Analyzing Aldous Huxley's 'Brave New World'

The color of the groups uniform determined how intelligent and skillful the people were mentally. A certain color(grey) determined if you were clever, an Alpha, and another color(green) determined if you were vapid, an Epsilon. More specifically, every individual was made to believe this in their sleep. As Huxley states, “Alpha children wear grey. They work much harder than we do, because they’re so frightfully clever. I’m really awfully glad I’m a Beta, because I don’t work so hard. And then we are much better than the Gammas and Deltas. Gammas are stupid. They all wear green, and Delta children wear khaki… Epsilons are still worse. They’re too stupid”(Huxley 27/28). Huxley is stating that brain washing begins since one is born and occurs when an individual is not aware of what is going on in their surroundings.

Here, it is seen through Bernard?s eyes how members of different castes interact with one another. Bernard views members of lower castes as disgustingly inferior to himself;

As for intelligence there have been three capacities and virtues that should be targeted for moral enhancement, which are the sensitivity to the features of situations, thoughtfulness about doing what is moral, and the proper capacity for people to make proper judgments. The continued progress in the modification of learning, cognition, memory, the capabilities of decision-making will help assist the moral enhancement with these tasks. There have also been many neurochemicals that have been used to enhance cognitive abilities, which include increased attention span and cognition span. Drugs like OxyContin have also been used to help with empathy, and to make people feel happier. It may be believed that a drug like soma was only possible in Aldous Huxley’s novel Brave New World, but perhaps not. Utilitarian’s have been pushing for human enhancement that uses drugs, genetic engineering and nanotechnology to ensure the maximum amount of happiness possible while attempting to eliminate any pain. Proponents believe that this would reset the brain’s thinking patterns, and allow people to think more positively by keeping our minds engaged, rather than in a constant dull and depressing state. Many anti- depressant drugs are attempting to do just this. It is safe to say that moral enhancement is not just a potential innovation, but a technology that is already beginning.

Derived from “polis” meaning city-state, politics as Bismarck refers to is an art of total government control, exercising complete authority and power by creating, introducing and enforcing rules made by collective decision. However in both texts, “Brave New World” by Aldous Huxley and the film “The Giver” directed Phillip Noyce, the roots of politics stem from the art of total and limitless control. The novel Brave New World presents a futuristic society that has tried to create a perfect community where everybody is happy, they use science to mass produce people and condition them to do and want only things prescribed to them, taking away freedoms such as the freedom to think for one self. While, “The Giver” sets a story in a society which at first is presented as a utopian world. The society has eliminated pain and strife by converting to "sameness”. The main character Jonas is selected to inherit the position of Receiver of Memory, the person who stores all the memories of the past. Through a variety of literary techniques, the notion of politics as an art rather than a science is thus explored in both texts.

According to Webster’s New World Dictionary, bravery is “possessing or exhibiting courage or courageous endurance” (Agnes 178). Oftentimes, people are commended for acts of bravery they complete in the heat of a moment or overcoming a life-changing obstacle. Rarely one is commended for simply living a brave life, facing challenges they do not even understand. The characters in the Aldous Huxley’s Brave New World live a peculiar lifestyle demonstrating bravery for just breathing. Although Huxley’s ideas are surfacing today, the dystopia he creates is unrelatable . The genetic make-up of these men and women is different, creating a human lacking basic function of life. In Western Europe an individual forms in a laboratory, “one egg, one embryo, one adult-normality. But a bokanovskified egg will bud, will proliferate, will divide. From eight to ninety-six buds, and every bud will grow into a perfectly formed embryo, and every embryo into a full-sized adult. Making ninety-six human beings grow where only one grew before. Progress” (Huxley 6). The dystopian way of reproduction rarely involves a man impregnating a woman. Huxley’s characters are born in a laboratory. These class divided people are manipulated to be personality less , sex-driven, dumb-downed, assembly line workers. Brainwashing from birth conditions them to go through the motions without doubting their purpose. Government controllers are not looking out for the egg at all, simply manufacturing them to keep the

Imagine, the government being your plug. In Aldous Huxley’s Brave New World (BNW), the citizens get a drug called Soma from their government. Soma works as a miracle drug, in that it gives the mental effects of euphoria, but doesn’t give any negative physical effects. When I first heard about this so called, “miracle drug” I was immediately intrigued. I was enthralled by the idea of a government giving its citizens drugs, and how Soma was a major part of how their society functions. Throughout the story, I thought that one of the most important ideas brought from the story was Soma. While reading, I made an association from Soma to a real life drug, marijuana. I chose the topic of marijuana being used medically as well as

In his text Brave New World Aldous Huxley imagines a society genetically engineered and socially conditioned to be a fully functioning society where everyone appears to be truly happy. This society is created with each person being assigned a social status from birth, much like caste system in modern society or the social or the social strata applied to everyday society. Huxley shows the issues of class struggle from the marxist perspective when he says the structure of society in relation to its major classes, and the struggle between them as the engine change its major classes. Huxley describes a perfect society created through genetic engineering where each individual is assigned a class from the time of being . In Brave New World by Aldous Huxley it states “Why not? Bernard’s an Alpha Plus. Besides, he asked me to go to one of the savage reservations with him. I’ve always wanted to see a savage reservation. But his reputation?”(Huxley 123). Clearly the social interactions of the upper castes are a little more nuanced than a simple matter of agreed caste status.

In Brave New World, Aldous Huxley warns of the dangers of science and technology and their impact on society. In the world he describes, humans are genetically modified and developed in factories, and the population is controlled by drugs and hypnopaedic conditioning. Although this is a fictional society, it is a very possible future based on the direction science and technology are already heading. Advancing science and technology are some the largest threats to society, and action must be taken to prevent a future similar to the one described by Huxley.

Brave New World is a cautionary tale about the crushing effects of an authoritarian regime on human individuality. In this satire, Aldous Huxley offers a critique of totalitarianism by creating a single World State government and society. Although the World State’s motto is “community, identity, and stability,” ironically, the concept of individual identity is all but lost to the citizens of the World State (Huxley). The government controls virtually every aspect of human activity -- from creation to death. In exchange for comfort, happiness, and stability, the people in Huxley’s world give up their free will and sense of self. To make his point, Huxley employs powerful symbols of a mechanical, mind-numbing world where individual identity

Thomas and Linda’s son, John, is a scholar and resident of the savage reservation in New Mexico. Despite not being introduced until Chapter 7, John is seen as the centralizing character of the novel. Unlike the rest of his community, he is educated. When Lenina and Bernard come across John during their trip, they soon realize John’s biological father is the Director, Thomas. Once reaffirming this, Bernard and Lenina offer to bring John and Linda back to the World State. Hoping to connect better to the people in the World State, John gladly accepts. It was, however, to John’s misfortune to find out that either way, there was no escaping his isolation. In one scene, where John takes Lenina home,

Truth and happiness can be used in hundreds of different trivial ways, thoughtlessly. Merriam Webster defines truth as a “a judgment, proposition, or idea that is true or accepted as {fact}” and happiness as “a state of well-being and contentment”. Modern lexicon tends to mash the two together, like knowing the accepting facts are essential to ones physical and mental well being. So naturally when we discuss human issues in societies, specifically those of the fictional variety we apply our mashed set of ideals based on truth and happiness on each of these different societies . In Aldous Huxley’s A Brave New World, by conventional societies ideas the citizens of the world state know nothing of traditional reality and by the standards of the traditional world are far from a state of contentment, but if examined by the ideals of the society in question the overall appearance is quite different. the population seems happy because they don’t know the truth. In fact the characters that do know the truth are far unhappier by both societies measures.

The flaws found in the world are what create the distinct characteristics that scatter the face of our planet. Today, in our world, there is no such thing as a perfect state in existence. In Brave New World, Aldous Huxley describes the World State as the perfect place to be, a dystopia where everyone is obliviously happy. Every member of the community is content with his or her position, no matter what their job is, because of the special conditioning revolving around the World State’s motto: “Community, Identity, Stability”. Balance within the World State is achieved through the sacrifice of the genuineness of the citizens, demonstrating the society’s value for stability and strong desire to maintain it, to the extent of living in entire falsehood.

Aldous Huxley’s Brave New World introduces us to a futuristic technological world where monogamy is shunned, science is used in order to maintain stability, and society is divided by 5 castes consisting of alphas(highest), betas, gammas, deltas, and epsilons(lowest). In the Brave New World, the author demonstrates how society mandates people’s beliefs using many characters throughout the novel.

Brave New World by Aldous Huxley depicts a future that seems happy and stable on the surface, but when you dig deeper you realize that it is not so bright at all. People almost autonomously fall in line to do what they have been taught to do through constant conditioning and hypnopædia. Neil Postman’s argument that Huxley’s book is becoming more relevant than George Orwell’s 1984 is partly true. Huxley’s vision of the future is not only partly true, but it is only the beginning of what is to come.

The New World, a man-made Utopia, governed by its motto, Community, Identity, Stability (Huxley 3). A man-made world in every way. Human beings fertilized in bottles. Identity, gender, intelligence, position in society, all predestined. Human beings classified in the order of precedence: Alpha, Beta, Gamma, Delta, and Epsilon. Every one conditioned to be a certain way. Every one works for every one else (Huxley, 74). All man-made to ensure social stability. Is society in the New World truly better than in the 2000s? Are people in the New World truly happier than we are in the 2000s? Do we in the 2000s have any thing in common with the New World? Are there significant sociological differences between