Marxist Criticism In Brave New World

Aldous Huxley’s novel takes place in London in a world where humans are developed through tubes, put into social categories, and conditioned to feel and go through the same experiences. The members of this society are forced to learn these habits at a young age and continue them until death. A drug called “soma” exists to serve as a relaxer if they ever feel an emotion other than happiness. Many characters are introduced in this novel, including a “savage” who disagrees with the ideology of the world and rebels against all that they stand for. The novel, Brave New World, by Aldous Huxley, reveals throughout the novel that because of the caste system, people are treated different, given various duties, and are placed on a spectrum; all for the purpose of maintaining the stability of the society.

In the Ford society, people are split up into castes that are called Epsilon, Delta, Gamma, Beta, and Alpha. Alpha’s are at the top and are considered the leaders, while the castes that are lower aren’t acknowledged as much. This can be shown through Marxist Criticism with the terms “proletariat” and “bourgeoisie.” The proletariats are the working class people, while the bourgeoisie are the people who own most of the society’s wealth and production. Ann Dobie, the author of Theory into Practice: An Introduction to Literary Criticism, highlights on the class difference, “The dominant class, using its power to make the prevailing system seem to be the logical, natural one, entraps the proletariat into holding the sense of identity and worth that the bourgeoisie wants them to hold, one that will allow the powerful to remain in control” (Dobie,