Brave New World

Brave New World

It seems clear that most people in the World State are happy and contented. There are no longer problems such as disease, war, poverty, or unemployment in this society. Why then, do Bernard Helmholtz and

John criticise the quality of their lives? What is wrong with World

State Society?

600 hundred years into the future has advanced the new World State technologically, and perhaps also in the way of life for its citizens.

Some might even go so far as to say it is an improvement. At least, in the physical aspects of their lifestyle. Happiness and contentment seemingly prevail.

What price though, has had to be paid for that happiness and contentment? Nothing comes for free after all. The question is - was that price too high?

Bernard Marx - an Alpha plus male, is ostracised because of his inferior looks and his thoughts and ideas about the promiscuous sexual practices considered not only healthy but also mandatory. He does not belong. One does not find fault with one's world unless one's world finds fault with one. Bernard had reason to find fault with the World State because he was ostracised, and therefore, unhappy. When he later had fame and popularity because of John, he forgot all that he had previously found so inadequate about his life.

"Success went fizzily to Bernard's head, and in the process completely reconciled him (as any good intoxicant should do) to a world, which, up till then, he had found very unsatisfactory. In so far as it recognised him as important, the order of things was good." P.141

Helmholtz's dilemma is different to Bernard's. His sense of not belonging in Brave New World is because he feels that he is capable of achieving more than he will ever be permitted to. The World State is a

...

... middle of paper ...

...happiness, but an element of it, and society had denied them happiness.

" '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.'

" In fact,' said Mustapha Mond, 'Your claiming the right to be unhappy.' 'All right, then,' said the Savage defiantly, 'I'm claiming the right to be unhappy.' " P.219.

The only reason that there seems to be something wrong with the World

State was the fact that it did not adhere to our own society's morals.

Yet it is each society's beliefs that define right, and Brave New

World is in every sense just like society of today. One is judged based on the discretion of one's society. How then, can one deem the

World State as wrong, when it is merely following the standards that its society has set?

In this world, perhaps there is no such thing as right or wrong, only human whim.