preview

Free Brave New World Essays: Huxley and Shakespeare

Decent Essays

Huxley and Shakespeare

"Do they read Shakespeare?" asked the Savage as they walked, on their way to the Bio-chemical Laboratories, past the School Library. "Certainly not," said the Head Mistress, blushing.

In Aldous Huxley's “Brave New World", allusions to William Shakespeare and his works emphasize the contrast between the ""Brave New World"" and the world in Shakespeare's time and even the current time period. Enhancing the work's meaning, the allusions and character's reactions to the allusions reveal the positive and negative aspects of our society today.

The main characters in "Brave New World", Lenina Crowne, Henry Foster, and Bernard Marx, live in a futuristic world where babies are mass produced in laboratories and …show more content…

With little knowledge of the past, the characters only have heard vague information about worship of God, respect for Shakespeare, and psychology of Freud. Instead of God, they worship Ford partially because of his T-model and its influence on the future of technology and his existence as the spark for their world. They cannot fathom the events in Shakespeare's works. For example, in Romeo and Juliet, Capulet and Lady Capulet plan Juliet's marriage to Paris even though Juliet loves Romeo. Since the characters in "Brave New World" live in a self-satisfying world where they are promiscuous and rely on drugs like soma and mescal, they cannot relate to Shakespeare.

Enhancing the meaning of the work, Huxley chooses Shakespeare--an author and playwright so well-known and influential for many centuries. Shakespeare seems so normal to us, disregarding certain details. Divided into groups including comedies, tragedies, and histories, his works touch on conflicts and romances. They address morals, values, and beliefs of the time. While many of these beliefs still hold true to people today, the world is changing. People are changing, but are scientific advances causing this change? Aldous Huxley asks his readers this as they concentrate on the descriptions in "Brave New World". Are science and technology actually harming society instead of helping? Huxley forecasts the future from the experiences in his lifetime. In his writing, he reflects how society today

Get Access