Society has one single fatal flaw, and it is it’s obsession with perfection. Every single person on this earth desires to be something that they are not. It is a mental, physical and psychological disillusion that people can obtain perfection, but the truth is that perfection is unattainable. Often as a society moves toward perfection, more imperfection is created and progression is stopped. Brave New World’s author, Aldous Huxley, helps display to readers how obtaining “perfection” truly disillusions humanity and creates a dystopia. Huxley argues the discord between knowledge and stability, and the power of conformity in order to illustrate the absurdity of humanity’s desire to reach perfection.
The incompatibility between knowledge
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The novel presents an alarmingly bleak future society, in which uniqueness is lost and confinement is valued. Individuality is compromised through the Bokanovasky Process. The Bokanovasky Process is the method used to create identical “perfect” human beings for their respective social class. In the opening pages of the novel the Director explains the process. He begins with stating “Standard men and women; in uniform batches” (Huxley 7). The diction choice of standard represents the loss of individuality. To be standard means to meet the normal expectations and not be an individual. Instead of have a society filled with people, who have opinions and morals, the World State has clones. The novel displays that in order for a utopian society to actualize a state of perfection, a loss of individuality must occur. The crucial factor of perfection implies that individuality must be absent. In the words of one of the ten controllers, "[there is] no civilization without social stability. No social stability without individual stability" (Huxley 42). This quote shows that the basic principal of the World State is stability. In order for the society to reach perfection, stability must be created no matter the cost. The major cost of stability is humanity. A human is unable to reach perfection because they have emotions and a mind that can control their emotions to a certain degree. Emotions create individuals. The way a person reacts to situations is what makes them an individual. Emotions allow man to believe and dream, to grow and love, but these intense human characteristics handicap perfection and stability, this is why the Bokanovasky Process was created, to dehumanize and create people that accept
Can ‘perfect’ worlds go downhill and affect individuals in a negative way? Lord and Miller’s The Lego Movie, and Vonnegut’s, “Harrison Bergeron,” unmask the conflict between the ideal of perfection as well as equality of their utopian societies and the realities of people living in their societies by showing Utopias becoming dystopias in the following ways: In The Lego Movie, Lord Business aims at perfection which leads to lack of individuality; in “Harrison Bergeron,” equality that is valued within their society leads to lack of beauty; and in both, The Lego Movie, and “Harrison Bergeron,” the pursuit of these ideals leads to negative consequences for those who do not follow rules and rebellion.
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.
Through hypnoaedic teachings, reservation contrasts to the “Civilized” world, and John’s critique of the society, the reader sees Huxley’s point of view of the importance of an individual. With hypnoaedic teachings, Huxley creates the society and the values. Inside the reservation, Huxley contrasts the society of the reservation to that of Lenina’s society. Finally Huxley’s main evaluation and critique of lack of identity is seen in John’s character. John’s horrid descriptions in his point of view on society demonstrate to the reader the importance of an individual. Since there were absolutely no conscious men or women throughout society, ideas of ignoring death, God, and beauty creates a world where men and women sacrifice true happiness (Where pain and hard work are involved for a greater happiness) for a “smooth running society.” The picture of the society to the reader is horrifying and quite terrifying. Overall, within our society, the importance of the individual is not a problem. People, even teenagers, are encouraged to show who they are inside. One can truly see the idea of the importance on individual through the new openness to different sexualities. Overall, within the book, Brave New World, by Aldous Huxley, Huxley demonstrates the need for conscious individuals through a horrifying
Before examining how utopias rob individuals of their identities, it is important to note the large cultural differences between the present in Brave New World and the modern-day present to show how utopias cannot function even in a highly technologically advanced future. A common phrased used by most of the characters in the novel is, “Oh, Ford!” (Huxley 21) as opposed to “Oh, God!” in modern-day language. This shows how the Brave New World society views Henry Ford, one of the fathers of modern technology, as its deistic figure. The manner in which Henry Ford is viewed is similar to the way ‘God’ is viewed in the present day, as the omniscient, omnipotent figure. Likewise, the futuristic society is one driven largely by the consumption of drugs, spe...
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.
The novel Brave New World shows that in order for a utopian society to achieve a state of stability, a loss of individuality, and the undoing of Mother Nature must occur. Successfully engineering these conditions produces a world where people are finally living "happily ever after," but at a great cost.
A Utopia is an imaginary place where human ideals are established; an idea of a place that is free from all of the human complications such as pain and suffering. Utopia writing has been around for thousands of years and can be found in almost all different cultures. Opposite of a Utopia, is a Dystopia, a fictional world where everything is unpleasant or dismal. Although the social pressures in which these utopias and dystopias were created from different pressures, all of these stories share the common theme of escapism and “what ifs?” The purpose of this paper will be to compare and contrast the novel Utopia, written by Thomas more with the dystopian novel Brave New world, written by Adlouls Huxley. I will also share my opinions about these
The impracticality of the utopian ideal is explored in Orwell’s Nineteen Eighty-Four and Huxley’s Brave New World. Both authors suggest that a lack of familial bonds, the repression of human individuality, and the repression of artistic and creative endeavors in order to attain a stable environment renders the achievement of a perfect state unrealistic. The lack of familial bonds, in both novels, contributes to the development of a dystopian society. This lack of familial bonds is evident through genetic engineering, the use of names, and a commonly used drug, soma.
Aldous Huxley’s Brave New World demonstrates key principles of Marxist literary theory by creating a world where mass happiness is the tool used by positions of power known as the Alphas to control the masses known as the Epsilons at the cost of the people's freedom to choose. The social castes of Brave New World, Alphas, Betas, Gammas, Deltas, and Epsilons, draw parallels to the castes applied in Marxist literary theory, the Aristocracy, the Bourgeoisie and the Proletariat.
Perfection cannot be achieved. In Aldous Huxley’s Brave New World we experience what it is like to live in a utopia. In the beginning Huxley explains how people are made in a futuristic utopia and we meet the main character, Bernard Marx. Throughout the story we learn that Bernard does not fit in and is threatened to be exiled, but is saved when he brings a savage from Malpais, an unutopian city from the past. The people of London, where Bernard lives, are intrigued by how different the Savage is. The Savage is baffled by all the technology in the brave new world. The use of soma, the conditioning, and daily life in Brave New World’s utopian society are examples of a technological influence.
Imagine living in a society where there is no sense of independence, individual thought or freedom. A society where the government uses disturbing methods that dehumanize people in order to force conformity upon them. Taking away any sense of emotion, It would be very undesirable to live in a society with such oppression. Such society is portrayed in Aldous Huxley's novel Brave New World. The World State uses social restrictions to create permanent artificial personalities for people within the society. The World State also uses controlled groupings of people to brainwash them further to be thoughtless people with no sense of individualism. Lastly, the World State uses drugs to create artificial happiness for people, leaving no room for intense emotion which causes people to revolt against the World State. Within the novel Brave New World, it is seen that the World State eliminates individuality through social restrictions, government controlled groupings and the abuse of drugs to maintain control of the population.
"'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.
In Brave New World, the society is established based on efficiency and collectivism. The World State uses the “‘Bokanovsky’s Process as one of the major instruments of social stability!”’(Huxley 7) This process consists of artificial fertilization and embryonic growth in test tubes.The workers manipulate the embryos to create up to 96 identical twins. “‘Ninety-six identical twins working ninety-six identical machines”’would be efficient in cooperation and harmonization. (Huxley 7) But, Huxley conveys that the misuse of this reproductive technology can result in a lack of individualism and
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.
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.