The Application of Utopia in Brave New World
Aldous Huxley's Brave New World illustrates the loss of morality when
established standards are replaced by amoral criteria. In his novel,
Huxley criticizes the practical applications of Utopia in actual society.
Huxley's depiction of love, science, and religion support the
ineffectiveness of implementing Utopia in everyday life.
In Brave New World, Huxley shows contempt for the human emotion of
love. The people that make up his imaginary society have no conception of
love or any other passion, and actually scorn the idea. Huxley believes
that along with passion comes emotional instability. The Utopian state
cannot afford any
…show more content…
In reality, the family unit is the core of society. Huxley
realizes the importance of the home and family. A home is where people
learn to establish communication and relationships. Without a family, a
person cannot learn these relationships which are invaluable in dealing
with everyday life in society.
In Utopia, any approach toward monogamy is forbidden and long term
sexual relationships are discouraged. In the brave new world, it is taught
that "everyone belongs to everyone else." Excessive sex with many partners
is considered normal and even expected. In a conversation between two of
the female characters, Huxley illustrates Utopia's views on monogamy
through Fanny Crowne, "I really do think you ought to be careful. It's
such horribly bad form to go on and on like this with one man" (40). In
Huxley's Utopia, having sex with only one partner is not acceptable.
Sexual pleasure in this world is greatly degraded. Promiscuity is
considered a virtue, unlike actual society where promiscuous women are
thought to be trashy and cheap. Children are taught at a young age to be
exploratory in their sexual behavior. Children who seem timid and
embarrassed about their bodies are taken for psychological testing.
Huxley criticizes the idea of the absence of love in Utopia. In
actual society, love is a revered
Aldous Huxley foresees that promiscuity will become socially acceptable and engrained in culture due to the lack of romantic relationships. While at the savage reservation Linda talks to Lenina about how “Everybody belongs to everyone else”. This is one example as to how there is no emotional attachment between any two people. “Well, here, … Nobody’s supposed to belong to more than one person. And if you have people in the ordinary way, the others think you’re wicked and anti-social. They hate and despise you.” (81). In this quote Huxley talks about people being seen in the “ordinary way”. In his utopian society, being promiscuous is not seen as wrong. However, in the savage reservation you are despised and disliked if you engage in a relationship with multiple different people in a short amount of time.
Although comparing one society to another does not require them to be different in government or human behavior, it does necessarily weight one’s faults against its victories to render it better or worse than the other. This comparative structure, found between Thomas More’s two books of Utopia, poses the country of Utopia opposite the broader communities of world civilization. Despite the comparison of Utopia as distinct from and morally better than widespread society, in truth Utopia is, at best, an extension.
Society in Aldous Huxley’s novel, Brave New World was an exaggerated society of the United States during the 1920s. These extreme societal boundaries were unknowingly predicting the future. Brave New World developed a liberal trend toward materialistic views on physical pleasure. Throughout the novel, there was dependence on science for reproduction, open-minded views on sex and, ideological concepts that disvalue family and relationship. In the modern-day United States these views are reciprocal and ever-present, however, these views were not directly mirrored, values today are not completely lost.
It is astounding how two pieces of literature can be similar but different at the same time, just by how the authors choose to use different literary devices. Two novels, Brave New World by Aldous Huxley and The Road by Cormac McCarthy, portray these differentiated attributes because of the way the two authors vary in these literary techniques. Brave New World portrays a futuristic society in which people are artificially made and their jobs are pre-selected before they are created. All of the emotions and desires of man have been inhibited in these beings to create a so-called “utopian society” in which everyone lives and works harmoniously. The
Huxley's work, Brave New World, is a book about a society that is in the future. This book contains many strange things that are generally unheard of today. Yet we see that some of the ideas that are presented in this book were already present in the 20th century. The idea of having one superior race of people can easily be seen as something that Hitler was trying to accomplish during the Holocaust. Huxley presents the society in his book as being a greater civilization. A totalitarian type of leadership is also presented in his book. According to him, this would be the best and most effective type of government. Hitler also thought that a totalitarian government was best. We see several similarities between Hitler's Germany and Huxley's
Aldous Huxley wisely inserts many instances of distortion to the elements in Brave New World to successfully caution the world about its growing interest in technology.
The novel opens in the Central London Hatchery and Conditioning Centre. The year is a.f. 632 (632 years “after Ford”). The Director of Hatcheries and Conditioning is giving a group of students a tour of a factory that produces human beings and conditions them for their predestined roles in the World State. He explains to the boys that human beings no longer produce living offspring. Instead, surgically removed ovaries produce ova that are fertilized in artificial receptacles and incubated in specially designed bottles.
The novel Brave New World by Aldous Huxley shows how hidden desires and the unconscious mind can be difficult to understand and or cope with; they can eventually lead to one’s downfall. The perfect society consists of distinctive classes for each person (upper, middle, lower), everyone has the same values, everyone is happy because they are told they are, worries of finding a true love are non existent as well as the heartache that can come with it, challenges are never a problem because they don’t exist, and youth is sustained. Sounds splendid, right? According to the creators of this world, this society is utopian because it has an ideal perfection in laws, government, and social conditions, but when you take a good look on what is happening,
Even before babies are born, they are treated to a specific amount of oxygen, or
George Santayana once said, “Ideal society is a drama enacted exclusively in the imagination.” In life, there is no such thing as a “complete utopia”, although that is what many people try to achieve. Aldous Huxley’s Brave New World is an attempt at a utopian society. In this brave new world, mothers and fathers and family are non-existent. Besides being non-existent, when words of that sort are mentioned, ears are covered and faces of disgust are made. In a report to the Controller, Bernard wrote,”…This is partly due, no doubt to the fact that he heard them talked about by the woman Linda, his m-----“(106). Words of the sort cannot even be written. Art, history, and the ability to have emotions are shunned.
We all dream for a utopia where we are all happy, equal, and safe. However in Aldous Huxley’s novel Brave New World, the utopia of the World State is achieved through dystopia characteristics such as heteronomy, mind control, and inequality.
In our lives today, we take advantage of all the luxuries that are presented daily. Freedom alone is one of the greatest luxuries we possess as an American nation. In Death and Life of Great American Cities by Jane Jacobs and Utopia by Thomas Moore, we are presented two life styles, which some might consider very similar in various ways. Both authors focus on a peaceful living lifestyle, to better the people of the nation. Although some of their specific details are different, I believe that Jacobs would definitely approve of the features that More develops in Utopia.
America may seem like a utopia to many. It clearly consists of many perfect elements including an egalitarian democracy, luxuries, and a free country. However, this vision of a perfect society is only an illusion, as there are several flaws with the American society. In this sense, America is a flawed dystopia rather than a utopia. According to George Orwell and Aldous Huxley, there are two types of dystopian societies that will rule the world.
Utopia. The idea of a society that has a perfect social, political, economic, and legal system is a popular one. Fiction writers love to explore the possibility of Utopian worlds and have been doing so for a long time. Some famous literary works exploring Utopian worlds are 1984 and Animal Farm by George Orwell, The Hunger Games series of books by Suzanne Collins, and Island and Brave New World by Aldous Huxley. These books usually feature a story where the hero uncovers an ugly truth or reality about the society. They then set about to expose the truth and generate change. This usually results in the partial or total destruction of the society.
Brave New World, as written by Huxley, serves to illustrate the repercussions of a society that is conditioned specifically in every aspect of their life; to the point where even the intimate act of sex has been dehumanized and is completely devoid of emotions . The directors of conditioning and embryonic modification endeavor to create a “stable,” society run on a rigid set of expectations, including sexual promiscuity. Sex pervades every aspect of this culture, and the more prominent it becomes, the less importance and intimacy is associated with it . The children of this society are psychologically conditioned from a young age to start exploring the act of sex and perceive it as solely for physical delectation. Sexual promiscuity is depicted