David Henry Thoreau popularized the motto “The government is best which governs the least” in his work “Civil Disobedience”, and Aldous Huxley would greatly agree with the phrase. In Huxley’s novel, Brave New World, he creates a world dominated by the tyrannical leader Mustafa Mond. Mond’s way of ruling is very similar to that of Henry Ford, and Huxley draws attention to parallels between Ford and Mond throughout the book. He mocks their style of leadership, which values science over nature, and demonstrates the detrimental effects of it. In Aldous Huxley’s work, Brave New World, he utilizes the character Mustafa Mond to reflect the life of Henry Ford in order to warn readers of the negative effects of an overbearing leader. Mustafa Mond …show more content…
“The individual, having become means rather than an end, accepts his role of cog in the immense machine without, giving a a passing to thought to the effect on his personality” (Siegfried 351). Siegfried analyzes how mass production has harmful effects on humans and their individuality, because they see every day as monotonous and dull rather that exciting and adventurous. Mustafa Mond and Henry Ford both valued mass production in their controlling communities, and the consequences of mass production prove to have disastrous outcomes. Huxley heavily focuses on the somber effects on mass production in order to forewarn readers to not take part in it, as it only had negative outcomes. Along with mass production, consumerism plays a central idea in Henry Ford’s era and in Mond’s World State, and Huxley analyzes how overbearing leaders who enforce consumerism create false happiness for the consumers. Similar to Ford’s philosophies, Mustafa Mond focuses on controlling citizens by regulating their goods. Ford and Mond both strive have as much control as possible in their communities, and they do this by forcing their people to consume certain products. Mond boldly makes the decision to “to abolish the love of nature, but not the tendency to consume transport” (Huxley 26). With this being said, Mond proves how much he wants to control every aspect of his civilians’ lives. The “tendency to consume transport” overrides nature and everything beautiful and free,
Aldous Huxley’s Brave New World, published in 1932, is a masterpiece of science fiction. His imagined, dystopian state creatively employs facts and theories of science, as well as his very own thinly-veiled commentary on the future of society. His family background and social status, in addition to molding Huxley himself and his perspective, no doubt made impact on his writing and contributed to the scientific accuracy of his presentation. However, Huxley certainly qualifies as a social commenter and his extensive works, while sometimes biased, were always perceptive comments on the future of mankind, predictions made based on current event in his world. In other words, current affairs had undeniable impact on Huxley’s novel, and his
“If one’s different, one’s bound to be lonely.” Within Brave New World, a totalitarian government in a utopian world is depicted by a handful of hatchery directors that condition each of their creations and divide them into groups amongst one another based on qualities in order to establish an idealistic stable community depicting the theme of power. Aldous Huxley illustrates social and political worldly conflicts within a newfound society to ridicule the behavior of other upon him and the strictness of his living environment during the 1930’s and surroundings by using figurative language, tone, and detail.
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.
Totalitarianism diminishes the idea of individuality and destroys all chances of self-improvement, and human’s natural hunger for knowledge. In George Orwell’s famous novel, “1984”, totalitarianism is clearly seen in the exaggerated control of the state over every single citizen, everyday, everywhere. Totalitarianism can also be seen in the book “Brave New World” by Aldous Huxley, in which humans are synthetically made and conditioned for their predestinated purpose on earth. The lack of individualism will lead a community towards a dystopia in which freedom is vanished by the uncontrolled power of the state.
Huxley’s Brave New World could be considered almost prophetic by many people today. It is alarmingly obvious how modern society is eerily similar to Huxley’s novel with the constant demand for instant gratification encouraging laziness, greed, and entitlement. Neil Postman, a contemporary social critic, seems to have noticed this similarity, as he has made bold, valid statements regarding the text and its relevance to our world today. This response is strongly in support of those statements and will prove both their accuracy in clarifying Huxley’s intentions and how Postman’s assertions compare to society today.
Often individuals choose to conform to society, rather than pursue personal desires because it is often easier to follow the path others have made already, rather than create a new one. In the novel Brave New World by Aldous Huxley, this conflict is explored. Huxley starts the story by introducing Bernard Marx, the protagonist of the story, who is unhappy with himself, because of the way he interacts with other members of society. As the story progresses, the author suggests that, like soma, individuals can be kept content with giving them small pleasure over short periods of time. Thus, it is suggested in the book that if individuals would conform to their society’s norms, their lives would become much
From reproductive rights, morality, and drugs, Huxley develops a futuristic approach to mankind. Brave New World, by Aldous Huxley serves as a cautionary tale about contemporary American culture by illustrating the technological and scientific advancements within a society to establish power and the affects it may have on mankind.
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 his novel Brave New World, Aldous Huxley confronts the way in which mass production and capitalism serve to disempower the individual by cementing a self-reinforcing system of consumption and production wherein the individual is reduced to his or her utilitarian function. Although the novel touches on a number of ways in which the individual is disempowered and commodified in contemporary society, from pacifying drugs to an overreliance on technology, Huxley's critique of capitalism remains the most prominent, if only because the novel includes explicit references to the father of modern capitalist production, Henry Ford. Huxley's critique of capitalism becomes most apparent in the third chapter of the novel, when the tour group is taken over by Mustapha Mond, "his fordship" and the Resident Controller for Western Europe. Examining Mond's discussion of the time before the institution of the World State, Huxley's creative demonstration of capitalist reduction, and the function of the individual within capitalist society reveals the ways in which the novel seeks to highlight the dangers of unrestrained capitalist and the consumer culture is perpetuates.
Huxley managed to evoke rethinking in social conditioning studies, provide original criticism towards the changing political environment with the emergence of the USSR, and adequately defend his domestic values from anti-traditionalists determined to abolish all known establishments. Brave New World centers all three elements in its development of the World State as a flawed society as Huxley’s grand presentation to an impressionable audience of how their world may be headed in the same direction if they do not take the necessary steps to
To begin, Huxley utilizes Aristotelian appeals in order to incite a response of discontentment towards dangerous technologies from his readers. In his novel, the author highlights the ways in which scientific advances could be converted by a totalitarian government into innovations that would ultimately alter how individuals behave and think. Towards the beginning of the novel, the author details the laws against natural
In Aldous Huxley’s Brave New World, the most powerful thing the world state uses to control its citizens is its influence over their free will. This mass producing and artificial birthing is powerful. Their lives have been predetermined before they were even born, or more accurately, designed in a lab. When the government is the sole reason of one’s entire existence, there is no way to have free will. They are no longer pure, natural beings on this earth.
In Brave New World, Huxley utilizes characterization, motifs, and symbols to show that the pursuit of “success” as a whole comes with consequences because there is no value placed upon being an individual. The World State does what it sees as best for society to function in a systematic manner and achieve collective “success”; however, their effort to achieve this utopia fails.
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
Aldous Huxley wrote, in his novel Brave New World, of a society whose quixotic ambitions created a skeletal civilization that functioned in the absence of freedom. Now, almost a century later, the issues of that fictional society are significantly more relevant to contemporary society as we see the crusade for social stability trample over the notion of individual freedoms modern political discourse and conduct.