Huxley’s Brave New World (1932) is a satirical novel that presents grossly exaggerated and absurd constructs as the norm. This World State is described as the ideal place; it is the best thing that happened for humanity. It is civilized civilization. The World State is full of everything one could ever want: sex without commitment, easy access to drugs, and essentially guarantees a state of being content through conditioning. Moreover, death is no longer something to fear and feelings do not exist in their full spectrum. It is through Huxley’s use of satire and presentation of these ideals that made me aware of how those aspects form my definition of what it is to be uniquely human.…
We’re fascinated by the terrible things character's face and for years now, authors have evaluated and ridiculed the “perfect” society to share their concerns about humanity. Brave New World by Aldous Huxley presents a dystopian, emotionless and controlled world where all individuality is masked by their false understanding of “happiness”. Soma, is their armament against the effects of conflict and the only way to indulge in their inescapable life. True happiness is only possible through the perception and feeling of emotions, soma simply provides a distraction from the truth of a world gone wrong. In fact, it appears the plot, tone and characters from the novel all display examples of soma and the belief that happiness is achieved within.…
In her investigative essay entitled “Alienation in Aldous Huxley’s Brave New World,” Josephine McQuail explores the recurring theme of alienation in Huxley’s dystopian classic, touching upon “psychological, sociological, sexual, biological, and even aesthetic” (McQuail 32) alienation for several major characters. She expresses her belief that Huxley’s main message in the novel, “only the alienated individual… can achieve true happiness” (McQuail 31), is flawed. While this claim has its merits, the four main characters of the novel, all iconoclasts in their society, meet some kind of unhappy end, invalidating Huxley’s message. However, all other people but the four main characters-- Bernard, Helmholtz, Mustapha, and John-- are incapable of any emotions besides those conditioned to them.…
In Brave New World John begins to whip himself to “purify” himself due to having sexual relations with Lenina. In chapter 13, Lenina kept pursuing John for sex “laying her hands on his shoulder, pressed herself against him. “Put your arms around me,” she commanded. “Hug me till you drug me, honey...knew words that sang and were spells and beat drums. pg.193-194.” this quote shows her tempting him which evidently succeeded her into having sex with him, but only resulted in John calling her a “whore” and being enraged with anger towards her because he betrayed himself and his beliefs. Lenina manipulated him into having sex with her so that she can feel satisfied but it goes beyond what John believes in,which led him into whipping himself in chapter 18. Knowing John’s situation of being an outcast and not able to conform or agree with society’s rules and morals, having sex with Lenina made his issue even worse due to not wanting sexual relations with Lenina. John did not agree with his feeling of sexual relations with Lenina, but she tempted him, which only caused John to go against what hebelieves in, which caused his problem to increase which led to self punishment. In the end, John hung himself due to him being unable to live in a society where he’s outcasted and doesn’t agree upon any of their…
In a world where there aren’t enough problems for healthy personal development, do we create artificial mental distress with chemicals for balance? This section of the piece of literature known as Brave New World by Aldous Huxley is a piece of literature that makes a lot of broad points about ideology, has characters that in ways seem to be pawns of these ideologies but lacks a setting, is written in third person, and has a very interesting plot and conflict.…
Similarly, Aldous Huxley’s Brave New World illustrates the peril of an all-powerful state in harsh reality, demonstrating the dangers of such a governance on the human psyche through the protagonists’ decline in mental health, which ultimately results in his eventual…
Brave New World intrigued me, even before I began reading because it has been said to be complicated, provocative, and prophetic. In Huxley’s vision of the future, humans are produced the same way consumer goods are produced on an assembly line. It was hard to imagine a world without childbirth, where human reproduction became solely about maximizing efficiency. I felt pity for the students because they felt no positive connotation to the words “parent” and “home”. They no longer had a personal connection to family, feeling no love or emotion at all, which to me is the entire basis of humanity. They feel lucky to be spared all the pain and suffering that come with emotions, and although many of us probably feel it would be easier, with pain comes the understanding of real happiness. Even the traditional taboos about sex have been discarded; children engage in erotic play because they have been conditioned to believe that sex has no emotional or moral…
These are some of the problems that we experience and struggle with in our lives. Huxley sees this and tries to sell us the idea of a utopian world by showing that sameness is good, and difference is not good. In the book two characters feel isolated, and different then the rest, Bernard Marx, and John the Savage. Bernard's isolationism is shown when Bernard does not experience "the coming" and the solidarity service while everyone else does. "He was miserably isolated now as he had been when the service began- more isolated by reason of his unreplenished emptiness, his dead satiety. Separate and unatoned, while the others were being fused into the Greater Being." (Huxley 76-77). Through this I believe that Huxley is saying that being different, and feeling different is not a good thing. Although this is a very strong message that Huxley conveys, there is one that is much stronger. John's struggles are much greater because he is much different from the rest of society. At the end of the novel john commits suicide by hanging himself, "Slowly, very slowly, like two unhurried compass needles, the feet turned towards the right; north, north-east, east, south-east, south, south-south-west, then paused, and after a few seconds, turned as unhurriedly back towards the left. South-south-west, south, south-east, east..." (Huxley 237). This quote is explaining how john…
To begin with, John was not manufactured on an assembly line in the World State and thus has not been conditioned to the conformities of the various castes. John comes from a reservation in New Mexico for savages where his mother teaches him to read and be educated in a society where knowledge is not widely seen. Because of the knowledge John has acquired, he cannot believe the absence of emotion within the people when he arrives to the overly technological state. An example of the disbelief John has on the insensitive nature of the people can be seen when he lashes out at the children for aimlessly engaging in horseplay around his mother’s deathbed. To an outsider of the nation, the conditioning of children to refrain from forming bonds or having a real sense of the emotion seems absurd and cynical on the government’s part.…
Within contemporary American society, there is a large focus on self pleasure, and being able to stay happy throughout the hardships and struggles of life. Our lives shift in different directions as we change as people, but our end goal is always happiness, whether immediate or requiring investment. Within the shallow society of Brave New World, the people constantly search for pleasure and release, much like our own world. However, they are heavily inclined by the government to search for the short-term solution to curing their desire for pleasure. Through Brave New World, Aldous Huxley provides a relevant warning about a society focused purely on short term pleasure solutions, whether sexually driven, or driven by drugs, and the extensive…
Certain types of novels, articles, or even images has social intentions. One of them is satire, "It is a style of writing, or art, which ridicules or criticizes its subject often as an attempt to accomplish change." Which is what both the Adbusters image and Aldous Huxley's novel Brave New World bring about. Both these pieces have created a question and fear on what these technological advancements can lead a society into. Both Brave New World and Adbusters share the same satirical message that science and technology is created for an advancement in social and cultural developments, however ironically it resulted in a degradation of social and cultural relationships.…
Aldous Huxley, author of Brave New World, demonstrates that use of technology that we use today. Comparing the book to society today, in 632 A.F. The government had owned all of the new studies, almost too much of the experiments. It had way too much control over the social lives of the natural citizens. Every new body that is born becomes of the governments liking, which leaves “natural” child birth out of the picture. It is known as the Bokanosky Process, taking the ovaries out of a woman and hypnopaedic conditioning. The mindset the government had was they were constantly making newer and better technology to create “perfect” individuals without error.…
“Community, Identity, Stability” ( Huxley 1). The dystopian society of the future lives by this motto in everything it does. One of the first things Huxley mentions in his novel is this hypocritical slogan. Community and identity are controlled by the apparent stability that the government has created. There is no true identity or community when the free will of each person is being suppressed. In Aldous Huxley’s novel, Brave New World, the author uses John's life into the tribe and sudden submergence in the new world to display that natural human instincts will always outweigh the illusion of happiness and stability.…
Huxley presents the drug soma, which compares to all the painkillers in our world today. By taking the user on a “holiday,” it makes the user unaware of his surroundings. When one takes soma, he would escape the dolorous reality and enter an elated world. One can compare soma with painkillers. People have accommodated with using pain relievers even in at unnecessary times. The pain tolerance level of our society rapidly decreases; therefore, whenever the slightest pain arises, people take painkillers. One can also compare the effects of soma with the effects of painkillers in the sense that both belittle pain. Instead of enduring the pain, one would take a pain reliever or soma to make the pain go away. No more feeling lachrymose about anything anymore because of drugs. Both drugs show how the societies cannot face pain on any level, but instead act craven, and take a drug. Life in Brave New World cannot function without soma, and the same applies in our world.…
The concept of freedom is always changing and is often open to interpretation. What, exactly, is freedom? and why is it so important that we be free? In Brave New World, Aldous Huxley leaves the reader in continuous suspense over which character is truly free or has freedom. The citizens of the World State do not possess any notion of freedom, they are unable to control the way they think, feel and make decisions; however, John has the ability to do all of these things. The World State holds the citizens captive of their most fundamental rights to freedom through Soma, the media and hypnopedia; whereas, John, free from society’s captivities, has complete control over himself and his mind.…