"'God isn't compatible with machinery and scientific medicine and universal happiness.'" So says Mustapha Mond, the World Controller for Western Europe in Aldous Huxley's novel Brave New World. In doing so, he highlights a major theme in this story of a Utopian society. Although the people in this modernized world enjoy no disease, effects of old age, war, poverty, social unrest, or any other infirmities or discomforts, Huxley asks 'is the price they pay really worth the benefits?' This novel shows that when you must give up religion, high art, true science, and other foundations of modern life in place of a sort of unending happiness, it is not worth the sacrifice.
True, the citizens of this "brave new world" do enjoy many refinements and benefits to life. Lenina shows one thing they enjoy when on the reservation she sees an old Indian man and reacts with, "'What's the matter with him?'… 'He's old, that's all,'… 'But the Director's old; lots of people are old; they're not like that.'" (Huxley 110) Evidently Utopia has succeeded in eliminating the effects of old age. Being able to live one's entire life youthful certainly would be wonderful. It is not a thrilling prospect to grow weaker with age, gradually having your sense's perceptiveness fade, so most anyone would prefer this 'unimpaired youth.' There are other things which also make life easier, pointed out by Mustapha Mond talking to John the Savage, "'But there aren't any wars nowadays…There's no such thing as a divided allegiance; you're so conditioned that you can't help doing what you ought to do. And what you ought to do is on the whole so pleasant, so many of the natural impulses are allowed free play, that there really aren't any temptations to resist. And if ever, by some unlucky chance, anything unpleasant should somehow happen, why, there's always soma to give you a
holiday from the facts,'" (Huxley 243, 244). The people are never unhappy, there is nothing in society to bring about strong emotions, and any desires they have are almost immediately fulfilled. If anything is wrong, the people can take soma, a drug that makes you happy and high and has no adverse affects. One might be led to believe that this society is a perfect place to live, since all the inhabitants are eternally happy. The...
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.... The Savage could see that it was nothing but valueless vice, and when he accidentally succumbs to that which he so detested, he commits suicide after waking from his 'soma holiday.' Aldous Huxley is also sending us many warning messages with his novel. If we spend too much of our lives pursuing happiness through physical fulfillment, we will miss out on what is truly important, our relationships with other people and with God. He is also telling us to be careful with our science, or we may end up like the Utopians, mass producing identical citizens, then brainwashing them to think alike, and to think exactly what the government mandates. Huxley tells us not to cheapen sex through promiscuity, because it is supposed to be something to express a deep and undying love to someone, not a simple carnal pleasure. These were just some of the mistakes the Utopians made, all of which contributed to their lives being shallow and meaningless. They were not truly happy, because they misplaced their values and failed to see what brings true joy and peace in one's life. The apparent blissfulness in which they lived turned out to be nothing, their Utopia was not worth the high price they paid.
As analyzed by social critic Neil Postman, Huxley's vision of the future, portrayed in the novel Brave New World, holds far more relevance to present day society than that of Orwell's classic 1984. Huxley's vision was simple: it was a vision of a trivial society, drowned in a sea of pleasure and ignorant of knowledge and pain, slightly resembling the world of today. In society today, knowledge is no longer appreciated as it has been in past cultures, in turn causing a deficiency in intelligence and will to learn. Also, as envisioned by Huxley, mind altering substances are becoming of greater availability and distribution as technology advances. These drugs allow society to escape from the problems of life instead of dealing with reality. With divorce rates higher than ever in the past few decades, it has become evident that lust has ruined the society's sexual covenants. People are indulging in their sexual motives; lust runs rampant, thus strong, long-lasting relationships are becoming a rarity.
Lenina and Bernard go on a date. He tries to show her the ocean, and
After the publishing of Aldous Huxley’s Brave New World, modern literature has changed forever. It is considered a masterpiece and one of the pillars of the dystopian novel. However, both of those affirmations can be called into question. The former based on a subjective opinion of a reader and the latter through compromising its dystopian nature. Similarly to George Orwell’s novels, the main appeal of Brave New World is within the ideas it contains, not within its literary merits. Huxley’s talent is essentially composed of his ideas and the attitude he assumes towards the problems he presents. He took full advantage of his endowment in Brave New World Revisited, a non fiction work sequel to Brave New World. The sequel is devoid of a mediocre narrative in favour of factual information and proposing solutions of the tackled problems. Simply put, Brave New World Revisited is what Brave New World should have been.
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.
Huxley implies that by abrogating dreadfulness and mental torment, the brave new worlders have disposed of the most significant and brilliant encounters that life can offer also. Most remarkably, they have relinquished an abstruse deeper joy which is intimated, not expressed, to be pharmacologically out of reach to the utopians. The magical foundation of this assumption is dark. There are clues, too, that a percentage of the utopians may feel a poorly characterized feeling of disappointment, an irregular sense that their lives are trivial. It is suggested, further, that assuming that we are to discover correct satisfaction and importance in our lives, then we must have the ability to contrast the great parts of existence with the awful parts, to feel both euphoria and despondency. As vindications go, it’s a great one.
Brave New World, a novel by Aldous Huxley was written at a tine in history when war had ravaged much of the nation, Depression was blanketing society, and people’s wills were being put to the test. Science had become an overwhelming force for better or for worse. People had witnessed science saving and preventing millions of lives with vaccinations and such, but on the contrary, had also witnessed it kill with horrifying “factory-like” efficiency in WW I (the age of machine guns and chemical warfare). Brave New World is not intended to be a happy book, it is more Huxley’s way of describing what he believes is coming to us. He is basically saying, “This is our future”. Huxley’s writings are known for dealing with conflicts between the interest of the individual and the interests of society. Brave New World addresses this conflict in a fictional future (approximately 500 years into the future) in which free will and individuality have been sacrificed to achieve complete social stability.
Although our world is not extreme as the World State, we are closer than we have ever been to Aldous Huxley’s future prediction of the world. In this dystopian novel, people want what they want, but never what they can’t have. They live through meaningless relationships, extreme censorship, and a substantial amount of soma. Writer, Frances Tapon, says, “Psychologists believe that there are seven factors that influence your happiness: wealth, education, personal freedom, equality, health, social position, and positive life events.” The only difference between what makes us happy and what makes them happy is conditioning. In the World State, people are conditioned from the day they are decanted with chemicals, hypnopaedia, and Neo Pavlova. Humans today have always been told “money is power” and “go to college, get a good job, then you will be happy.” Even though we feel emotions, people will do anything to feel happy just like the World State. Brave New World is our world with a surplus of drugs, sex, and people conditioned to think that their life is happy and
In the novel The Brave New World, Aldous Huxley introduces a deranged world where humans are trapped, drugged, and obsessed with looks. The United World is presented as the ideal world; everyone knows their place in society, no one has any troubles, at the end of the day, everyone gets a dose of soma. However, throughout this ironic novel, the reader can see that, though portrayed as a flawless universe, Huxley has set it up to blatantly show its flaws. While showing how the real world, though more difficult to live in, is a better situation, Huxley also draws subtle parallels between the two worlds. Our abuse of drugs, both legal and not, are used to fade out the troubles we may be having, just as soma is used in the Brave New World.
While we cannot achieve perfection, the utopia in Brave New World tries to be perfect by using advanced technology to eliminate things that might make a society unstable. Nature, love, and true happiness are eliminated by technology like soma and conditioning. Daily life is affected by this technology advance. Have you ever gone a day without your iPhone or other electronic device that is how Lenina is attached to soma? Soma makes her happy just like a good morning text from your crush makes you happy.
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.
Aldous Huxley’s Brave New World illustrates a colorful, fantastic universe of sex and emotion, programming and fascism that has a powerful draw in a happy handicap. This reality pause button is called “Soma”. “Take a holiday from reality whenever you like, and come back without so much as a headache or a mythology.” ( Huxley 54 ).
In a perfect society, humans do not need to resort to drugs to keep society in balance. In Aldous Huxley’s Brave New World, society is based on keeping everyone happy- and if for some reason someone becomes unhappy then there is always soma- the “perfect” drug. Humans are conditioned from the very start to be happy while performing their specific tasks. “We also predestine and condition. We decant out babies as socialized human beings, as Alphas or Epsilons, as future sewage workers or future Directors of Hatcheries.” (Page 13) Brave New World’s society is built on keeping everyone happy and keeping everyone working in balance with civilization. However, without soma, Brave New World’s society wouldn’t function properly. The soma helps to keep the society moving, always working to keep production moving, just like Ford’s assembly line. However, is there something wrong with depending on a drug to keep a society working?
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.
Because of the place and development of this society, it has formed a certain alterity or “otherness” to it's culture that is vastly different than what we see today. It is all used as a blown up concept of what life is today, and even in the 1930s when the book was written. Huxley is showing where we have placed ourselves as a society and how we have set the direction of it for the future. Aldous Huxley sets out and makes true connections and assumptions that with time our own society is becoming more exotic from one generation to the next. We change in sexual morality, what we value changes completely and we begin to see our own alterity in the culture we have so blindly and carelessly shaped.
...lso dislikes the Utopian civilization. The problem with him is they let they him get too smart. That led him to want a better life, a dream he felt was unobtainable in Utopia. He was one of the few people that understood John and had similar interests in literature. He is also classified as an alpha-plus.