Stability, Silence, and Progression: Analysis of Aldous Huxley's A Brave New World

Humans are not meant to be alone permanently because isolation drives people to craziness, transforming the need of companionship into an insatiable desire. When humans associate with one another, the thirst of sociability quenches and morphs into either happiness or progression. The futuristic society Brave New World encourages the former of happiness upon its citizens through repeated, whispered lessons, or hypnopaedic messages, at night during early childhood. The hypnopaedic messages function as values for all of the society’s caste members, promoting the ideas society regulates and deems as correct, such as limited progress. The whisperings also influence the civilians slightly more than advertisements do in modern society. For example, East Carolina University broadcasts a brightly colored advertisement in a magazine in the hopes that it will inspire students to attend the college. East Carolina University desires that the inner needs of progression and companionship of the viewer fulfill themselves for the benefit of the university, and eventually, the viewer itself. In his novel Brave New World, Aldous Huxley’s society abolishes solitude by conditioning the citizens to always surround each other, stunting progress, whereas East Carolina University instigates progression by encouraging students to interact with their aspiring peers, showing that both communities draw upon the bandwagon technique to appeal to the need for sociability.

The society in Brave New World conditions the people to never think, forcing them to engage with other people and reflect a common value. For example, one night Alpha-Plus worker Bernard Marx and the beautiful Lenina travel on a date to several locales, such as the Sumo-Wrestling Championship...

... middle of paper ...

...desiring that the audience of college-bound students attend the university. East Carolina University supports its hidden claim of progression by saying that because of its aspiring students, ECU can perceive the future; therefore, the consumer should be excited as well, illustrating that happiness and progress exist peacefully together. Both communities use the same technique to publicize radical ends of a spectrum: one society preferring total happiness, the other favoring progression, which overlaps the opposing side of joyfulness, melancholy. In the near future, however, the opposite ends of the happiness spectrum could clash violently, forcing the government to either overwork its people or embrace a future similar to the one Huxley desires, a future where one’s individuality sacrifices itself for stability.

Works Cited

Brave New World, by Aldous Huxley