Humanity In Brave New World

Brave Old Humanity History and culture are the foundations of both civilization and humanity. Without history one would not have culture and ideals or be more prone to manipulation and control. The book Brave New World capitalizes on the idea of history, culture, and humanity as they play huge roles in the novel. The novel takes place in a dystopian future where the citizens live shallow, fruitless lives serving a World State that bans culture and history. Aldous Huxley’s Brave New World holds the idea of dehumanization, class differences, and comparisons between the knowledgeable and the oblivious to explain how having knowledge of culture and history makes one complete as a human. The class differences between the citizens in Brave New

Each class of people in the novel becomes less and less human the lower they are, with the lowest being Epsilons. “’But in Epsilons,’ said Mr. Foster very justly, ‘we don’t need human intelligence’” (Huxley 15). Epsilons were genetically designed to be deformed and forced to do essentially slave labor in the World State yet they were specifically designed without intelligence, so they are not able to question this kind of work. These people had their humanity stripped from them with the removal of their intelligence. Without intelligence there is no way for Epsilons to think about how their work is terrible because that’s the only work they know. While Epsilons are the worst case of dehumanization, the entire population of the World State also suffers from obliviousness. Everyone in the World State sufferers from obliviousness caused by social conditioning and genetic experimentation. Humans have been severely dehumanized by the time Brave New World takes place and the banning of history and conditioning is the source. Without any previous morals and ideas coming from history and culture, anyone without a knowledge of history can be led to believe anything with proper conditioning. This process is

While not nearly as educated as Mustapha Mond, John was much more learned than any of the Alphas in the World State as well as being more human. However, because of John’s knowledge, he was much more excluded in the New World as a result. John the Savage brought “Old World ideas into an age that no longer needs them, where they cannot live” (Fallout… 461) and was treated as a freak in the World State. It is ironic that the World State depicts John as a savage because savagery connotes a lack of humanity when he has the most humanity of all the people in the World State. The biggest difference between John the Savage and Mustapha Mond is that Mustapha has been conditioned by the morals of the World State. Even though the controllers rule the World State, they were still created by it. Despite the fact controllers make the laws of the New World, their freedom in the New World is limited. The only people in Brave New World who have humanity and freedom are the so-called savages in the reservation. Their preservation of culture and history is what kept them human and happy unlike the oblivious enslaved people of the World