Throughout these initial chapters in Aldous Huxley’s dystopian novel, Brave New World, The World State is shown using science to manipulate society. This serves the World State’s best interests under a guise that it is being used to create a society without the humanity that could make their lives savage. This is unknowingly expertly summed up by Bernard in a repetition of a common phrase “Civilization is sterilization” ( Huxley 64). Sterilization is a reference to a controlled area that is devoid of any unwanted life. This is very similar to the lack of human emotion experienced by the subjects of Brave New World. This is through the creation of subjects as a machine process, the lack of love as a sought after emotion, and the use of scientific …show more content…
There is an assembly line where different processes are performed in order for the subject to have the characteristics desired by the designers. “The surrogate goes round slower; therefore passes through the lung at longer intervals; therefore gives the embryo less oxygen. Nothing like oxygen-shortage for keeping an embryo below par” (7). The shortage of oxygen provided to the Epsilon children serves as a natural inhibitor in order to keep them from being free thinkers aspiring to disrupt the status quo. This allows them to create workers who are the backbone of the society while ensuring that they will not revolt as they cannot see how they are being mistreated. Treating these children no better than a new smartphone being assembled on a production line shows how far the World State is willing to go to remove the humanity out of its subject’s lives. This process allows for the World State to create an ever growing obedient population. While this is partly due to the creation of the people as subjects, it is also due to the conditioning provided by the World State in order to keep them obedient. However, if these children were to be brought up by their own kind, no matter how they were created, it would be far harder for the World State to control them. This would be because they would be brought up in the best interest of humanity not in the best interest of the World …show more content…
While it might initially seem that this use of scientific language is being employed because they are an advanced civilization that is grounded science. The use of strictly scientific language is instead used to detache the emotions that drive human nature from what was previously regarded as intimate activities. “Oh, she's a splendid girl. Wonderfully pneumatic. I'm surprised you haven't had her” (26). This emotional detachment from sex just serves to highlight the extremes to which this society has changed from modern humans. Of all the human emotions, sex was arguably the most natural one. This made it a prime target for the World State to attempt to control. Sadly, while sex was once considered to be one of the most intimate of acts, it is now relegated to just a recreational activity no better than playing a sport. Another way in which the World State used scientific language in order to better control the population was through the words used in the human growth process, “All the embryos were simultaneously shaken into familiarity with movement. Hinted at the gravity of the so-called ‘trauma of decanting’” (12-3). By changing the name of birth to decanting serves to further remove humanity from a once very intimate process for humans. Birth is the emergence of a new creature into the world. Since the World State has already managed to
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
In Aldous Huxley’s Brave New World, truth and happiness are falsely engineered to create a perfect society; the belief of the World Controllers that stability is the the key to a utopian society actually led to the creation of an anti-utopian society in which loose morals and artificial happiness exist. Huxley uses symbolism, metaphors, and imagery to satirize the possibiliy of an artificial society in the future as well as the “brave new world” itself.
In the novel, Huxley exhibits a utopian society where the citizens are free of anxiety and discomfort due to technological advancements, and are conditioned from birth to agree with their social and economic status. The World State’s main goal is to create a society in which stability is achieved through technological progress, and in order to achieve stability, the World Controllers focus on creating a ‘perfect’ community. To produce this ‘perfect’ utopian community, the World Controllers apply advanced technology to create individuals u...
Through hypnoaedic teachings, reservation contrasts to the “Civilized” world, and John’s critique of the society, the reader sees Huxley’s point of view of the importance of an individual. With hypnoaedic teachings, Huxley creates the society and the values. Inside the reservation, Huxley contrasts the society of the reservation to that of Lenina’s society. Finally Huxley’s main evaluation and critique of lack of identity is seen in John’s character. John’s horrid descriptions in his point of view on society demonstrate to the reader the importance of an individual. Since there were absolutely no conscious men or women throughout society, ideas of ignoring death, God, and beauty creates a world where men and women sacrifice true happiness (Where pain and hard work are involved for a greater happiness) for a “smooth running society.” The picture of the society to the reader is horrifying and quite terrifying. Overall, within our society, the importance of the individual is not a problem. People, even teenagers, are encouraged to show who they are inside. One can truly see the idea of the importance on individual through the new openness to different sexualities. Overall, within the book, Brave New World, by Aldous Huxley, Huxley demonstrates the need for conscious individuals through a horrifying
In his novel Brave New World, Aldous Huxley illustrates ways in which government and advanced science control society. Through actual visualization of this Utopian society, the reader is able to see how this state affects Huxley’s characters. Throughout the book, the author deals with many different aspects of control. Whether it is of his subjects’ feelings and emotions or of the society’s restraint of population growth, Huxley depicts government’s and science’s role in the brave new world of tomorrow.
Seven-foot, blonde haired, blue-eyed super-humans bearing the swastika and marching in perfect Aryan rhythm, bred to be smarter, stronger, superior. This is a typical image when people hear the word eugenics, but there are two distinct branches: negative eugenics, which looks at removing undesirables and degenerates from society, and positive eugenics, which looks to promote the positive hereditary traits within society. In this essay I will Look at both sides of the eugenics argument in order to find a conclusion.
The concept of eugenics has to do with the belief or practice of improving the genetic quality of the human race (“Eugenics” 2010). The concept was first introduced by Francis Galton, a researcher who wished to apply Darwin’s theory of evolution to the human race. Much like many endeavors that start off with good intentions, the results of applying this concept in real life were gross crimes against humanity. The eugenics movement in the early 20th century perverted the original concept by employing morally objectionable techniques including forced sterilization, marriage restrictions, segregation, internment camps, and genocide (Black 2012). In War Against the Weak: Eugenics and America’s Campaign to Create a Master Race, Edwin Black discusses the root of the eugenics movement in the United States of America and how this ultimately influenced the horrifying actions taken by the Nazis in pursuit of the pure Aryan race.
Imagine living in a society where there is no sense of independence, individual thought or freedom. A society where the government uses disturbing methods that dehumanize people in order to force conformity upon them. Taking away any sense of emotion, It would be very undesirable to live in a society with such oppression. Such society is portrayed in Aldous Huxley's novel Brave New World. The World State uses social restrictions to create permanent artificial personalities for people within the society. The World State also uses controlled groupings of people to brainwash them further to be thoughtless people with no sense of individualism. Lastly, the World State uses drugs to create artificial happiness for people, leaving no room for intense emotion which causes people to revolt against the World State. Within the novel Brave New World, it is seen that the World State eliminates individuality through social restrictions, government controlled groupings and the abuse of drugs to maintain control of the population.
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.
The novel, Brave New World, takes place in the future, 632 A. F. (After Ford), where biological engineering reaches new heights. Babies are no longer born viviparously, they are now decanted in bottles passed through a 2136 metre assembly line. Pre-natal conditioning of embryos is an effective way of limiting human behaviour. Chemical additives can be used to control the population not only in Huxley's future society, but also in the real world today. This method of control can easily be exercised within a government-controlled society to limit population growth and to control the flaws in future citizens. In today's world, there are chemical drugs, which can help a pregnant mother conceive more easily or undergo an abortion. In the new world, since there is no need...
The first two chapters of this novel consist of the Director of Hatcheries and Conditioning showing students how the reproduction system works in the World State. The students are taken to the center where they make the babies using ovaries and reproductive systems removed from humans. They are shown how the government controls all of the reproduction in the country. This shows that the government has complete control because the government even controls the most basic part of life. Children do not have parents and are trained by the government from the time they are born. Immediately this seems alien to the reader because this is obviously not how society works. This seems like a violation of human rights; especially to readers that live in democracies because all human rights are taken away immediately starting at the reproductive state of life.
For years, authors and philosophers have satirized the “perfect” society to incite change. In Brave New World, Aldous Huxley describes a so-called utopian society in which everyone is happy. This society is a “controlled environment where technology has essentially [expunged] suffering” (“Brave New World”). A member of this society never needs to be inconvenienced by emotion, “And if anything should go wrong, there's soma” (Huxley 220). Citizens spend their lives sleeping with as many people as they please, taking soma to dull any unpleasant thoughts that arise, and happily working in the jobs they were conditioned to want. They are genetically altered and conditioned to be averse to socially destructive things, like nature and families. They are trained to enjoy things that are socially beneficial: “'That is the secret of happiness and virtue – liking what you've got to do. All conditioning aims at that: making people like their inescapable social destiny'” (Huxley 16). Citizens operate more like machinery, and less like humans. Humanity is defined as “the quality of being human” (“Humanity”). To some, humanity refers to the aspects that define a human: love, compassion and emotions. Huxley satirizes humanity by dehumanizing the citizens in the Brave New World society.
One of the most pressing issues in Brave New World is the use of science and technology and how it affects people’s lives. In the novel, technology is far more advanced than it was in Huxley’s time. One of the main uses of technology in the book is for making human beings. Humans are no longer born, but rather “decanted (Huxley 18).” Technology and science are used to make an embryo into whatever kind of human that is desired. Some embryos are even deprived of oxygen in order to make the person less intelligent much like a soggy piece of pizza.
Technology, which has brought mankind from the Stone Age to the 21st century, can also ruin the life of peoples. In the novel Brave New World, the author Aldous Huxley shows us what technology can do if we exercise it too much. From the novel we can see that humans can lose humanity if we rely on technology too much. In the novel, the author sets the world in the future where everything is being controlled by technology. This world seems to be a very perfectly working utopian society that does not have any disease, war, problems, crisis but it is also a sad society with no feelings, emotions or human characteristics. This is a very scary society because everything is being controlled even before someone is born, in test tube, where they determine of which class they are going to fall under, how they are going to look like and beyond. Therefore, the society of Brave New World is being controlled by society form the very start by using technology which affects how the people behave in this inhumane, unrealistic, society.
They program these humans to have needs and desires that will sustain a lucrative economy while not thinking of themselves as an individual. Huxley describes the World State’s intent to control their society through medical intervention, happiness, and consumerism, which has similarities to modern society. Designing life from conception is an intriguing concept. Brave New World’s World State is in control of the reproduction of people by intervening medically. The Hatchery and Conditioning Centre is the factory that produces human beings.