Brave New World: Utopia Without Shakespeare?
The Utopia of the future- something every human seemingly wants, but is it worth it to throw away everything for happiness and live in a world where only a few people can recall a man named Shakespeare? In Aldous Huxley's satirical novel, "Brave New World," this cellophaned world, polished and regulated to perfection, is a reality. In this Utopia, people like Bernard Marx, an intelligent and adverse Alpha, the highest class of humans, are conditioned to worship the Great Ford, to believe everything the Controllers say, to amuse themselves with sports, "feelies" and non-utilitarian relationships and, most of all, to take soma, a drug simulating happiness, whenever a problem should arise. No one feels, no one reads or experiences art, no one discovers, no one cries, no one grows old, no one feels pain or fear and absolutely no one is unhappy.
Different from regular Alphas, having mental excesses and physical shortcomings as a result of his decanting process, Bernard seeks meaning in his perfectly structured civilization. Discontented with the daily routine in "Utopia," Bernard attempts to venture out in search of mental and physical freedom. He does so by visiting the primitives in a simple Indian village outside of his ordered world. There he meets the savage named John, the "natural" son of a Beta woman who was forced to live in the Indian village after getting lost several years before. Natural childbirth is unheard of in Utopian society with its totally structured birth control system. Through John's experiences and realizations in the "Brave New World," the nonsense of the conditioned and controlled humans, living in Utopia, is understood. John proves to be the epitome of rebelliousness in Bokanovsky society by reading Shakespeare, feeling love, being independent, wanting freedom and wanting the inconveniences of life.
Representing opposing ideas, the "Brave New World" and the simple Indian village offer contrast which contributes to the central meaning of Huxley's great work. The Utopian society of the "Brave New World" symbolizes structure, civilization, and a place where human clones of one another simply exist, experiencing false happiness. The Indian village, however, touches close to home in that it's a society where people actually live and feel and love and die. By creating these two contrasting places, Huxley depicts the world in which we live in and the world in which we think we want to live in. Comparing the ludicrous ways of life in the "Brave New World" to the simplicity and freedom of the Indian village, the reader realizes the dangers and the stupidity of a Utopian society.
"Community, Identity, Stability," the World State's motto of the "Brave New World," says it all. Everyone is to live together in one happy group with no parents and no families. They are perfectly conditioned to exist with one identity. Everything is stable- there are no radicals or fanatics because everyone is sedated by soma. If any hint of a problem arises, the procedure is to go on holiday, take soma, become completely comatose so you can't experience pain or sorrow. Existing in this civilized caste system, the lives of the poor inhabitants of Utopian society are predestined. Produced by the Bokanovsky process in the London hatcheries, people are decanted from bottles and are processed and conditioned to become either Alphas, Betas, Gammas, Deltas or Epsilons. Each is structured to be totally content with the job and position he or she is given in society. In a hatchery, one can find ninety-six identical Epsilons, working ninety-six identical machines, perfectly happy with their unindividual, unexciting lives. Hence, everyone lives on, experiencing their Epsilon or Beta lives which are set out for them. They go where they're told, feel what they're told, worship the Great Ford like they're told, and no one breaks away from the system.
From childhood, Utopian children learn to experience relationships on a non-utilitarian plane. People sleep with whomever they please, provided they're in the same class. Women are forced to take routine birth-control formulas to insure that no pregnancies occur. No love or intimacy exists, only physical pleasure.
For recreation, people in the "Brave New World" amuse themselves with mindless sports, such as obstacle golf, or they attend "feelies," movies in which the audience can feel the sensations and smell the aromas of the film. No books or poetry or philosophy exists to enrich their conditioned minds. They can only understand what they're taught to understand. John experienced this sad reality in a frustrating attempt to force gammas to feel sorrow for someone's death. They could not understand that emotion and they only stared at him with blank, identical faces.
Therefore, these "perfect" people of a "perfect" society, live, lifeless, in their cellophaned world. They do not grow ugly and fat with age, they never experience hunger or discomfort or fear, yet the only happiness they feel is a simulation, an illusion.
On the other hand, the seemingly primitive society of the simple Indian village, symbolic of our own, actually encompasses the real meaning of life- to live and love and die as an individual, as you choose. In the Indian village, people marry for love, they bear children and care for them and their heritage lives on in their descendants. Their lives are not predestined and they are not clones of one another. Each person experiences life individually, with their own thoughts and ideas. By performing traditional rituals and ceremonies, they worship their own God, believing in what they feel is right. They experience the inconveniences, which one soon discovers by reading "Brave New World," are the blessings of life. With John's speech towards the end of the novel, these inconveniences transform into blessings.
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. . . I'm claiming the right to be unhappy. . . Not to mention the right to grow old and ugly and impotent; the right to have syphilis and cancer; the right to have too little to eat; the right to be lousy; the right to live in constant apprehension of what may happen tomorrow; the right to catch typhoid; the right to be tortured by unspeakable pains of every kind. . . I claim them all (Huxley 288).
Certainly, the two existing places in Huxley's "Brave New World," Utopia and the Indian village contrast drastically. By representing two totally different societies, an actual and an ideal, they contribute to the central meaning of the work, to show that a perfect society in which happiness prevails is not the answer. Living your own life as an individual, in an imperfect world, is far more rewarding than Utopia.Partner sites: French Bulldog, Spanish school in Quito, and Wedding Speeches