How Does Huxley Use Satire In Brave New World

Jett Phillips 07.02.2017 Dearing AP Lit & Comp A.3 Aldous Huxley’s Satirical Ironic World There is no novel more synonymous with irony and satire than Aldous Huxley’s 1932 novel Brave New World. Throughout the novel, Huxley takes advantage of irony and satire to bring about his message, in an attempt to criticize those who would like to see the expansion of the state and proliferation of promiscuity, by showing those how such a world would look like, through his depiction of the “World State.” As presented in the novel, the World State’s citizens are designated by birth into genetically engineered classes, controlled throughout life through drugs and endless promiscuity, and pushing the never-ending production line forward in the satirically stated year of 632 “After Ford.” However, Huxley’s use of irony shines brightest through the names of his characters, such as Lenina Crowne, Bernard Marx, and John the Savage. The former two names are in reference to Vladimir Lenin and Karl Marx, and the latter being an ironic name based on how, essentially,

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