A Comparison of the Effectiveness of Dystopian Authors: Aldous Huxley and Ray Bradbury

As humanity entered the twentieth century a breakdown in social convention and the resultant blossoming of social ideas lead to the conception of a new literary sub-genre, soft science fiction. Inspired by works including “The Iron Heel” by Jack London1, it used the deficiencies and corruptions in both capitalist and communist culture to predict a dystopian future. These counter or anti-utopian societies often focus on the dehumanisation of the proletariat, and how the ruling class use fear and war to control those below them. Every novel is as dissimilar as the authors who wrote them, with both the tools of oppression and the extent to which they are applied differing greatly. Although the books also vary in the style they are written the inherent trends that connect the sub-genre are obvious. (129 Words) However before the two novels can be thoroughly compared a brief background of both will be useful. Written in 1953, “Fahrenheit 451” is an American novel set in a war torn twenty fourth century where the ironically named “Firemen” control the outlawing of books through extremely violent methods. The narrative follows the protagonist Guy Montang, on his journey from Fireman to the unlikely leader of a group of galvanised intellectual exiles, as his world is overturned by nuclear war. On the other hand “Brave New World” was written earlier in 1932, and is set on the other side of the Atlantic in AD 2540. In this future world the planet has been unified under a “free” world state, eradicating both the need and purpose of war. Although similar to “Fahrenheit 451” in the fact that books to have been banned, a far more diverse range of oppressive techniques are exhibited in Huxley’s novel, ranging from the Bokanovsky process, where embryos are divided to create an identical population, to sleep learning where children are taught to obey the intricate class system of this highly “developed” world. Unlike “Fahrenheit 451”, there are far more characters with each