A Brave New World: Character Analysis
As people grow in different societies around the world, surrounded by different cultures, customs, and moral values, most people have come appreciate diversity and individuality. Especially with the United State being so multicultural, there are no longer caste systems or monarchies in place to keep certain people from having access to certain rights and privileges. In the science fiction novel Brave New World by Aldous Huxley, we are introduced to a dystopian society where individuality is lost. They system put into place in the World State requires the work of all the members to function as a whole, and that the individual does not matter as long as the system survives. Sacrificing freedoms, rights, and privileges is not worth the price of
…show more content…
social stability. No one society can remain perfect. It is habitual to have fluctuations in stability, but asking humans, which are fallible creatures, to keep up with a perfect system will inevitably lead to its own demise.
The core values of the World State lie in the motto “ Community, Identity, Stability”. Within these words is years of conditioning through the Bokanovsky's Process and Hypnopaedia. Freedoms as individual are terminated before they have a chance to grow through these methods of controlling the population. Conditioning has become a process in itself for which “...most men and women will grow up to love their servitude and will never dream of revolution.” Thus, leading to a monotonous society where each and every person has a place in the system and will new learn of a different perspective. Their serving nature is produced artificially through biologically disturb embryos so they match their jobs later on in life. Not only is this horrific in modern-day society, people of the World State are oblivious to how wrong it is.
To go into depth, the Bokanovsky’s Process is a process to create multiple twins that are in the Gamma, Delta, and Epsilon caste or social level. The population of people in the World State are divided into Alpha, Beta, those are not bokanovskified, and Gamma, Delta, and Epsilon which are. Bokanovsky's process is used to produce babies in the novel Brave New World. “One egg, one embryo, one adult-normality. But a bokanovskified egg will bud, will proliferate, will divide. From eight to ninety-six buds, and every bud will grow into a perfectly formed embryo, and every embryo into a full-sized adult. Making ninety-six human beings grow where only one grew before. Progress” where the process consists of a series of arrests in embryo development.
Producing more twins and more twins through each arrest are matched to the size and intelligence of the lower castes. In Bernard’s case he measured eight centimeters shorter than a standard Alpha, “For Gammas, Deltas and Epsilons had been to some extent conditioned to associate corporeal mass with social superiority. Indeed, a faint hypnopædic prejudice in favour of size was universal” and he suffers insecurity because of the physical inadequacy. Their abilities are restricted from full capacity down to basic traits used for the jobs in their later lives. Arguments against this process can be detrimental, “We don't want to change. Every change is a menace to stability.” As inhumane as the routines explained here are, the stabilization is the most important factor at play. Without it, the community would fall apart.
Another important factor in condition the population is through Hypnopaedia.
Hypnopaedia is used to teach lessons of moral consequence, and can be referred to as sleep-teaching or sleep learning, At various points of a child's conditioning, one listens to a prerecorded slogan or lesson in a specific sequence, much like a science. Bernard Marx’s career is working to instill this conditioning. “One hundred repetitions three nights a week for four years,' he says. 'Sixty-two thousand four hundred repetitions make one truth. Idiots!” are examples of how many lessons are repeated throughout a child’s sleep over the years. Hypnopaedia was discovered to be best for moral training, not intellectual because it only causes a memory of the message being broadcast in their sleep, not an understanding. This type of control is very powerful and has the capability of becoming very dangerous in the hands of the wrong person. Unlike the family unit which provides love, affection, and teachings from beyond the classroom, the hatcheries and human production are nothing more than exactly that. They provide the moral background and the societal standards before they enter the World State which prevents the individual from creating their own thoughts and
feelings.
Lastly in the conditioning process, they used a technique similar to Pavlov's dog experiment. While that experiment dealt with dogs, clickers, and treats, in the World State the director lead the group of students to witness Neo-Pavlovian Conditioning Rooms. These conditioning rooms house Gamma, Delta, and Epsilon infants and they introduce them to books and flowers. Each time they enjoy or coo at the objects a siren goes off and the infants receive an electric shock. After about 200 times the babies are ingrained to hate books and flowers. The fear instilled in the young babies are to prevent deconditioning, and to help increase consumption of goods. Books contain knowledge that can stray a lower caste away from their work, and since nature is free the only thing being consumed is transport which is not very accepted by the World State. To increase goods consumed they are conditioned to hate nature but love countryside sports, to consume not only transportation, but tickets, equipment, and other necessary expenses for trips like this. Bernard goes against this train of though proceeding to declare, “But I don't want comfort. I want God, I want poetry, I want real danger, I want freedom, I want goodness. I want sin.” What is established here is the systematic control of the population, and the lack of conscience to make choices individually which leaves outsiders like Bernard, John, and Linda wanting more.
Diving into the moral values and culture of the World State, the readers are introduced to a dystopian future, featuring an established social hierarchy where the Alphas and Betas are the brightest and most physically apt rather than the lesser Gammas, Deltas, and Epsilons. Paring this with conditioning children are keen to how society functions, "Alpha children wear grey. They work much harder than we do, because they're so frightfully clever. I'm really awfully glad I'm a Beta, because I don't work so hard. And then we are much better than the Gammas and Deltas. Gammas are stupid. They all wear green, and Delta children wear khaki. Oh no, I don't want to play with Delta children. And Epsilons are still worse. Social hierarchy is the framework for the World State and almost everything in each sole person’s life is managed by their rank.
The higher ups obviously have more access to learning, traveling, and enjoying the finer things in life. Lower ranking members of society are made to be less intelligent and physically apt, "The lower the caste," said Mr. Foster, "the shorter the oxygen." The first organ affected was the brain. After that the skeleton. At seventy per cent of normal oxygen you got dwarfs. At less than seventy eyeless monsters." The quote shown here summarizes Bokanovsky’s process where they intentionally harm and alter embryos to create up to ninety-six identical copies, much like a fish hatchery in the real world.
Emerging later in the story is a boy know as John the Savage. He lived life on a Savage Reservation, much like a Native American reservation one could visit today, but there was more military force as if they were animals. His upbringing was at the opposite end of life in the World State. He saw the rituals, dancing, religion, sin, uncleanliness and felt pain without the use of the popular drug, soma. He was a child of the Director’s and was put on the reservation so he would not shame his father, but Bernard visited the reservation with Lenina and brought him and the mother Linda back with him. Mustapha Mond explains, “Their world didn’t allow them to take things easily, didn’t allow them to be sane, virtuous, happy. What with mothers and lovers, what with the prohibitions they were not conditioned to obey,”. Life as we know is not easy, life is not fair, but it is a teacher and we all go about life as best as we can. Life is a struggle, but a struggle or endeavor is a foreign concept, especially to those of higher status, “...With the temptations and the lonely remorses, what with all the diseases and the endless isolating pain, what with the uncertainties and the poverty—they were forced to feel strongly. And feeling strongly , how could they be stable?”The morals and customs on the reservation differ from the lack of hygiene, to religious ceremonies. In the World State the technology and standards of living are exponentially higher than reservation life, and the stability is unmatched, there are no wars, fights, or other acts of violence that are regularly on the news in The World State is far superior and has peace and order unlike anything we see today, or so it seems.
Overall, while seemingly robotic in a sense, the World State operates like a factory line, producing humans in hatcheries, classifying people into certain social groups, and praising superficiality. The system has run smoothly for several years but those that become self aware like Bernard and John find that life is not about sleeping around, taking soma holidays, or fitting in with the crowd, and because of that social stability is not worth the price that taxes the population.
social stability. No one society can remain perfect. It is habitual to have fluctuations in stability, but asking humans, which are fallible creatures, to keep up with a perfect system will inevitably lead to its own demise.
The core values of the World State lie in the motto “ Community, Identity, Stability”. Within these words is years of conditioning through the Bokanovsky's Process and Hypnopaedia. Freedoms as individual are terminated before they have a chance to grow through these methods of controlling the population. Conditioning has become a process in itself for which “...most men and women will grow up to love their servitude and will never dream of revolution.” Thus, leading to a monotonous society where each and every person has a place in the system and will new learn of a different perspective. Their serving nature is produced artificially through biologically disturb embryos so they match their jobs later on in life. Not only is this horrific in modern-day society, people of the World State are oblivious to how wrong it is.
To go into depth, the Bokanovsky’s Process is a process to create multiple twins that are in the Gamma, Delta, and Epsilon caste or social level. The population of people in the World State are divided into Alpha, Beta, those are not bokanovskified, and Gamma, Delta, and Epsilon which are. Bokanovsky's process is used to produce babies in the novel Brave New World. “One egg, one embryo, one adult-normality. But a bokanovskified egg will bud, will proliferate, will divide. From eight to ninety-six buds, and every bud will grow into a perfectly formed embryo, and every embryo into a full-sized adult. Making ninety-six human beings grow where only one grew before. Progress” where the process consists of a series of arrests in embryo development.
Producing more twins and more twins through each arrest are matched to the size and intelligence of the lower castes. In Bernard’s case he measured eight centimeters shorter than a standard Alpha, “For Gammas, Deltas and Epsilons had been to some extent conditioned to associate corporeal mass with social superiority. Indeed, a faint hypnopædic prejudice in favour of size was universal” and he suffers insecurity because of the physical inadequacy. Their abilities are restricted from full capacity down to basic traits used for the jobs in their later lives. Arguments against this process can be detrimental, “We don't want to change. Every change is a menace to stability.” As inhumane as the routines explained here are, the stabilization is the most important factor at play. Without it, the community would fall apart.
Another important factor in condition the population is through Hypnopaedia.
Hypnopaedia is used to teach lessons of moral consequence, and can be referred to as sleep-teaching or sleep learning, At various points of a child's conditioning, one listens to a prerecorded slogan or lesson in a specific sequence, much like a science. Bernard Marx’s career is working to instill this conditioning. “One hundred repetitions three nights a week for four years,' he says. 'Sixty-two thousand four hundred repetitions make one truth. Idiots!” are examples of how many lessons are repeated throughout a child’s sleep over the years. Hypnopaedia was discovered to be best for moral training, not intellectual because it only causes a memory of the message being broadcast in their sleep, not an understanding. This type of control is very powerful and has the capability of becoming very dangerous in the hands of the wrong person. Unlike the family unit which provides love, affection, and teachings from beyond the classroom, the hatcheries and human production are nothing more than exactly that. They provide the moral background and the societal standards before they enter the World State which prevents the individual from creating their own thoughts and
feelings.
Lastly in the conditioning process, they used a technique similar to Pavlov's dog experiment. While that experiment dealt with dogs, clickers, and treats, in the World State the director lead the group of students to witness Neo-Pavlovian Conditioning Rooms. These conditioning rooms house Gamma, Delta, and Epsilon infants and they introduce them to books and flowers. Each time they enjoy or coo at the objects a siren goes off and the infants receive an electric shock. After about 200 times the babies are ingrained to hate books and flowers. The fear instilled in the young babies are to prevent deconditioning, and to help increase consumption of goods. Books contain knowledge that can stray a lower caste away from their work, and since nature is free the only thing being consumed is transport which is not very accepted by the World State. To increase goods consumed they are conditioned to hate nature but love countryside sports, to consume not only transportation, but tickets, equipment, and other necessary expenses for trips like this. Bernard goes against this train of though proceeding to declare, “But I don't want comfort. I want God, I want poetry, I want real danger, I want freedom, I want goodness. I want sin.” What is established here is the systematic control of the population, and the lack of conscience to make choices individually which leaves outsiders like Bernard, John, and Linda wanting more.
Diving into the moral values and culture of the World State, the readers are introduced to a dystopian future, featuring an established social hierarchy where the Alphas and Betas are the brightest and most physically apt rather than the lesser Gammas, Deltas, and Epsilons. Paring this with conditioning children are keen to how society functions, "Alpha children wear grey. They work much harder than we do, because they're so frightfully clever. I'm really awfully glad I'm a Beta, because I don't work so hard. And then we are much better than the Gammas and Deltas. Gammas are stupid. They all wear green, and Delta children wear khaki. Oh no, I don't want to play with Delta children. And Epsilons are still worse. Social hierarchy is the framework for the World State and almost everything in each sole person’s life is managed by their rank.
The higher ups obviously have more access to learning, traveling, and enjoying the finer things in life. Lower ranking members of society are made to be less intelligent and physically apt, "The lower the caste," said Mr. Foster, "the shorter the oxygen." The first organ affected was the brain. After that the skeleton. At seventy per cent of normal oxygen you got dwarfs. At less than seventy eyeless monsters." The quote shown here summarizes Bokanovsky’s process where they intentionally harm and alter embryos to create up to ninety-six identical copies, much like a fish hatchery in the real world.
Emerging later in the story is a boy know as John the Savage. He lived life on a Savage Reservation, much like a Native American reservation one could visit today, but there was more military force as if they were animals. His upbringing was at the opposite end of life in the World State. He saw the rituals, dancing, religion, sin, uncleanliness and felt pain without the use of the popular drug, soma. He was a child of the Director’s and was put on the reservation so he would not shame his father, but Bernard visited the reservation with Lenina and brought him and the mother Linda back with him. Mustapha Mond explains, “Their world didn’t allow them to take things easily, didn’t allow them to be sane, virtuous, happy. What with mothers and lovers, what with the prohibitions they were not conditioned to obey,”. Life as we know is not easy, life is not fair, but it is a teacher and we all go about life as best as we can. Life is a struggle, but a struggle or endeavor is a foreign concept, especially to those of higher status, “...With the temptations and the lonely remorses, what with all the diseases and the endless isolating pain, what with the uncertainties and the poverty—they were forced to feel strongly. And feeling strongly , how could they be stable?”The morals and customs on the reservation differ from the lack of hygiene, to religious ceremonies. In the World State the technology and standards of living are exponentially higher than reservation life, and the stability is unmatched, there are no wars, fights, or other acts of violence that are regularly on the news in The World State is far superior and has peace and order unlike anything we see today, or so it seems.
Overall, while seemingly robotic in a sense, the World State operates like a factory line, producing humans in hatcheries, classifying people into certain social groups, and praising superficiality. The system has run smoothly for several years but those that become self aware like Bernard and John find that life is not about sleeping around, taking soma holidays, or fitting in with the crowd, and because of that social stability is not worth the price that taxes the population.