Brave New World By Aldous Huxley

During the 1940s and 1950s, when society as a whole was threatened by the ideals of communism, censorship, and new invasive technology, authors were exploring a future when these specific fears came to pass. Related themes involving citizens losing certain freedoms were implemented into these novels which generated connections between these stories. In his novel, Fahrenheit 451, Ray Bradbury describes a distant world in which the idea of censorship was exaggerated to such an extent that it was illegal for any literature to exist, and if found books are burned by the firemen. Similar to Bradbury’s society, 1984 by George Orwell includes a corrupt government where members of the Party are under surveillance at all hours of the day, and the worst crime committed is thinking anything different from what the central leader, Big Brother, allows members to think. In order to express their concerns for the destructive path they view society taking, the authors of both Fahrenheit 451 and 1984 utilize satirical examples when elaborating on the similar themes portrayed in both of the dystopian novels.

John, also known as John the Savage, is the son of Linda and his father, who are both members of Utopia. He was born and raised on the Savage Reservation. John is an outsider both on the Reservation - where the natives still practise marriage, natural birth, family life and religion - and the apparently civilised Brave New World: a totalitarian welfare-state based on principles of stability and happiness, even if it`s a happiness of a superficial and bland nature.

Society is challenged once Bernard finds John. John was a boy who, Bernard found on a "Savage Reservation" in New Mexico. John's mother (oh yeah mother is another word that has lost its usefulness in society except when describing animal or savages) had gone to the reservation with the Director of Hatcheries in London, Bernard's boss, and had acidently ended up pregnant. She was unable to have the pregnancy aborted, as was normal practice if one ended up pregnant, so she was forced to give birth to John. Society considers this disgusting, so she was quite ashamed of this. Bernard saw an opportunity, the director had threatened to send him to Iceland, because of Marx's unorthodox ideas, so Bernard decided to embarrass the Director. Inadvertantly Marx added a whole new element to the society in London.

In the totalitarian country of London, the people are not subjected to war, hate, poverty, disease and suffering. There is an abundance of wealth, leisure and pleasures, but with utopia comes elimination of freedom and orthodox values. The people in the society are created in factories, then put into a strict 5 class hierarchy. To take the edge off of the harshness of reality, they take a synthetic drug called Soma and drift into blissful ignorance. When a savage named John—who becomes isolated from his indian tribe in New Mexico—comes to live in utopia London, he is forced to learn the strange, untraditional customs of the civilization. In the end, he has to choose between either assimilation or death. In the novel Brave New World by Aldous Huxley, John the Savage is both alienated from his community and emotionally enriched after being isolated from his home tribe.

Society tricks the Savage by making him believe that he is free and able to do whatever he wants when in reality, he was not granted these liberties. John is shown what makes the society “civilized” and what makes the society work, but he doesn’t agree with any of their methods. However, when John asks Mond if he can go to the islands with his friends, Mond refuses to let him because he says that John needs to stay for experimentation. He is trapped

John, a savage, has never been able to fit in society. Moving through two contradicting societies, John is unable to adapt to the major differences of the civilized society due to the different ways upon how it is conducted. Living with the savages, John feels isolated from the savages as they exclude him from most of their norms. John wanted to

John “The Savage” experiences a rift from the civil society of London as a result of his misunderstanding of that society’s standards. Dwelling among the savages, he had believed that the civilized world would be more accepting of him than the people of Malpais. However, his experiences in the savage world had enlightened him in the deeper meaning of life, separating him from the ignorantly blissful inhabitants of the civil world, and even his own mother. This rift illuminates the text as a whole because it illustrates the perpetual theme that one who puts all of their energy into fitting societal standards will never reach true happiness.

Brave New World explicitly states that their society rejects people with abnormalities that make them differ from everybody else in the apparent utopian society. This is a society in which prejudice is extremely common and acceptable and at times would be encouraged among the civilians. In Brave New World, people are genetically engineered in a laboratory and categorized into five different castes, The five different castes are rendered into different magnitudes of skills and intellects, based upon how well they will be able to do in the future also how socially acceptable they will stand. In which alpha is the highest, Epsilons the lowest. The Alphas can be viewed as the geeks in school, while the Epsilons basically do the grunt work such as shoveling, and picking up trash. In their society, it is acceptable to criticize based upon looks and actions. If a person looks or acts different, the “perfect” society initiates in awkward stares and glances. Once somebody acts a little different from the norm this society spreads absurd rumors about them. In this “perfect” society civilians can only associate with the people in their same caste.

Everyone wants everyone to be happy. It is the general mindset philosophy of society today to wish no ill-will or troubles toward anyone, including themselves. Many dream of a world in which everyone gets along, where there are no wars or famine or sorrow. What happens if those dreams become a reality, though? What does a world in which there is no ill-will or conflict look like? Thankfully, Aldous Huxley has crafted a world in which all of these dreams are a reality. Not so thankfully, this sought-after world is not as wondrous and illustrious as it may seem. A world in which citizens are given drugs handily and sexual encounters are arranged in earshot of any who so desires to is a world without substance and deeper meaning. The truth of the matter is that when people depend on drugs to keep them happy, as well as enough attractions and bountiful food to keep everyone entertained and sated, humans as a species lose what makes them so special: growth and development in the face of conflict. Without hunger, suffering, and hate or emotion in general, then we lose meaning not only as a people but as a species. In a time of abundance and excessive consumerism, deep and philosophical thinking begin to be considered unnecessary; faith and religion therefore become irrelevant. While initially appearing as a utopia of sorts, a society in which excessive consumerism & over

Many political figures assert that freedom is knowledge and knowledge is power. However, imagine if that knowledge was never attainable due to the government in ones society. Would one ever become free? Would anyone resist that government to gain knowledge? Would these people be considered individuals though they are not unique from the man next to him? Some universal ideas consist of, individuality, the cost of happiness, technology and control, and dystopia/totalitarianism. Humanity over time has carved itself to be different from others, to be considered unique. However in many societies that is not true today. These societies steal this individuality from people and control every single thing they do. They take away an individual’s

Brave New World is based around characters who gave up the right of freedom for happiness; characters who ignored the truth so that they could live in a utopian civilization. The deceiving happiness was a constant reminder throughout the book. Almost every character in Brave New World did whatever they could to avoid facing the truth about their own situations. In this society, happiness is not compatible with the truth because the World State believes that happiness was at the expense of the truth. Aldous Huxley was a man ahead of his time in respect to his development and discussion of the incompatibility of happiness and truth in his 1932 novel, Brave New World.

Many people would argue that today’s society has loose morals and people are promiscuous. In the novel Brave New World, that is not a problem because everyone belongs to everyone else. People are expected to be in many relationships with whomever they like.

Numerous connections can be drawn between the film production The Truman Show by Peter Weir and Aldous Huxley’s novel Brave New World. In each media, the society depicted seemed outwardly perfect, and the citizens were content. The individuals remained content through complete government control. With every society’s strength is a weakness, interestingly enough, the Achilles’ heel of both perfect societies is totalitarianism and social conditioning. The fact of the matter is that not everyone will be the standard. The Truman Show is a 24/7 recording of a man’s life that is being recorded without his knowledge and adjusted by the director. The protagonist of Peter Weir’s movie, Truman Burbank, is an insurance salesman living in a quaint island town that is conditioned to have a fear of water in an attempt to keep him from leaving the island town set called Seahaven. Truman is the only person in his world that isn’t a paid actor. He is the only one with genuine emotions. His sincere reactions set him apart from the rest of Seahaven. Brave New World follows characters through their lives in dystopian civilization. The main character of the novel is Bernard Marx, an introvert with a strong will for acceptance, up until he travels to a Savage Reservation. At the Reservation, he meets John. John was rejected by both the people of the soma-inducing World State and savages of the Reservation. He is the greatest example of a pariah. The characters’ inability to be like everyone else

Throughout history, regimes around the world have orchestrated their own social system, influenced by political and economic ideologies. Humans have been victims of corrupt government systems that set a large gap between two distinct social classes: The Proletariat and Bourgeoisie. This system is mostly seen in places where one or many have an excessive amount of power (tyranny). Whether it’s an overpowered ruler who puts himself far beyond everyone else in terms of social class, or a society where the lower class is completely irrelevant to the rich, this has been prevalent throughout the course of humanity. One classic novel that exhibits the ideas and consequences of Marxism within a society is Brave New World by Aldous Huxley. In Brave New World, Huxley was able to analyze the book through a Marxist lens where there is a major difference in social classes, desire for power, and ideological perspectives within the Bourgeoise and Proletariat.

Aldous Huxley and Jonathan Swift both have a different way of bringing society’s attention to the real problems of the world. Both authors utilize the “New Historicism” lense as an influence to each of their pieces of literature. From 1729 to 1932, there were plenty of historical conflicts that could help each author make society want to change the current problems that they were facing. Huxley satirizes the sexual freedom and moral decay of the Roaring 20s in Brave New World and Swift satirizes the rising problem of overpopulation in Ireland in his short story, “A Modest Proposal”. A popular theory by Thomas Malthus on overpopulation could have been influenced by Swift’s short story and Huxley might have used it to contribute to his novel.