To What Extent Can True Happiness Be Achieved with Limited Freedom?

Our civilization has chosen machinery and medicine and happiness. That's why I have to keep these books locked up in the safe. They're smut." -Mustapha Mond (234). Instead of relying on fear to control the people and letting them choose from their own perspective, the government controls them through happiness; a fake happiness which is put into their heads as they grow up. In the novel, according to the World State, happiness is combined with stability. The basic goal of the brave new world is, supreme: the "happiness" of all, even if the consequences lead to the loss of freedom and free will. We can see how important it is for the state to improve happiness upon the people when Mustapha Mond says: "The world's stable now. People are happy; they get what they want, and they never want what they can't get. They're well off; they're safe; they're never ill; they're not afraid of death; they're blissfully ignorant of passion and old age they're so conditioned that they practically can't help behaving as they ought to behave. And if anything should go wrong, there's soma." (220). The government's goal is to control people but it uses a very inhumane way. People aren't experiencing what life is really about because the state wants to keep people away form questioning. The essay Brave New World Society's Moral Decline found in www.123helpme.com, talks about Huxley's beliefs and predictions of the future when he was writing the novel. Some of these, he believed were

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.

First, Aldous Huxley contradicts the events he’s witnessed in real life to create a dystopian world in his novel. During the 1930’s, life wasn’t so pleasant in Europe. Depression was a big factor during this time. The use of ethos shows how the morals of the Brave New World people were basic and forced. Huxley interprets the quote “That’s because we don’t allow them to be like that. We preserve them from diseases. We keep their internal secretions artificially balanced at a youthful equilibrium” to show that in order for the society to maintain stability, the people weren't allowed to think freely. The brighter people in the novel believed that if the happiness wasn't forced into the society , they would experience the life of depression and old age. The society of the novel never got to encounter a face of wrinkles or back pain. They didn’t have to go through the real stages of life like a normal

I’d have gone round ten times-twelve, fifteen. Palowhtiwa only got as far as seven. They could have had twice as much blood from me” (Huxley 100). This shows John’s urge to be a part of the savage community and be like the other savages. Him being different, causes him to be sad since he is not free to do as he wishes.

In Aldous Huxley’s novel Brave New World, Huxley creates a futuristic world governed by conformity and submission to society. Citizens of this World State are conditioned to follow a set lifestyle determined at birth in order to create a stable civilization. However, there is still some form of individuality in each person, specifically in the characters Bernard, Lenina, and Linda. Within each of these characters, their difference in personality does not fit the norms of society, and they therefore try to suppress their own traits with unique methods such as soma. In times of sadness and despair, Bernard, Lenina, and Linda each give up a part of their own individuality and ideology, sticking to the

In Brave New World Aldous Huxley, creates a dystopian society which is scientifically advance in order to make life orderly, easy, and free of trouble. This society is controlled by a World State who is not question. In this world life is manufactured and everyone is created with a purpose, never having the choice of free will. Huxley use of irony and tone bewilders readers by creating a world with puritanical social norms, which lacks love, privacy and were a false sense of happiness is instituted, making life meaningless and controlled.

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

In their society, “Feeling lurks in that interval of time between desire and its consumption. Shorten that interval, break down all those old unnecessary barriers” (Huxley 44). While this seems like an ideal situation, if people are never sad or uncomfortable, then they never can experience true happiness. When people become happy after being sad, they appreciate it more and can understand their happiness. Since bad and good are binary oppositions, it is necessary to have one in order to define the other. I would rather suffer through pain if it meant that my happiness was true and

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

Having been a somewhat of an outsider in his life, physically and mentally, Aldous Huxley used what others thought as his oddities to create complex works. His large stature and creative individuality is expressed in the characters of his novel, Brave New World. In crafting such characters as Lenina, John, Linda, Bernard, and Helmholtz, not to mention the entire world he created in the text itself, Huxley incorporated some of his humanities into those of his characters. Contrastly, he removed the same humanities from the society as a whole to seem perfect. This, the essence and value of being human, is the great meaning of Brave New World. The presence and lack of human nature in the novel exemplifies the words of literary theorist Edward Said: “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.” Huxley’s characters reflect the “rift” in their jarred reaction to new environments and lifestyles, as well as the remnant of individuality various characters maintain in a brave new world.

In Brave New World, Aldous Huxley introduces the dystopia of a society created on the principle of social stability at all costs. Huxley wrote this book in 1932 hoping to warn future generations of what he feared might happen if society did not do something to stop the inevitable. The leaders of our society today hope for and work towards social stability without taking away primitive rights. Social stability can only be achieved by a society whose beliefs in social and ethical issues are never challenged. So even though modern society hopes for social stability, it is not a practical aspiration because it is obvious that some of the social and ethical

One may think that the society in Aldous Huxley’s Brave New World is a gross representation of the future, but perhaps our society isn’t that much different. In his foreword to the novel Brave New World, Aldous Huxley envisioned this statement when he wrote: "To make them love it is the task assigned, in present-day totalitarian states, to ministries of propaganda...." Thus, through hypnopaedic teaching (brainwashing), mandatory attendance to community gatherings, and the use of drugs to control emotions, Huxley bitterly satirized the society in which we live.

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

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

Aldous Huxley’s compelling futuristic novel, Brave New World, takes place in an elaborately constructed society whose citizens have their intellect highly conditioned from birth to be entirely “jolly” [as stated in the text] throughout life merely through superficial fulfillment that the government is able to provide. However, the perpetually gleeful yet blind citizens are stripped of their dignity, compassion, values and morals-ultimately losing their human emotions without the realization that they’ve lost such an important aspect in life. When problems arise, the drug soma is a quick ‘solution’ to the distress it brings. An outcast to the new society, Bernard Marx struggles through his life, seeking to understand why his peer’s, such