In Aldous Huxley’s Brave New World, he portrays the future as an isolated society, based off of stability and rigid order in order to avoid conflict and ensure continuous happiness. The citizens’ naive willingness to comply with a society that promises them eternal contentment is an attitude that has been conditioned in them since birth, in a manner in which our society may consider as cruel or unusual. After John, the Savage, an outsider of this society, comes to realize the truth behind the manipulation used to ensure the uniformity, he challenges the authorities and the system in its entirety. It is quite evident to him that this society is one built off of artificial emotions and insincerity. In this paper, I will highlight the different ways in which the Controller, Mustafa Mond, attempts to control the society, as well as prove why John’s criticisms of the society holds strong against Mond’s unbacked defensive claims. The Brave New World’s society is one that takes complete pride in the rigidity and conformity of their society. An example of this would be at the beginning of their life, during the decanting process, when the fetuses are artificially fabricated in the Hatchery. Through the Bokanovsky Process, the society is able to create nearly exact fetuses out of identical eggs. Not only are the fetuses able to develop more quickly, but in large quanitities. The benefit of using identical eggs is not only limited to simply allowing for the ideal body to be
Brave New World by Aldous Huxley shows how scientific advances could and have destroyed human values. Huxley wrote Brave New World in 1932, and most of the technologies he examines in the book have, to some extent, turned into realities. He expresses the concern that society has been neglecting human-being distinction in the progression of worshipping technology. In the story there are no mothers or fathers and people are produced on a meeting line where they are classified before birth. They also use a drug called, soma, to control themselves which illustrate the lack of personal freedom. Everyone in the state world do whatever they were taught since they were growing. For example, one of the tasks they give people is sexuality which is
Aldous Huxley’s “Brave New World” highlights the theme of society and individualism. Huxley uses the future world and its inhabitants to represents conflict of how the replacement of stability in place of individualism produces adverse side effects. Each society has individuals ranging from various jobs and occupations and diverse personalities and thoughts. Every member contributes to society in his or her own way. However, when people’s individuality is repressed, the whole concept of humanity is destroyed. In Huxley’s “Brave New World”, the concept of individualism is lost through hyperbolized physical and physiological training, the artificial birth and caste system, and the censorship of religion and literature by a
While reading chapters 1-3 of Brave New World, I was shocked, angered, and fascinated by the aspects of the world created by Huxley. I was shocked that the children are taught nothing of the past. In chapter 3, Mustapha Mond says “History is bunk.” He is implying that history is nonsense and that the society flourishes when living in the present rather than bothering to learn the past. I was irritated by the fact that the lower classes are given less oxygen as an embryo to purposefully make them underdeveloped and weak. In particular, the phrase “Nothing like oxygen-shortage for keeping an embryo below par” made me realize the cruelty underlying in the World State(Huxley 6). Despite these negative feelings, I have to admit that the society fascinates me. The class system is strictly separated by colors, occupations, and intelligence, science has advanced to the point that children are all taught and created in a factory
Huxley reflects the consequences of totalitarian World State, upon the concern of oppressed citizens. Provoked by Freud and with Mendel’s work on genetic engineering and consumerism early 20th century, Huxley chose a science fiction medium to warn the audience as they venture into the political beliefs and attitudes of the World State and identify its dehumanising effects. The imperative verb, ‘unescapable’ as Huxley states “All conditioning aims at…making people like their unescapable social destiny” (Ch 1) illustrates the loss of freedom due to scientific means which have constrained them into accepting the ideology taught by the World State. Huxley provides ‘John the Savage’ a sense of freedom from the Mexican Reservation where he is given thought, emotions and choice. Although he exclaims “How beauteous mankind is!” in the metaphorical “O brave new world” (Ch8) compared to the Reservation’s society, after seeing the oppression and nothingness of the World State he feels the oppression. This is stressed by the asyndeton of his desires using the personal pronoun ‘I’ in “But I don’t want comfort. I want God, I want poetry, I want real danger, I want freedom, I want goodness. I want sin” (Ch 17) as John identifies the powerlessness and mindlessness of the citizens. Though Huxley through John’s anti-thesis “I’m claiming the right to be unhappy.”
"'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.
"'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 author Aldous Huxley predicts a future, like no other, where truth is trumped by happiness. The people in the World State are ignorant of the truth. They mistake the truth as happiness. This ignorance leads them to believe that a tablet called soma is used “to calm your anger, to reconcile you to your enemies, to make you patient” (Huxley 213). Through drugs and conditioning, the government has kept the World State uninformed of the truth. Being controlled by the government, people in the World State do not know society is built upon lies. Throughout this novel, John, Bernard, and Helmholtz, go through this Dystopia lifestyle being a savage, a misfit and too intellectual for the society they are born or
The society, cultural norms, and outcasts of Huxley’s Brave New World reveal the true backbone to the stability of the community. The society’s organization depends on the susceptibility of its people to feel not as an individual, but as a whole community, identical and belonging to others. The society is appealing to its citizens, who always experience an induced happiness and therefore have no choice but to feel content. However, the society strips its people of anything raw, true, or lively. Experience is nonexistent and life is a dull and repetitious cycle. There are several authority figures. These figures include Mustapha Mond: the World Controller, Helmholtz: the message writer, Tomakin: the director, and Bernard the psychologist. There are
In conclusion, it is safe to say that Huxley 's utopia went about achieving its status in the wrong way. Mankind has lost its free will to the controlling powers of a system. This system cannot be called government, as it is more akin in characteristics to slavery. Man no longer has freewill and order is kept not through respect and intellect, but via degeneration and conduct. The former sections of this essay present strategies and techniques used to maintain order in a society of individuals. Finally, it may be argued that the Brave New World protects society by locking them in a cage of ignorance; however, this is at the cost of freedom, and this is unacceptable. Mankind needs be free in order to progress as has been explained. Protection is all well and good but not at the cost of
In the Sci-fi futuristic novel “Brave New World”, published in 1932, Aldous Huxley introduces the idea of the utopian society, achieved through technological advancement in biology and chemistry, such as cloning and the use of controlled substances. In his novel, the government succeeds in attaining stability using extreme forms of control, such as sleep teaching, known as conditioning, antidepressant drugs – soma and a strict social caste system. This paper will analyze the relevance of control of society versus individual freedom and happiness to our society through examining how Huxley uses character development and conflict. In the “Brave New World”, Control of society is used to enforce
In this world where people can acquire anything they need or want, we have to wonder, “Is the government controlling us?” Both the governments in A Brave New World and in the United States of America offer birth control pills and have abortion clinics that are available for everyone, thus making birth control pills and abortion operations very easy to acquire. Although both governments offer birth control pills and abortion clinics, A Brave New World’s government requires everyone to take the pills and immediately get an abortion when pregnant. This in turn shows us that A Brave New World’s government is controlling the population and the development of children. China is one of the few countries that currently have control of the
The formative years of the 1900’s, suffered from communism, fascism, and capitalism. The author of the Brave New World, Mr. Aldous Huxley lived in a social order in which he had been exposed to all three of these systems. In the society of the Brave New World, which is set 600 years into the future, individuality is not condoned and the special motto “Community, Identity, Stability” frames the structure of the Totalitarian Government.
In Brave New World, Aldous Huxley uses tone to develop characters in the novel while simultaneously showing that every character is cast out at some point in their lives. This utopian future setting is developed throughout the whole first half of the novel.The entire culture is different, children are genetically bred and conditioned in so called Hatcheries. “ “Stability,” said the controller, “Stability. No civilization without social stability. No social stability without individual stability” (page 42) Each person supports a specific role in society, and if they break that role they are exiled. Readers get the chance to meet a few characters who question why they were even decanted or in John's case, Born.
At the beginning of the novel it opens up in Central London Hatchery and Conditioning Centre (p.15). We become familiarized with the World State’s motto: “Community, Identity, Stability” (p.15). The Director of Hatcheries is giving a group of students a tour on how human beings are produced. He tells the boys a valuable idea that generalities are intellectually necessary evils (p.16). With that also fretsawyers and stamp collectors compose the backbone of society (p.16). The eggs are taken surgically from the women; the useless ones thrown
Drugs, promiscuous sex, birth control, and total happiness are the core values of the World State in the novel Brave New World by Aldous Huxley. In today’s society things like drug use and reckless sex are often seen as taboo, but in World State, these activities are glorified and even considered normal. Aldous Huxley attempts to address to readers the harsh realities and cruel ways of our society in an exaggerated form. His purpose in doing so is to open the eyes of society to what the world might come to if things like technology and humanity get out of hand. In the World State, the motto that people are conditioned to live by is “Community, Identity, and Stability”, all three of which are ironically twisted to encourage members of the society