Attack on Utopian Society in Brave New World

Attack on Utopian Society in Brave New World

Huxley’s Brave New World is an attack on Utopian Society. Having a perfect society seems ideal since it takes away the pains and struggles of the real world. Things such as finding a loved one, heartbreak, deciding on a career path, being successful, and raising a family. This novel focuses on what the world would be like if it were a utopian society, and the reader can see that it is not as perfect as it seems. It shows how technology and engineering can get to a point where it is too much, and has the ability to control almost every element of society and the human race. Every person is engineered, and born to a certain caste. Each person is “conditioned” so that they only perform certain tasks and have no ability to excel at anything else. A person’s fate is decided for them. The lower castes especially, since these castes perform laborious tasks, they are cloned so the work performed becomes identical to the others. Just as the humans are clones, so are the products they produce. As Marilyn Monroe once said, “imperfection is beauty…” If there are no imperfections to the human race, than what is the beauty of the humans and each individual’s uniqueness? This so-called perfect society is actually the complete opposite. Everything unique about humans is taken away, and people are “manufactured,” not born. Although humans strive for perfection, when one actually gets a taste of what it is like, it is not what they expect. John, comes from the real world, he is thought of as a “savage.” When he arrives in this New World, he is disgusted by society and the lack of passion it contains, so much that the novel results in John’s suicide. A Utopian society, in reality actually becomes the dystopian society. Lois Lowry’s The Giver shows ideas of dystopian society similar to Huxley. This novel is set in the World State, which represents a Utopian Society. This society is highly controlled by technology, and people do not have any ability to be unique. The people in this society have predestined futures. As embryos, their futures are already decided for them. They can be part of the Alpha, Beta, Gamma, Delta, or Epsilon castes. The humans that are destined to be a Gamma, Delta, or Epsilon castes are treated as embryos. They have alcohol in their “tubes” and have oxygen deprivation. This is so these embryos will grow up to have lower intelligence, and will not be tempted to excel and succeed, or do things of higher intelligence like Alphas and Betas do. As babies, books are placed in front of them, and when the babies go for the books they get mildly shocked. This trains these babies to stray away from books so they never have the temptation to read, and learn more. These three classes are also subject to the Bokanovsky Process. This is basically cloning these embryos is “mass amounts.” These clones will be able to identical work as the original so identical mass amounts of products are able to be produced. The embryos are also conditioned to what types of jobs they will have to do when they grow up. For example, those who will have to work in tropical climates are “heat conditioned” and introduced to diseases, so that when they go to work the heat does not bother them and they are immune to the diseases. Once someone’s fate is determined, it cannot be changed. The people, however, do not know they there are more to life and that if they tried they can succeed. All they know is their social destiny. “All conditioning aims at that: making people like their inescapable destiny” (16). The people in the New Word lack emotion and passion. The people are conditioned to not know any of these feelings. This is the reason most literature is banned, because people do not understand the emotions of the books. Love does not exist. The humans are pretty much manufactured in laboratories, so there is not the love between man and woman to produce offspring. The children also do not have parents or siblings, so they do not know familial love either. Sex is encouraged, however, not sex because two people love each other, but more because of physical attraction. It is casual sex, and group-sex is a common activity. It is considered normal, and when one child felt uncomfortable with the idea, he was taken to a therapist. The reference of taking Soma is mentioned many times throughout the novel. Soma helps to numb people’s emotions so they do not feel anything. Similar to every other aspect of these people’s lives, there emotions are controlled as well. “All the advantages of Christianity and alcohol; none of their defects” (220). For example, when Bernard does not want to have sex with Lenina, Lenina makes him take a large dosage of Soma so he does sleep with her. While visiting the Savage Reservation, Lenina is disgusted and overwhelmed with it, so she takes Soma to handle herself. In this society, everything is controlled by technology or something, and Soma is a way for people’s emotions to be controlled. Soma ensures people will not have any “different” feelings from everyone else.
The reader can see a sharp difference between this Utopian society and the real world. When John, a character who comes from the “real world” or “savage reservation” he has an undeniable attraction to Lenina, however, Lenina does not feel the same because she cannot. John wants love, and Lenina does not know how to feel love, so she just assumes he wants to casually sleep with her. When she attempts to sleep with him, John slaps her and calls her a whore. “He shut his eyes, he shook his head with the gesture of a dog shaking its ears as it emerges from the water. Detestable thought! He was ashamed of himself. Pure and vestal modesty” (33). Lenina, does not know love though, she just thinks John wants to sleep with her because that’s how society works. John, on the other hand faces the struggle of wanting to love Lenina but not being able to get the same feelings out of her. This shows the real world being more desirable. In the real world, people are able to feel emotion and passion; they are not numbed by Soma. Without passion and emotion, the characters cannot enjoy religion, music, or literature because all of those things take emotion to understand and enjoy.
The end of the novel shows the real world being a better place after all. After real-world John spends some time in World State, a so-called Utopia, he ends up killing himself because he cannot bear it anymore and is disgusted by the way humans are manufactured and treated. Mind also lets Bernard know that he will be exiled, and admits that being exiled is actually a good thing. Bernard will be exiled to a normal place, where he can live normally and not under Utopian Society rules. This goes to show trying to make everything perfect, can actually have the opposite effect. People need struggles and differences to be happy. It’s the struggles that make the good things in life even better, and the being able to have emotions to feel things. Exile is actually a good thing. Huxley’s ideas about Utopia actually being a dystopia can be found in Lois Lowry’s The Giver as well. In this novel, all the characters are “manufactured” and all live equally. Everyone gets the same amount of food, has professions picked out for them, and live in the same type of houses. No one is greater than anyone else. The people in this society, similarly to the World State, do not know much about love or feelings, or anything. They are not able to succeed, excel, or choose the path they want for their lives. As the novel progresses, the reader can see tat the Utopian Society, is not a happy perfect world. “The life where nothing was never unexpected. Or inconvenient. Or unusual. The life without colour, pain, or past.” Similar to Bernard getting exiled at the end of Huxley’s work, at the end of Lowry’s Jonas finds himself escaping the Utopian society and on his way to the real world, where things, in reality, are much better. “For the first time, he heard something that he knew to be music. He heard people singing. Behind him, across vast distances of time and space, from the place he had left, he though he heard music too. But perhaps, it was only an echo.”
Through the works of Huxley and Lowry, the readers can see that Utopian societies are actually more dystopian. Life is manufactured to be “perfect” where everyone is equal, and no body has to suffer. This manufactured life takes away the beauty of it though. The characters are not able to experience the great emotions, and joys of life. They are not able to choose what they love to do, and feel accomplished when they do something right. The characters that venture away, or are not part of Utopian life are ultimately the happy ones.

Works Cited

Lowry, Lois. The Giver. Boston” Houghton Mifflin, 1993.

Cited: Lowry, Lois. The Giver. Boston” Houghton Mifflin, 1993.