The Price of Perfection in Brave New World
Aldous Huxley's Brave New World presents a portrait of a society which
is superficially a perfect world. At first inspection, it seems perfect in many
ways: it is carefree, problem free and depression free. All aspects of the
population are controlled: number, social class, and intellectual ability are
all carefully regulated. Even history is controlled and rewritten to meet the
needs of the party. Stability must be maintained at all costs.
In the new world which Huxley creates, if there is even a hint of anger,
the wonder drug Soma is prescribed to remedy the problem. A colleague, noticing
your depression, would chime in with the chant, "one cubic centimetre of soma
cures ten gloomy." This slogan is taught to everyone, from the youngest to the
oldest. Unhappiness, intellectual curiosity, disagreement, suffering - none of
these feelings is allowed in the world which Huxley creates. At the first sign
of unhappiness, Soma is prescribed. Emotions of all types are strictly
controlled to provide stability and predictability within the population.
Another of the panaceas for social ills is the belief that everyone
would enjoy his or her work because he or she was "made" or trained for it when
young. Consequently, from birth, everyone in Brave New World is slotted to
belong to a specific social and intellectual strata. In conjunction with this
idea, all births are completely planned and monitored. There are different
classes of people with different intelligence and different "career plans." The
social order was divided into the most highly educated, the Alpha+, and then in
descending intelligence, the following divisions: Alpha, Beta, Beta -, Gamma,
Delta, and Epsilon, which is the last group comprised of those citizens of the
lowest intelligence who are necessary to perform society's most menial jobs.
Another of the problems with the society which Huxley depicts is that
the people do not have individuality. They are all conditioned by subliminal
messages and artificial stimuli to respond the same way. Although all people are
meant to respond identically without thinking, a few are made 'imperfectly' and,
as a result, do have personalities. These people violate the principles of
technology and artificial personalities and consequently have to be sent away so
as not to "contaminate" others. To maintain order in Brave New World, the
Resident Controller must have complete authority over more than just the
present; he must also have influence over the past. In order to be able to
achieve this, he must be able to rewrite history. This gives rise to one of the
As I gazed across the book isles and leaned over carefully to pick one up out of the old dusty vaults of the library, a familiar object caught my eye in the poetry section. A picture in time stood still on this book, of two African American men both holding guitars. I immediately was attracted to this book of poems. For the Confederate Dead, by Kevin Young, is what it read on the front in cursive lettering. I turned to the back of the book and “Jazz“, and “blues” popped out of the paper back book and into my brain. Sometimes you can judge a book by it’s cover, I thought. Kevin Young’s For the Confederate Dead is a book of poems influenced by blues and jazz in the deep rural parts of the south.
This is one of the many ways that Huxley uses satire to bring about his message, through the setting of a dystopic utopia, in itself ironic. To this end, the setting truly acts as a warning somewhat, in how “Brave New World’s […] ironic satire of a utopia warns us against the dangers of political manipulation and technological development.” (“Aldous Huxley” 1) One of the biggest features of Brave New World’s setting is the way in which the World State within it controls its citizens. The entirety of the setting is in a way a “[critique] of the twentieth-century obsession with science, technological development, and the commercial and industrial advancement,” (Chapman 1) especially in how no one in this world is born from a mother, but is instead created and genetically manipulated within a test-tube, within a great
Michael Sandel is a distinguished political philosopher and a professor at Harvard University. Sandel is best known for his best known for his critique of John Rawls's A Theory of Justice. While he is an acclaimed professor if government, he has also delved deeply into the ethics of biotechnology. At Harvard, Sandel has taught a course called "Ethics, Biotechnology, and the Future of Human Nature" and from 2002 to 2005 he served on the President’s Council on Bioethics (Harvard University Department of Government, 2013). In 2007, Sandel published his book, The Case Against Perfection: Ethics in the Age of Genetic Engineering, in which he explains unethical implications biotechnology has and may have in the near future regarding genetic engineering.
Huxley implies that by abrogating dreadfulness and mental torment, the brave new worlders have disposed of the most significant and brilliant encounters that life can offer also. Most remarkably, they have relinquished an abstruse deeper joy which is intimated, not expressed, to be pharmacologically out of reach to the utopians. The magical foundation of this assumption is dark. There are clues, too, that a percentage of the utopians may feel a poorly characterized feeling of disappointment, an irregular sense that their lives are trivial. It is suggested, further, that assuming that we are to discover correct satisfaction and importance in our lives, then we must have the ability to contrast the great parts of existence with the awful parts, to feel both euphoria and despondency. As vindications go, it’s a great one.
Throughout the book, many difficult questions about the nature of moral choices are raised. The plot is concentrated on the various abuses of power made possible by science. I believe that Huxley was not lashing out against science, but more offering a warning, the new world is not evil because of science, but because power hungry individuals have misused it maliciously. The theme of Brave New World is “not the advancement of science as such; it is the advancement of science as it affects human individuals” (Brave New World, page XI). The devastating affects through the misuse of science, philosophy and control are portrayed through this book.
Mr. Rochester pleaded Jane for forgiveness and that they should marry and forget about Bertha Mason and leave with him to France. Jane deceived him by leaving the Thornfield hall in the middle of the night without saying farewell to Mr. Rochester in person.
Alduos Huxley, in his science fiction novel Brave New World written in 1932, presents a horrifying view of a possible future in which comfort and happiness replace hard work and incentive as society's priorities. Mustapha Mond and John the Savage are the symbolic characters in the book with clashing views. Taking place in a London of the future, the people of Utopia mindlessly enjoy having no individuality. In Brave New World, Huxley's distortion of religion, human relationships and psychological training are very effective and contrast sharply with the literary realism found in the Savage Reservation. Huxley uses Brave New World to send out a message to the general public warning our society not to be so bent on the happiness and comfort that comes with scientific advancements.
This novel was one of the most radical books of the Victorian Era. It portrayed women as equals to men. It showed that it was possible that men could even be worse than women, through John and Jane. It taught the Victorians never to judge a book by its cover. The novel would not be as successful were it not for Charlotte Brontë’s talent in writing, and were it not for the literary devices employed.
In the dystopian novel, Brave New World, Huxley uses symbols to create meaning and to get his agenda across. The use of sex and reproduction, and Shakespearian writing and religious texts, as symbols in the novel help to push Huxley’s agenda that total government control is devastating, and the inner human drive to be an individual can never be suppressed. Also, the fact that the novel was written in 1931 shows that Huxley was attacking the newly forming Socialist nations.
Bertha Rochester’s introduction to the story created a major change. Right when things were somewhat falling into place for Jane, havoc struck again. Mentally unstable; Bertha caused great damage to Thornfield and those that stayed there. Bertha was Mr. Rochester’s wife whom he married for her good looks and fortune. Bertha was unpleasantly married to Mr. Rochester for four years. After four years of being with Bertha, Mr. Rochester locks her away in the attic...
Firchow, Peter. "Science and Conscience in Huxley's "Brave New World" ." University of Wisconsin Press Journals Divisions (n.d.).
Even though the novel, Brave New World was written quite some time ago, Huxley still makes points that are relevant today. By using satire, he warns us on issues such as science, technology and religion. We should slow down our uses of science and technology, especially when using them for abusive purposes. We also need to be careful about letting the government get too involved in aspects of our everyday lives. If we start letting simple freedoms go, we could lose some major ones.
In most countries in our world, society has experienced technological advances to the point of being able to accomplish what Huxley envisioned. In contrast to Huxley’s vision, the moral standards of most nations allow all humans to enjoy basic human rights that embrace family, personal relationships, and individualism. Today’s society is able to comprehend how with the technological advances Huxley’s world could be a reality, but with the privilege of a democratic society, civilization would not allow the medical intervention for reproduction, the conditioning for happiness and consumerism. Work Cited "Brave New World by Aldous Huxley : Barron's Notes" Brave New World by Aldous Huxley: Barron's Notes. N.p., n.d. Web.
By definition, human evolution is the development, both biological and cultural, of humans. Human ideologies of how the evolution of man came to be is determined by cultural beliefs that have been adopted by societies going back as far as the Upper Paleolithic era, some 40,000 years ago. Through the study of paleoanthropology, we have come to determine that a human is any member belonging to the species of Homo Sapiens. Paleoanthropologists, while studying the evolution of humans, identify and explain evolutionary changes that occur throughout time that aid in the development of the human species. It will be through the examination of human physical traits, human origins from pre-humans to modern humans, and major discoveries that we will be able to understand the history of human evolution.
The theme of Brave New World is freedom and how people want it. The people want poetry, danger, good and bad things. This novel shows that when you must give up religion, high art, true science, family, love and other foundations of modern life in place of a sort of unending happiness, it is not worth the sacrifice. These are all also distinguishing marks between humans and animals that were abolished here. In exchange, they received stability with no wars, social unrest, no poverty or disease or any other infirmities or discomforts. However, they only live with an artificial happiness, which they have been brainwashed to love since infancy. There is no marriage, no violence or no sadness which may result in an unstable society which would threaten the totalitarian government. But the majority of the people don't realize what they are missing as it's never been there. It's a society in which the human being only serves a sociological and scientifical purpose; the individual thought is overruled by one big autocratic state. Huxley is also telling us to be careful with our science, or we may end up like the Utopians, mass producing identical citizens, then brainwashing them to think alike and to think exactly what the government mandates.