True Happiness In Brave New World, By Aldous Huxley

Happiness is a trait that has definitely lost its true meaning due to superficial, materialistic extravagances. Society today has created an image of what happiness entails, and now there are many different ways to try to achieve that image. However, the question then becomes: is happiness, as a result of things like sex, drugs, consumption, real happiness? Is it better to feel fake happiness than to experience the drudgeries that come with living a sober life? In the novel, Brave New World, by Aldous Huxley, the whole society is built off of a precedent of fake happiness. The people take drugs to cover up their true feelings and individuality. Citizens are supposed to feel content with their lives and the society around them. In both the brave

In the Brave New World, almost all of the individuals are conditioned to take soma to alleviate any stress or unorthodox thoughts, like love or individuality, they may have. Soma is highly advertised and the officials always remind the people that, “there is always soma, delicious soma, half a gramme for a half-holiday, a gramme for a week-end, two grammes for a trip to the gorgeous East, three for a dark eternity on the moon” (Huxley 55-56). The use of soma allows the individuals to take a “soma holiday” to anywhere they wish and feel cool, calm, and collected. The soma never produces any negative side effects, so people continue to want to utilize the drug over and over. Bernard, a character searching for individuality, is the first to question the use of soma. He explains his disuse of soma by saying he would rather not use soma and feel himself “[himself] and nasty. Not somebody else, however jolly” (Huxley 89). Although many people in society today take on Bernard’s point of view and feel that happiness is a result of both the good and bad times, there are also many people who use drugs and depressants to create

In the brave new world, the society is based off of the motto, “Community, identity, [and] stability” (Huxley 3). In this supposed Utopian society, people being content with their jobs and being a contributor to the process of consumption drive their happiness. People are satisfied with dying because they know their bodies will be cremated and used for fertilizer. Citizens are happy because they believe it is “fine to think we can go on being socially useful even after we’re dead. Making plants grow” (Huxley 73). All of the people are under a false impression of happiness because they do not realize how much the Director and higher authorities manipulate them. They do not realize how much they really cannot do. They do not realize how much they do not about their lives and life around them. All the people think about is consumption and how it serves as happiness. The citizens are too ignorant and blind to the fact that they are only living to be a part of the assembly line, and that is their only purpose. John is the only character that is sickened by the assembly line and sees how disturbing life in the new world is. He is the only one who realizes how much control the Director has over the society and how people do not even have the ability think for themselves. He sees this fabricated happiness in play, and it makes him start to violently retch in disgust at this so-called