Happiness And Freedom In Aldous Huxley's Brave New World

Many people in the world today are suppressed and have freedoms taken away from them everyday, but everyone has the right to feel any emotion they want to. Imagine even having that freedom taken away, and so many more natural rights, all in the name of constant happiness. Brave New World by Aldous Huxley is a science fiction novel that could also be classified as a piece of dystopian literature. It is set in a futuristic London, where there is a new government that has come into control called the World State. This new form of government came into power due to a Nine Years War that caused destruction unlike anyone had ever seen. This war forced the world to go to extreme measures in order to ensure nothing like that would ever happen again.

As the Director is giving students a tour of the facility, they watch as children are electrocuted while playing with books and flowers. He explains it is so that they are more happy when they are not around nature or books, “‘And that,’ put in the Director sententiously, ‘that is the secret of happiness and true virtue - Liking what you’ve got to do. All conditioning aims at that: making people like their inescapable social destiny” (Huxley 16). This passage reveals how little freedom the people of the World State truly have. This passage describes the reasoning behind the conditioning process, and how it is supposed to make people truly happy. This relates to the theme because it forces the reader to face the question of whether it is better to be happy with little freedom, or to have the freedom to choose without the promise of happiness. The children of different social castes are conditioned into believing they are happy in their social status, but they do not get to choose for themselves if they like to read, write, or draw. The people of the World State do not get to choose what they want to do with their lives, and they do not get to experience passion of loving a job that they choose. Also, they do not get to choose who they are in the world, because someone else decides their place

Through the wanton use of soma, conditioning techniques, and an absence of love in the characters’ lives, the reader can uncover the theme of the book; that is one should not become convinced that being happy is the only thing in life that matters when they have the opportunity to be free and choose emotion and truth. The people of the World State are trapped in a seemingly perfect world, but they are not aware of how it can feel to be in control of their emotions and their lives. They have allowed themselves to be lured into a lifestyle where they do not need to problem solve, because the solution to their problems is in an easily accessible drug. The World State has also perfected the caste system, with absolutely no way to escape your destiny. They say it will make people happy, but the people never get a chance to choose their life or who they are going to be. Finally, the people of the World State are incapable of feeling any emotion deeper than numb pleasure, and they do not know what love is. These things that define people today are denied to those in the World State, and that shows how much this book relates to the world today.This message matters today, because it calls the reader to consider their lives, and notice if they are choosing the path of least resistance to ensure their happiness, rather than living life to the fullest and experiencing every emotion possible.