Aldous Huxley's "Brave New World" can be regarded as a dystopia, a false symbol of any regime of universal happiness.
The action is placed in the era of post-genomic medicine, in which our DNA is edited so we can all enjoy life-long bliss, peak experiences and a spectrum of outrageously good-designer drugs.By comparison, the description of the Savage's life in the Reservation conveys just how nasty the old regime of pain, disease and unhappiness can be.
Huxley's intentions are obviously satirical ; he expresses his major concerns for the future of a human society based exclusively on science and technology. Although he is ready to admit to the possible and even necessary benefits biotechnology might bring to our lives, he can't help feeling worried and warning us about the consequences of an unnatural, alienating scientific utopia ."Brave New World"deals with all the negative aspects the progress of civilization might engender .
The world he imagines is primarily governed by standardisation, monotony, stupidity, amorality, unacknowledged dictatorship, utilitarianism etc. All the members of this community are, in fact, clones conceived in laboratory and brainwashed while being asleep.
The society is divided into five main castes, each of them predestined to a certain condition and function in the society : the Alphas and Betas are the ruling upper classes, gifted with some intelligence, not performing any menial jobs ; the Gammas, Deltas and Epsilons are the lower dumb classes, satisfied with their humiliating position of providers for their superior leaders .Equality is a concept that cannot be applied under these circumstances, because th...
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...ring to the futile, materialistic concerns of the State.
What is even more fascinating is the fact that, for a society denying or ignoring the existence of God, the necessity of strongly believing in something - a cause, a creator(Ford) -is pretty prominent. The entire society would fall apart, weren't for its faith in an Entity far above their capacity of apprehension, an Entity viewed as a generative source of guiding principles in life. Just as we believe in God, without questioning His means of action and the laws He's given us, they believe in Ford and in the good changes he's brought to them.
The universe of Huxley is technically feasible, but we have to ask ourselves if we want to let things go that far . Huxley has given us a potential and likely version of the future, rising questions that can't and mustn't be ignored.
Huxley Living in a genetically perfect world is not necessarily a great achievement to mankind. It makes one think, "where do you draw the line in the advancement of eugenics?" Both worlds, the Brave New one and Gattaca, are alternative futures (clearly dystopic), written and shown in a believable way (not as much in BNW, though) through the use of satire. Also, for GATTACA, the director incorporates the traditional elements of movie - a murder-mystery tied in with a love story PLUS a science fiction touch - very effectively. Satire in Huxley's novel is glaringly obvious (mockery of the education system and the morals of today along with many more topics), as he writes with the purpose of teaching and humoring at the same time. However, with GATTACA, the satirical messages are not immediately perceivable - even after having seen the movie three times.
Ultimately, Orwell’s fears for the future are reasonable, but are not as probable as Huxley’s. Though Brave New World was written almost eighty years ago, Huxley was able to use his knowledge of science, technology and politics to create a not too far-fetched nation where human individuality is suppressed. Thus, Brave New World has the same voice as Henry David Thoreau when he claimed, “men have become the tools of their tools”.
John's eyes fluttered open and he cautiously surveyed his surroundings. Where was he taken? Who knocked him unconscious and carried him from his solitude at the lighthouse? He did not have to wait long for his answer, when he saw his friend standing over him, shaking him to awareness.
In the 1932 satirical novel Brave New World, Aldous Huxley describes an emotionless, mechanized world of the future, set mostly in London, in which individuality is eliminated, creativity is stifled, and such institutions as marriage, family, and church are unpleasant artifacts of a world long gone. In this society, people are mass-produced; human eggs are artificially engineered by technicians. Happiness is achieved through physical gratification and peace is safeguarded by the conditioning of youth and by dispensing soma, a tranquilizer. Bernard Marx is the main character and his unorthodox viewpoints and physical difference from the rest of his caste makes him as an outsider. Bernard and Lenina, his present "girlfriend", receive permission to visit a Savage Reservation in New Mexico. They return to "civilization" with a savage, John. There he struggles to understand this so-called utopia and is eventually driven to suicide while Bernard is exiled to an island for his unconventional beliefs.
In Brave New World, the author Aldous Huxley predicts a future, like no other, where truth is trumped by happiness. The people in the World State are ignorant of the truth. They mistake the truth as happiness. This ignorance leads them to believe that a tablet called soma is used “to calm your anger, to reconcile you to your enemies, to make you patient” (Huxley 213). Through drugs and conditioning, the government has kept the World State uninformed of the truth. Being controlled by the government, people in the World State do not know society is built upon lies. Throughout this novel, John, Bernard, and Helmholtz, go through this Dystopia lifestyle being a savage, a misfit and too intellectual for the society they are born or decanted into. Is this fictional novel too far away from the life style that could become in a society like today?
Throughout the book, many difficult questions about the nature of moral choices are raised. The plot is concentrated on the various abuses of power made possible by science. I believe that Huxley was not lashing out against science, but more offering a warning, the new world is not evil because of science, but because power hungry individuals have misused it maliciously. The theme of Brave New World is “not the advancement of science as such; it is the advancement of science as it affects human individuals” (Brave New World, page XI). The devastating affects through the misuse of science, philosophy and control are portrayed through this book.
Brave New World, by Aldous Huxley, while fictitiously showing the future possible advances of science and technology, is actually warning people of what science could become. In the Foreword of Brave New World, Huxley states: “The theme of Brave New World is not the advancement of science as such; it is the advancement of science as it affects human individuals” (xi). He is not suggesting that this is how science should advance, but that science will advance the way that people allow it to. The novel is not supposed to depict a “utopian” society by any means, but it is supposed to disturb the reader and warn him not to fall into this social decay. Huxley uses satire to exploit both communism and American capitalism created by Ford.
Today there are strong debates and questions about the extraordinary breakthroughs in science such as cloning, in communications through the Internet with its never ending pool of knowledge, and the increasing level of immersion in entertainment. People facing the 21st century are trying to determine whether these new realities of life will enhance it and bring life as they know it to a great unprecedented level, or if these new products will contribute and perhaps even cause the destruction of society and life. To many cloning, censoring, and total immersion entertainment are new, but to those who have read Brave New World by Aldous Huxley, the topics are reminiscent of the horror that is found in Huxley's fictional utopian world where the dehumanizing of man is achieved in the interests of "Community, Identity, Stability," the world state's motto.
Human beings have a tendency to avoid problems and suffering in their lives, searching for the “perfect world” in which every individual may constantly feel happy. However, is this “perfection” ascertainable by any individual or mankind as a whole? In Brave New World, Aldous Huxley offers his ideas and interpretations of a utopian society in which each person has the ability to always be happy. In Huxley’s vision, pain and suffering are completely avoidable through the use of a drug called soma. Soma functions as an opiate, allowing its consumers to escape all of life’s hardships almost instantaneously by entering into “another world.” People of the World State heavily depend on soma to live their daily lives each day without
Huxley observes in his work, Brave New World that the modern world revolves around technological development. The aspirations and morals of modern society do not entirely rely on social issues such as love, family, and success but rather on industrial progress and social development. According to Huxley, technological improvement and growth are critical factors that shape the operation and activities in modern society. So far, community members need to observe the world as technologically oriented and collective social setting. Instead of being interested in individual social development, modern society is focusing its attention on merging technological transformation and their impact in modern success. In his observation, Huxley states that modern society is quickly surrendering its culture to emerging technological development. Contemporary culture is mainly being characterised by socio-technological status (Huxley 7). Therefore, based on the novels content, it is clear that Huxley’s writing is a dangerous prophesy of technology’s ability to control modern social operations.
In this world where people can acquire anything they need or want, we have to wonder, “Is the government controlling us?” Both the governments in A Brave New World and in the United States of America offer birth control pills and have abortion clinics that are available for everyone, thus making birth control pills and abortion operations very easy to acquire. Although both governments offer birth control pills and abortion clinics, A Brave New World’s government requires everyone to take the pills and immediately get an abortion when pregnant. This in turn shows us that A Brave New World’s government is controlling the population and the development of children. China is one of the few countries that currently have control of the development of children. In controlling the development of its children, China is also controlling the population levels. In any country, controlling the amount of children a single family can have can dramatically decrease the population levels. Just by having birth control pills and abortion clinics there for anybody to take advantage of shows that the involvement of either government is already too high.
There is a great deal of evidence that supports the idea that we, in the twenty first century, are headed toward the society described by Huxley in Brave New World. Such things as advances in technology, government yearning for complete control, and an uncontrollable world population are many of the reasons Huxley’s world might become our own.
"'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.
Upon reading Brave New World we think that it’s about a totally unrealistic world, but that’s not the case anymore. Our society is proving that it is more like the Brave New World by our advancements in technology, desire to stay youthful, and increasing drug use. All these factors are bringing our world closer and closer to the one that Huxley had predicted 80+ years ago; a world that we should be scared of instead of being alike it.
Literature is both shaped by our culture and shapes it. Because of this it is an effective representation of the culture of a time. One can tell how people were affected by the events of the times by how it comes through in their writing. Aldous Huxley's Brave New World is a prime example of this. The work was targeted at people in a post WWI world. This is a time between WWI and WWII where the world is still shocked by how rapidly the science of war had advanced. People also continue to be appalled with the mass death of a World War caused by such technology and therefore yearn for a more stable world. Because of this yearning, they attempt to create a more stable environment for themselves. Most people had lost faith in the institutions they came to know because those institutions caused the War. Therefore the League of Nations was founded in 1919 only 13 years before “Brave New World” was published in 1932.