in regular societal activities. After his first date with Lenina, Bernard longs for something missing from his life. “I want to know what passion is,” he says. “I want to feel something strongly” (Huxley 94). Huxley uses Bernard’s feelings at the beginning of Brave New World to expose a severe lack of meaning in Bernard’s own life. Huxley later shifts his focus to John the Savage to support his warning. In his climactic conflict with Mustapha Mond, John demands that things should come with more emotional cost in the World State society, arguing, “What you need is something with tears for a change” (Huxley 245). It is with this argument that Huxley confirms his warning: the loss of meaning in life. Mond says of society, “We don’t [like inconveniences]. We prefer to do things comfortably” (Huxley 246). But as John points out, an overemphasis on comfort leads to the sacrifice of responsibilities and hardships that make life meaningful. On the other hand, Vonnegut applies the same techniques to warn against the loss of purpose in an age of automation. Vonnegut’s vision of Ilium, New York, sees that automation has displaced thousands of citizens to menial jobs in construction or the army, while only the citizens with the highest evaluation scores are eligible to be hired for high-paying engineering jobs that oversee the machines. A father’s personal tale of heartbreak reveals this flaw to the protagonist, Paul Proteus. “[My son] just about killed himself studying up for [the National General Classification Tests],” the man says, “but it wasn’t any use. He didn’t do nearly well enough for college. There were only twenty-seven openings, and six hundred kids trying for them”
(Vonnegut 30). Paul later meets the man again and inquires how his son is getting along. The father replies, “My boy’s all set… he hanged himself this morning in the kitchen” (Vonnegut 88). Evidently, the boy lost hope when he failed to secure a meaningful future as a superior in Ilium’s automated society, and chose to commit suicide to avoid the pains of a life without true purpose. Even though the entire anecdote is later revealed to be a lie, its vivid detail and relatable hardship make it certain that similar tragic stories happen in Ilium for real. For example, one day Bud Calhoun, a co-worker of Paul Proteus, suddenly receives news of his termination. Bud says of the last gadget he created in his job, “Works. Does a fine job… Does it a lot better than [I] did it” (Vonnegut 72). The cause of Bud’s termination―supplantation by his own work―is deeply ironic, and serves as a powerful example of displacement by automation in Vonnegut’s dystopia. Restatement (Attempt 1) In both Brave New World and Player Piano, the authors employ similar writing techniques to support their central warnings. These meticulously crafted themes are perhaps more relevant today than they were over sixty years ago after both novels had been published. Just as Huxley’s writings about loss of meaning are pertinent due to increased focus on comfortable lifestyles, so too are Vonnegut’s caution about loss of purpose as a result of the increased presence of technology in all aspects of life. Importance (Attempt 2) Both Huxley’s Brave New World and Vonnegut’s Player Piano use plot structures and allusions to craft two distinct warnings. The first, a warning against the loss of meaning among a world of comfort, remains relevant . The latter, a warning against the loss of physical purpose, has become increasingly relevant with advances in technology.
A Comparison of the Themes of Blade Runner and Brave New World ‘Humanity likes to think of itself as more sophisticated than the wild yet it cannot really escape its need for the natural world’ Despite different contexts both Aldous Huxley within his book Brave New World and Ridley Scott in the film Blade Runner explore the idea that humans feel themselves more sophisticated than the natural world, yet are able to completely sever relations between humanity and the nature. Through various techniques both texts warn their varied audiences of the negative ramifications that will come from such disdainful, careless opinions and actions. All aspects of the ‘New State’ within Aldous Huxley’s novel Brave New World indicate a belief that humanity is more sophisticated than the wild.
middle of paper ... ... It is clear that although Vonnegut's picture of the modern man is often bleak, he never totally abandons the glimmer of hope that accompanies the fact that life has its moments of grandeur. He encourages the modern reader to escape the question "why me" and urges us to embrace a philosophy that consistently reminds us that even in the midst of the most cruel (and the most celebrated) events, humanity retains all of its virtue and vice.
Kurt Vonnegut's apocalyptic novel, Cat's Cradle, might well be called an intricate network of paradox and irony. It is with such irony and paradox that Vonnegut himself describes his work as "poisoning minds with humanity...to encourage them to make a better world" (The Vonnegut Statement 107). In Cat's Cradle, Vonnegut does not tie his co-mingled plots into easy to digest bites as the short chapter structure of his story implies. Rather, he implores his reader to resolve the paradoxes and ironies of Cat's Cradle by simply allowing them to exist. By drawing our attention to the paradoxical nature of life, Vonnegut releases the reader from the necessity of creating meaning into a realm of infinite possibility. It appears that Vonnegut sees the impulse toward making a better world as fundamental to the human spirit; that when the obstacle of meaning is removed the reader, he supposes, will naturally improve the world.
Vonnegut and Jackson, through the use of well written short stories, have managed to address concerning issues in today’s societies. Through the use of Harrison Bergeron Kurt Vonnegut was able to address the growing issue of equality, this is a very important issue as many people in modern societies view the idea of equality to be incredible. Shirley Jackson through The Lottery addressed the concerning issue of societies blindly following religions and traditions due to superstitions and the unwillingness to change. These dystopian texts demonstrate the inevitable outcome these problems will eventually cause.
The main character, Paul Proteus, feels that he is isolated because his society has no freewill and they depend on machines to complete their lives. Paul believes in the machines that have taken over his society, but he still feels lonely. The book stated that “He didn’t feel important or brilliant at the moment, nor had he for some time” (Vonnegut 1). Paul feels that ever since machines have become a part of his life, that he no longer has a purpose in society. He feels that he has not been important for a long time because of machines.
With these components at the forefront, productivity presents itself in a crucial way. This dystopian world is built around constantly being productive, often leaving its citizens how they would personally benefit from helping their peers and associates; more specifically, how helping their peers and associates would benefit the World State. Mustapha Mond mentions this with his hypnopædic phrase, “But everyone belongs to everyone else” (Huxley 40). When Bernard brings John to London, John’s initial purpose is one hidden from him. Bernard searches to embarrass the Director for his hypocrisy by outing him as John’s father. When this mission is completed and the Director resigns, John’s significance severely decreases. He misses all chances at making connections and being productive and his lashing out on other citizens threatens his ability to continue to exist stably in society. With no true purpose of existing in the machine that is the World State, John does what he believes will be the most productive thing he can do for society and takes his own life. Doing so exemplifies how John resembles a Christ-like figure, as his death for the improvement of the world reiterates that he would rather die in isolation than live life only as a small part of a much bigger
Kurt Vonnegut’s science fiction, short story, “Harrison Bergeron” satirizes the defective side of an ideal, utopian American society in 2081, where “everyone was finally equal” (Vonnegut 1). When you first begin to read “Harrison Bergeron”, through an objective, nonchalant voice of the narrator, nothing really overly suggests negativity, yet the conclusion and the narrator's subtle description of the events show how comically tragic it really is. Vonnegut’s use of morbid satire elicits a strong response from the readers as it makes you quickly realize that this scenario does not resemble a utopian society at all, but an oppressive, government and technology-controlled society. “A dystopian society is a
Huxley and Niccol demonstrate in their fictionist stories that humanity cannot be changed and cannot be controlled; it is just what it is. The government cannot create a society, nobody can, a society is self-made, and all we can do is be a part of it. Nevertheless, the main purpose of these stories is that we as humans need to stay humans, we need to stay a society; and there are so many changes that are being made in today’s times, but don’t let that change our humanistic ways.
Bernard Marx is an intriguing character in the book Brave New World. At the beginning of the book, he is a very main character, but as the book goes on he is put more and more into the background of the story. The reason for this can be explained by the way his character changes as the book progresses. Aldous Huxley makes an interesting point by showing how a person can be changed by obtaining something he desires. It makes the readers wonder whether success would change them in the same way or if they would be able to maintain their character.
Dystopia represents an artificially created society to where a human population is administered to various types of oppressions, or a human population lives under the order of an oppressive government. The novel Fahrenheit 451 and the film V for Vendetta both effectively display this dystopian concept in their works. The nature of the society, the protagonist who questions the society, and the political power that runs the society are examples of how the novel and the film efficiently capture the main points of a dystopian society. The authors of the novel and the film use their visions of a dystopian future to remark on our present by identifying how today’s society is immensely addicted to technology and how our government has changed over the past decades. Furthermore, the authors use our modern day society to illustrate their view of a dystopia in our
The phenomenon of the American Dream has been engraved into the American culture since perhaps the beginning of post-revolutionary America itself. The classic belief that if you work hard, you would be able to reap the material benefits of what you sowed, at least enough to live comfortably is a myth that has been propagated in many literary works, deconstructed in many American literary works as a mere myth. And in Arthur Miller’s The Death of a Salesman and August Wilson’s The Piano Lesson, we see such deconstruction of the American Dream take place through both plays’ showcasing of the many complexities of the American life, complexities that are not taken into consideration with the black-and-white narrowing of the American Dream. While hard work does make up a part of the equation, it does not make up the entire equation of a comfortable lifestyle. That manifestation of the many facets of the American Dream is shown in both Miller’s The Death of a Salesman and Wilson’s The Piano Lesson.
"'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.
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.
Praises resound around the world everyday in admiration of man's magnificent creation, technology. Scientific progress has been hailed the number one priority of man, while the development of society itself has been cast aside like an old beta vcr. When surrounded by a constant herd of machinery, finding purpose in life is often overshadowed by a desire to continually generate new scientific inventions. In the post-war classics Waiting for Godot and Slaughterhouse Five, the authors rally for meaning within the chaos of technology and stress the importance of "a possibility of choice"(Sartre 339). In addition to improved technology, Vonnegut and Beckett emphasize that members of society need to attach significance to their lives through the use of free will.
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.