How Does Huxley's Characters Reflect The Value Of Being Human

In the novel, Brave New World by Aldous Huxley, Huxley includes allusion, ethos, and pathos to mock the wrongdoings of the people which causes physical and mental destruction in the society as a whole. The things that happened in the 1930’s plays a big contribution to the things that go on in the novel. The real world can never be looked at as a perfect place because that isn't possible. In this novel, Huxley informs us on how real life situations look in his eyes in a nonfictional world filled with immoral humans with infantile minds and a sexual based religion.

Exile can be voluntary or involuntary. A person could be exiled due to criminal reasons, or, like in the novel A Brave New World, one could be exiled because he or she is different from the social norm. However, a person could voluntarily exile themselves as a way to contemplate his or her life or to just get away from the harsh realities of the world. This form of exile is similar to the actions of John, the “uncivilized” man, on page 243 in A Brave New World .

As man has progressed through the ages, there has been, essentially, one purpose. That purpose is to arrive at a utopian society, where everyone is happy, disease is nonexistent, and strife, anger, or sadness is unheard of. Only happiness exists. But when confronted with Aldous Huxley's Brave New World, we come to realize that this is not, in fact, what the human soul really craves. In fact, Utopian societies are much worse than those of today. In a utopian society, the individual, who among others composes the society, is lost in the melting pot of semblance and world of uninterest. The theme of Huxley's Brave New World is community, identity, and stability. Each of these three themes represents what a Brave New World society needs

Brave New World is a book that shows what exile can bring people. Throughout the book characters are challenged with fulfilling the nearly impossible social expectation, but exile, to some, brings meaning to life. Brave New World can be seen as twisted and dark, but it is also a lesson for people to see how exile transform someone into a different person, for better or for worst. “Exile is strangely compelling to think about but terrible to experience. It is the unhealable rift forced between a human being and a native place, between the self and its true home: its essential sadness can never be surmounted.”

Aldous Huxley wrote Brave New World as a satire of a utopian future, never hesitating to call to question all that society holds dear: religion, love, freedom, and most importantly, individualism. Huxley incorporates this absence frequently in the novel to accentuate the importance of being an individual and having beliefs and values. The novel is centered around the loss of individualism and the belief that an individual is no longer their own person because they’re no longer an individual, or everyone belongs to everyone, as it is said in the book. From birth everyone is conditioned to be of their class, and those in that class are all the same, from the clothes, to the job, to the events attended.

In Brave New World, the community is given priority above the individual; and although this priority may seem like a sort of devotion, the way in which Huxley illustrates it strips a person of any form of individuality. William Matter sees that in Huxley’s Brave New World, “individuality must be repressed because it invites a malleable social structure” (Matter 95). This elimination of individuality causes no depth of feeling, no creativity and no intellectual excitement. What makes a person an individual is to have a sense of himself as being separate, distinct, and unique. This sense of self includes both the joys and sorrows of one’s life.

Aldous Huxley was born in 1894 to a distinguished family of scientists, writers, and teachers, who provided him with an excellent background in both the English language and the science of his day. After graduating from Oxford, he wrote prolifically, with a majority of his works focusing on the theme of the individual versus society and self-awareness within the society. These ideas reach their climax in Brave New World, published in 1932, his most famous novel. The society in Brave New World, called the World State, is a totalitarian one, with the government setting strict laws and using varied tactics to keep their world stable. The three protagonists of the novel, Bernard Marx, Hemholtz Watson, and John struggle with their place within the World State and search for truth. The guiding motto of the World State, stated

To fully understand why the novel’s themes were so eccentric, the reader must look into the overarching feeling and meaning of the novel. These thematic elements of Aldous Huxley’s Brave New World had created a certain astigmatism around the novel leading it to being banned in countries like Ireland and the United Kingdom. The theme, that individuality is lost through the World State, is one of the various reasons that the main character, Bernard Marx, started to question the World State. This theme also ties to another big theme that technology is controlling society.

In Aldous Huxley’s Brave New World, there are a series of characters who wind up in rather difficult predicaments, whether Bernard Marx is constantly questioning and doubting the basic social expectations and assumptions of the “home” in which he lives (World State) while failing to fit into the society of it and struggling with a lack of self-assurance and acceptance, John is always struggling to accept the strict expectations of the World State, or Helmholtz Watson is experiencing feelings of emptiness, meaningless, and isolation within the World State. In fact, every single one of these characters happen to experience some sort of exile in the story that really makes them feel like they’ve lost some type of connection to their “homes.” Although each respective character's painful experiences with exile come with feelings of utter alienation, it also provides some type of general enrichment for the character in one way or another. Out of all three of these major characters, Bernard Marx’s experience with exile may, perhaps, be the most significant one of all, especially considering the magnitude of his troubled and conflicted state of mental health prior to painfully experiencing the feelings of alienation and enrichment as a result of exile. For Bernard Marx, his experience with exile was most definitely both alienating and enriching, and his particular experience surely illuminates the overall meaning of the work as a whole.

Aldous Huxley’s novel, a Brave New World, is a dystopian novel that explains how being a consumerist society instead of a humanistic society can be damning. Central to the dystopian society is the absence of books. Huxley sees books as being a central element in the control of the novel’s society, and the absence of books leads to the loss of reading and loss of writing, but ultimately to the supreme control of the novel’s citizens.

The marxist and feminist perspectives are both are utilized to gain a deeper understanding of literature. The feminist lens deals with the role of gender within literature, and the marxist lens focuses on the context of culture and society within literature. Each perspective plays off the other to create a cohesive approach to analyzing Brave New World. Aldous Huxley’s Brave New World highlights the issues associated with a society with a disproportional basis in manufactured social structures. These dysfunctional social structures are created through a fundamental irony: knowledge both unities and destroys humanity. Huxley shows mankind, for the first time in history, united; however, the knowledge and intellect that created this ever lasting peace is also the same factor that stripped mankind of everything that makes it human. Aldous Huxley’s dystopian society, within Brave New World, shows that knowledge is the unifying and destroying thread of humanity through the fabricated social hierarchy and preconditioned gender roles.

There were many things that were going on in the world in the 1930’s to affect Aldous Huxley’s writing of Brave New World; such as racism and the prohibition of alcohol that contributed to the satirical tone that is prevalent throughout the book. Huxley uses the topics of moral and cultural decay, excessive government, drug dependency, and brainwashing to express his theme. Huxley uses symbols, negative connotation, and the personal aspects of the characters lives.

In Aldous Huxley’s Brave New World a possible dystopian future without morals and deprived of free thought exists. This relative utopia has removed most everything that makes humans human. Free thought, emotions, and learning have all faded to create a perfect world that has left nothing to nature. Huxley wrote this book because of the political and social turmoil the world was experiencing to make sure that morals remain, even in the name of advancing technology or promoting unity.

In the novel Brave New World, Aldous Huxley creates a utopian society that achieves happiness at the expense of humanity. Brave New World shows what a corrupt, utopian society could be when people are preoccupied by entertainment. Brave New World warns of the dangers of giving a group control over powerful technology. This story shows forms of control such as the use of drugs, technology and conditioning.

The novel, Brave New World, by Aldous Huxley illustrates a society hundreds of years in the future; one that has sacrificed art, science, and religion in exchange for total happiness. Within the novel there are many resounding themes, but none as significant as the feeling and effects of isolationism on an individual. A young boy named John, who is extracted from the Savage Reservation, experiences multiple stages of isolation throughout his life. He suffers from alienation from society, alienation from others, and self-alienation in the novel.