Dystopian Society In Brave New World

There are numerous ways of life around the world today in different cultures and countries, each changing as the world around them changes. In the novel Brave New World, author Aldous Huxley shows a dystopian society with strange new beliefs and practices. This story revolves around three characters, Lenina Crowne, Bernard Marx, and John and shows their individual thoughts on this so called “civilized” world. John in particular is a man born and raised away from the new culture who is suddenly pushed into it without preparation, therefore receiving the shock of how different this “brave new world” really is. Although John dreamed about going to the civilized world all his life, he finds it disturbing and corrupt because of the lack of emotions

Children don’t have parents or families and grow up without loved ones. People never experience the special bond from parent to child and therefore don’t have compassion or other loving emotions. As someone coming from a place with marriage and family, John doesn’t understand the lack of attachment between people. On the other hand, Lenina was born and raised in society and believes in the saying, “everyone belongs to everyone else.”(Huxley 40) which is a hypnopaedic lesson given to children while they sleep. When Lenina was little she was also death conditioned. Death conditioning is the practice of bringing children to see dying people in hospitals to abolish any fears of death. Although the intentions of this practice are good, death conditioning also teaches children that individual lives and people aren’t important. As John’s mother is dying in a hospital for the dead, John is introduced to this method when small children come and gawk at him and his dying mother. The children have no emotions when his mother dies, and don’t understand his grief. In this society, although people don’t experience pain or unhappiness, they have also lost their ability to feel compassion and pity for people who need

With the ability to grow babies in a factory, there was also the ability to decide the physical and mental capabilities of each person. In this world the jobs and lives of each person is decided before birth. As a factory worker, Lenina is one of the people who make sure each individual will fit into their job or caste. The caste five castes are the Alphas, Betas, Gammas, Deltas, and Epsilons. As world leaders, the Alphas group is made up of the intelligent people, but these people don’t work for their position, they are born with it. Meanwhile each caste becomes continually less intelligent. The least intelligent group is the epsilons, who are used for menial labor. Before they are born, factory workers deprive eighty percent of their oxygen and inhibit growth by putting alcohol in their surrogates. In the real world today, this would be considered unjust and wrong but in this dystopian society, this is normal. The children born are then made to like their jobs through horrific processes such as electrocuting Epsilon babies when they touch books. This eventually causes them to hate books and become illiterate. These people end up thankful they didn’t have a job where they would have to write like the Alphas. Hypnopaedic teachings are also used to brainwash and indoctrinate children into believing certain things. The people have no freedom or individual rights and are never