Aldous Huxley’s Brave New World depicts a seemingly perfect utopian society. This world has no illnesses, celebrates instant gratification, and exhibits no conflict whatsoever. However, this society is controlled by the subtle hands of the supreme World Controllers. The “freedom” that the citizens enjoy comes at the price of being under a soft totalitarian control. The message broadcasted by the government is to conform or be contained, like the Savage Reservation, which is surrounded by “upwards of five thousand kilometres of fencing at sixty thousand volts” (Huxley 101). Indeed, the government of this “paradise” has set aside the problems it has not solved, choosing to ignore rather than resolve them. Critic Derek Miller from the Inquiries Journal cites Neil Postman’s book, Technopoly: The Surrender of Culture to Technology, arguing that the society presented in Brave New World is a prime example of what Postman calls a “Technopoly,” where all forms of technology provide what is needed for the people to live their lives by. Furthermore, Miller reviews the ideas conferred in Huxley’s novel and identifies and expounds the main themes. He discusses the economic objectives, the substitution
Consequently, religious deities have been replaced by figures like Henry Ford, the inventor of the Model T and a large sponsor of the assembly line. Profanities were even adjusted to accommodate the worship of his “Fordship.” The citizens make the cross of a ‘T’ to show reverence, mocking the cross of Christ in real society. The citizens draw very close to actual worship without having any real
Merriam Webster’s definition of satire is a type of literary work used to ridicule human vices and follies. This type of work is presented in Aldous Huxley’s, Brave New World, when criticizing the power and control of the World State through the use of advanced technology towards the members of the World State. Throughout the novel the World State is portrayed as a totalitarian government controlling every aspect of its citizens lives. This controlling is made possible through all the advanced technology available within the World State. Set hundreds of years after Henry Ford, the renowned auto maker, the government’s technology is highly advanced, a folly Huxley is trying to expose in order to prevent a technological takeover in the life of people in the real world. Conditioning is one technological method used by the government in order to establish individuals to participate in a variety of tasks. Also entertainment is another factor used by theWorld State to keep power. Censorship is also illustrated in the novel presenting the governments ability to control, what is released in the World State.
Social stability can be the cause of problems. After reading Brave New World by Aldous Huxley, we are informed that “Bokanovsky’s Process is one of the major instruments of social stability!” Now is it worth it? Is it worth the sacrifice? Questions like those are addressed throughout the book. Huxley wants to warn us of many things, for example the birth control pill, the way that we can colon ourselves and many other things. He wanted us to know that many of the experiments that they do to the caste in Brave New World, we were later going to do investigate more ourselves or start doing them to others. We have all, at a point; come to a point to the question where we ask ourselves “is it worth it? Is it worth the sacrifice?”
Christian Nestell Bovee, a famous epigrammatic New York writer, once said, “No man is happy without a delusion of some kind. Delusions are as necessary to our happiness as realities.” This quote ties in wonderfully with the book Brave New World by Aldous Huxley and the concept of control. In the novel Brave New World, Aldous Huxley captured the true essences of a perfect dystopia. With people living seamless happy lives, and not knowing they are being controlled. How does one control entire nation? The World State does this by hatching, conditioning, and a synthetic drug called soma.
In many ways, today's society reflects the society Aldous Huxley wrote about in his novel Brave New World. Huxley predicted excessive drug usage to make the citizens happy, people deciding to buy new products instead of fixing old ones, sex not being treated as a sacred thing like it has been in the past, and many other very accurate predictions for our future. During the time that Huxley was writing this novel, the world was already starting to head in the direction that brought us here. This was a social commentary for his time and it’s still sadly relevant for our time now. We should have taken the warnings from the novel and changed paths before it was too late. Not that we are actually currently living in their society, but we are heading there. We can still avoid making this our reality.
A Brave New World, written by Aldous Huxley, is a book that to me is more of a warning then entertainment. In the book, Huxley writes about a future civilization and all how everything in life is simplified. Babies are created in factories and are designed however scientists want them to be. Relationships are completely irrelevant and frowned upon in this world. People are distracted from true beauty and left to submit their selves into a false world. Since this book was written in 1931, Huxley obviously had no knowledge of new age technology. But, many of the warnings he wrote about have, in fact, come true. Cloning is now a very relevant topic in the scientific community, which could actually lead to artificial birth like Huxley wrote about. Video games now have one of the most profitable industries and are now as immersive as ever. And according to multiple studies, sexual promiscuity is at an all time high in teenagers.
Technology is the application of scientific knowledge that deals with the creation and use of technical means and their interrelation with life, society, and the environment. It concerns itself with such subjects as industrial arts, engineering, applied science and pure science and is utilized for practical purposes. Though technology offers a variety of gadgets that work to the advance of humanity, it can also harm society extensively by dispersing a certain degree of power to individuals that can be abused. In his essay, Neil Postman, a social critic contrasts the proposed future of George Orwell's in his novel 1984 (1948) with that of Aldous Huxley in Brave New World (1932). Postman maintains that Huxley's vision of the future is more pertinent to today's society than Orwell's mostly because the themes that he includes in his dystopian society are present and are very similar to those in Brave New World. Overall, it is safe to say that Huxley’s vision of the future is an indulgent one and is one that today’s society is prone to experience because of the increasing dependency on technology.
In Aldous Huxley’s Brave New World, the author depicts a collective society in which everyone has the same values and beliefs. From a young age, the people in the World State’s civilization are conditioned to believe in their motto of “Community, Identity, Stability.” Through hypnopaedia, the citizens of the World State learn their morals, values, and beliefs, which stay with them as they age. However, like any society, there are outsiders who alienate themselves from the rest of the population because they have different values and beliefs. Unfortunately, being an outsider in the World State is not ideal, and therefore there are consequences as a result. One such outsider is John. Brought from the Savage Reservation, John is lead to conform to the beliefs of the World State, thus losing his individuality, which ultimately leads him to commit suicide. Through John and the World State populace as an example, Huxley uses his novel to emphasize his disapproval of conformity over individuality.
There were quite a few changes made from Aldous Huxley’s, Brave New World to turn it into a “made for TV” movie. The first major change most people noticed was Bernard Marx’s attitude. In the book he was very shy and timid toward the opposite sex, he was also very cynical about their utopian lifestyle. In the movie Bernard was a regular Casanova. He had no shyness towards anyone. A second major deviation the movie made form the book was when Bernard exposed the existing director of Hatcheries and Conditioning, Bernard himself was moved up to this position. In the book the author doesn’t even mention who takes over the position. The biggest change between the two was Lenina, Bernard’s girlfriend becomes pregnant and has the baby. The screenwriters must have made this up because the author doesn’t even mention it. The differences between the book and the movie both helped it and hurt it.
Today, in 21st century United States, people are concerned with the fast pace of new and growing technology, and how these advances should be used. In the last decade alone we have seen major advancements in technology; in science, cloning has become a reality, newer, more powerful drugs have been invented and, in communications, the Internet has dominated society. There is a cultural lag due to the fast rate of increasing technology, and while the governments of the world are trying to keep up their role as censors and lawmakers, we as individuals are trying to comprehend the effects it has on our lives. Will these advances enhance our lives to an unprecedented level of comfort, or lead to the loss of actual happiness? In the early 1930's, when Aldous Huxley wrote Brave New World, this was a question he felt was worth asking.
In Brave New World, Aldous Huxley deftly creates a society that is indeed quite stable. Although they are being mentally manipulated, the members of this world are content with their lives, and the presence of serious conflict is minimal, if not nonexistent. For the most part, the members of this society have complete respect and trust in their superiors, and those who don’t are dealt with in a peaceful manner as to keep both society and the heretic happy. Maintained by cultural values, mental conditioning, and segregation, the idea of social stability as demonstrated in Brave New World is, in my opinion, both insightful and intriguing.
The 20th Century and late 19th Century were periods of great turbulence. Aldous Huxley’s writing of Brave New World, a fictional story about a dystopian society managed by drugs, conditioning, and suppression, was greatly influenced by these turmoils and movements. Occurrences such as World War I, the Roaring Twenties, the second Scientific Revolution, the Great Depression, Modernism, the Industrial Revolution, Henry Ford, and many others had a significant impact upon Huxley’s thoughts, expressed through Brave New World.
During the past few weeks my class and I have been reading your book, “ Brave New World”. While reading your book I have discovered a few captivating issues. These issues include the destruction of the family, the use of drugs, and polygamy (obligatory sex). These issues are interesting because of their implications in life today, and the frequent times they are shown in the book. The ways they are used to control people and make their life easier, and the fact that our world seems to be falling into the same state.
There have been philosophers that have been philosophizing for thousands of years. Discovering new ideas and different ways to think about things. Thinking in new, creative ways is an inevitable future that humanity will face unless stagnancy in the development of technology and morality occurs. Aldous Huxley’s Brave New World displays this possibility incredibly and makes stagnancy look unappealing. With stagnancy and lack of new and imaginative thoughts, however, complete happiness seems like a less menacing task than before. Nobody questions why certain luxuries are not available. The whole world can be content. Why would this not be favorable for humanity? Happiness is hindered greatly by the ability to think.
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.
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.