Huxley And Vonnegut Essay

The human mind consistently wonders what if, and soon finds itself looking into the future for different possibilities in life. In Aldous Huxley’s novel Brave New World, the reader finds Huxley exploring a nuance in humanity, creating a dystopia, where science becomes the new focus and humans are mass produced in test tubes. Huxley creates a world which contrasts to some aspects of what the world is today. In this dystopia, the values of people are in the technologies which are developed to speed the process of developing babies. Through Huxley’s effective use of syntax and diction, his use of literary techniques, the structure, and playing of theme, Huxley creates an image of a society that worships technology

In the dystopian worlds created by the film director Andrew Niccol and renowned author George Orwell, notions of control and freedom are explored. Both worlds contain an overarching power that governs the rest of the population and restricts freedom of individuals, these powers also aid in the progression of technology, which further act to control individuals. The characterisations of the protagonists of each text portray the lack of freedom from the perspective of those that are affected. Both authors use a variety of techniques to portray themes of control and freedom in their texts.

One of the literary devices used is personification, “Eternity was in our lips and eyes.”

In the novel Brave New World, Aldous Huxley creates a scenario where the government has control over the people and their ideas. Throughout the novel, we are shown the different methods and techniques the leaders utilize to control the lives of the people. After reading the story, we can point out similarities of government control from our world and the book. Huxley has a message for us about government power and what it could do to us.

Bernard, Lenina, and Linda all have unique characteristics that set them apart from the regular citizens of the World State Society. However, all three of them have unknowingly fallen into the conformities of the state’s maladaptive rules, preferably choosing to emanate the state’s values that do not fit their own characteristics. The World State’s guidelines and regulations pull all the citizens of the World State, including Bernard, Lenina, and Linda, into one lifestyle of living through a domino effect of conformity: the more people that conform, the more harder it is to resist the urge to conform with them. Aldous Huxley’s Brave New

Torture, murder, oppression; these despicable acts are prime tenets in the governments of 1984, by George Orwell, and 2081, by Kurt Vonnegut. Inhuman acts are commonplace in many fictional worlds, but these two works showcase characters losing their humanity and being subjected to terrible acts. In both 1984 and 2081, dehumanization and inhumane acts are expressed through the removal of free expression and physical violence designed to break deviants.

​In a world where everything surrounding one is so different and so similar in the exact same time… Imagine a society where everything an individual can mentally and physically do is under the power of the government. Self-difference does not exist. In a futuristic setting of the novel ‘Fahrenheit 451’ written by Ray Bradbury, and the short story ‘Harrison Bergeron’ written by Kurt Vonnegut are both two very eventful and interesting readings that will keep one’s mind running on about the outlook on futuristic life and the governments strict needs and wants throughout a society. These two stories can be compared and contrasted by the strict outlook on the governments control, demand and want over a society, the close relation the two main characters from both stories portray and the similar theme demonstrating loss of individuality.

Throughout the novel of Brave New World the author Aldous Huxley utilises satire in order to address and criticise political systems such as communism, through human conditioning and the Bokanovsky process. The novel presents the idea of the totalitarian World State playing god and having complete

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.”

Imagine a society in which its citizens have forfeited all personal liberties for government protection and stability; Aldous Huxley’s Brave New World, explores a civilization in which this hypothetical has become reality. The inevitable trade-off of citizens’ freedoms for government protection traditionally follows periods of war and terror. The voluntary degradation of the citizens’ rights begins with small, benign steps to full, totalitarian control. Major methods for government control and censorship are political, religious, economic, and moral avenues. Huxley’s Brave New World provides a prophetic glimpse of government censorship and control through technology; the citizens of the World State mimic those of the real world by trading

Often in our society, people stifle their individuality in an attempt to fit in with others. This idea is taken a step further in both “Harrison Bergeron” by Kurt Vonnegut and “Brave New World” by Aldous Huxley. These texts demonstrate different ways in which one can surrender their unique traits and how when people lack individuality, they lose aspects of themselves that make them human such as thoughts and emotions. In Vonnegut’s text, people who have talents that exceed others are required to wear handicaps so that everyone is equal. In Huxley’s text, embryos are engineered and trained after birth to be the same in adulthood. In both stories, the authors use description and dialogue to show the reader how individuality is critical to humanity because if everyone is the same eventually they become less human and start acting more like machines.

The phrase “so it goes” is repeated 106 times in Kurt Vonnegut’s Slaughterhouse Five. From “dead” champagne to the massacre at Dresden, every death in the book is seemingly equalized with the phrase “so it goes”. The continuation of this phrase ties in with the general theme on indifference in the story. If the Tralfamadorian view of time is correct, then everyone is continuously living every moment of their life and dying is not the end. However, if Vonnegut believed in this idea, then he wouldn’t have felt compelled to write about the firebombing of Dresden. It is clear that both Billy Pilgrim and Kurt Vonnegut are affected by the massacre they saw, but they have different ways of rationalizing it. Billy finds comfort in the Tralfamadorian view of life, whereas Vonnegut disagrees, and urges the reader to disagree too. The constant repetition of “so it goes” breaks the reader away from the Tralfamadorian point of view, and allows them to come to their own conclusion that although it would be nice to forget the bad parts of life, it is important to remember all of the past. Vonnegut helps the reader come to this conclusion by repeating the phrase after gruesome moments, and showing how meaningless life can be if the Tralfamadorian ideas are believed, as seen through Billy Pilgrim’s bland life..

Dystopian novels have become more common over the last century; each ranging from one extreme society to the next. A dystopia, “A futuristic, imagined universe in which oppressive societal control and the illusion of a perfect society are maintained through corporate, bureaucratic, technological, moral, or totalitarian control,”[1] through an exaggerated worst-case scenario, criticizes about current trends, societal norms, or political systems. The society in Brave New World by Aldous Huxley is divided in a caste system, in which humans are not individuals, do not have the opportunity to be individuals, and never experience true happiness. These characteristics of the reading point towards a well-structured

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.

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