It’s hard to imagine yet somehow so extremely close to us is the possibility of a world of ideal perfection where there is no room or acceptance of individuality. Yet, as we strive towards the growth of technology and improvement of our daily living we come closer to closing the gap between the freedom of emotions, self understanding, and of speech and the devastation of a dystopia. A utopia, or perfect world, gone awry is displayed in Aldous Huxley’s provocative novel Brave New World.
Dystopia is drawn on “political and emotional events, anchoring its vision of a nightmarish future in contemporary fears of totalitarian ideology and ncontrolled advances in technology and science” (Baker 22). It is the situation that costs a piece of an unhealthy environment for human beings, is the theme of the novel. The dystopian setting is brought about by technology and by higher authorities. As technology increases, the use for human beings in the work force decreases leaving an overwhelming amount of depression among humans.
Therefore, a way to continue the production of technological findings is by bringing up humans from day one to accept their unhappiness as normal. By “breeding” human beings to accept the fact hat they are born to do a specific group. Higher authorities know the illimination of humans’ emotions is useful to stabilize what they think to be a utopian society. Huxley portrays a “perfect dystopia” where scientists “breed people to order” in a specific class (Baker 2). The purpose of this paper is to shows that Aldous Huxley clearly introduces a river of cases and incidences, which adds to the dystopia in his science fiction novel Brave New World.
Aldous Huxley was born on July 26, 1894 in England into a family of novelists and scientists. Leonard Huxley, Aldous’s father, was an essayist nd an editor who also was a respected, leading biologist in the time of Darwinism. Both his brother and half-brother worked in the science field. Huxley received an extensive training in both medicine and in the arts and sciences. Huxley was described by V. S. Pritchett as “that rare being-the prodigy, the educable young man, the peremial asker of unusual questions” (Introduction to Aldous Huxley 1). Huxley wrote a series of novels and essays as his career progressed.
Two of his best known novels are Brave New World and Island. These two novels depict a world of dystopia. In Brave New World it’s author “shifts is mildly satiric observations of a limited group of people to a broader and more ironic satire of a utopian society” (Introduction to Aldous Huxley 2). Island is novel of a Utopia which is constructed much in the same principles as Brave New World. The difference between these two pieces of writing is that Island is an approving form of Utopia while in Brave New World we look at the Utopia as being a harmful way of life.
Huxley’s works after these two novels were volumes of essays. In his assays, topics expressed were ones that other authors hadn’t truly developed before the late 1930s, when Huxley began to write them. In the essay called Brave New World Revisited that was written in 1950 Aldous Huxley brings forward the issues he had begun to express in the novel in which the essays’ name had been derived from. Overpopulation, mind control, and environmental destruction were the focuses in the novel. These topics were looked upon by Aldous as problems.
They were dilemmas that Huxley “foretold” of the future. This essay is interesting because of the many truths that have aroused since it was written such as the fact of overpopulation. Huxley’s life was cut short on November 22, 1963, a few onths after he wrote his last essay Literature and Science. He had spent most of his life in the United States by the time he died in his home in California. Brave New World is set in the future A. F. (After Ford) 632 in a society where war, hunger, suffering, disease are illiminated along with the freedom to have your own emotions, will, and mind.
In this society, humans are “conceived and mass-produced in test tubes and are genetically engineered with standardized traits” (Critical Survey of Long Fiction 2). Children are raised in laboratories were they are conditioned emotionally nd socially through technology and the use of drugs. In their adult lives the “children” are part of a social class already predetermined for them before birth. Their predestined lives are filled with promiscuous sex and the shunning of any type of emotions towards the opposite sex.
When the “savage”, otherwise known as John, is brought into this society he causes conflict. He had been raised in a much more normal (as we may call it) society and when brought to the new world he was shocked, confused and unaccepting of the new ways of living. John does not accept this new world society and goes against it. One of the first signs of dystopia being displayed in this book is introduced with a twist of hypocrisy. A main character of the novel named Bernard Marx went to the Director of Hatchery to ask for permission to go to the Savage Reservation, something that very few people got to do.
While in the office waiting to get his permit initialed the Director begins speaking of the past and how he had once been in the Savage Reservation with his girlfriend. This happens to be something that greatly shocks Bernard. As high authority, the Director is not supposed to have such emotions where he draws on memories. History in the new world is forbidden. Books were items that were greatly censored by the controllers of the world. The Director speaks of events of his past that affected him greatly. He spoke of the girlfriend he had taken and how she had disappeared as he slept one night.
To this day, the Director explained to Bernard, he still had dreams about those days about 25 years before. Marx felt extremely uncomfortable because “a man so conventional, so scrupulously correct as the Director-and to commit so gross a solecism! It made him want to hide his face, to run out of the room” (Huxley 112). The Director surely showed ow a dystopian world these people lived in. Even as authority, he was not able to fight back his emotions. This man was different from others in the society just as Bernard was. He knew that the conditioning passed on to the people was only good for those who choose not to see how they truly felt.
Huxley used the Director wisely making the point that it is impossible to live in a world where emotions are to be trapped in side of a person. His view comes across as one that we must pay a price to keep stability of a Utopia alive. Bernard is scolded by the Director of Hatchery for being different himself. Mr. Marx is accused of not being “infantile in his emotional life” when the Director is speaking of his uncommon feelings for Lenina, a worker in the hatchery plant (Huxley 116). A threat of being sent to Iceland is given to the “offender” as a punishment.
His feelings for a woman is unusual and not accepted in the new world because of the outrageous (in this writer’s opinion) fact that it is a threat to the stability of the world which they live in. Stability can be though of as a dystopian characteristic of this novel. Stability forces the people of the society, who are far from being individuals, to be closed to their feelings. Dystopia is also displayed in this imperfect world when it is shown that even with all the technology and the knowledge of the scientists they still haven’t figured out a way to completely end pregnancy among the women.
Huxley is giving the impression that the Lord is more powerful than all of the technology in the new world. This one mistake that haunts the people of the society is so crucial because births given my females are sins. They are preposterous and ridiculously embarrassing. Children who are born from a bottle instead of natural birth are shunned in the new world and his dystopian idea adds to the dystopian setting. Another display of dystopia in this English writers novel is that even in all it’s perfection, the people are of the society turn to a drug named soma to run away from their unhappiness.
Linda, the mother of the “savage”, comes back from the reservation with Bernard. She had been the woman that the Director had mentioned before to Bernard. John was the Director’s son. This in itself is a shock to everyone and a destruction of the Director’s reputation. When Linda returned to the new world she was shunned for the birth of her son and she went into a soma holiday. This eant that she took many tablets of soma until she no longer was a normal individual. She was in a comatose state while on soma.
The use of the legal drug was to make her forget her emotions and her pain. It was to hide the fact that even with the conditioning every new world citizen received they could not be in a total utopia. John showed his savage characteristics with his anger and disapproval for soma. In a desperate moment next to his mother he spoke ” ‘But, Linda! Don’t you know me? ‘ ” (Huxley 244). Aldous cleverly worked into his novel that they could not be machines as they had somewhat had been conditioned to be with no haracteristics of emotions as that of “normal” human beings.
The most outstanding and shocking moment (to this writer) is when Mustapha Mond, who happens to be one of the new worlds’ seven controllers, admits that the world they inhabit is far from perfect. The controller says to John “he who makes the laws is free to break the laws” (Clareson 3). Huxley gave the dystopia in his novel a climax when we find out that the controller along with the other 6 controllers have gone into the forbidden books and read them. This fact is showing that even the commanders of the new world cannot control their interest for history and Shakespeare.
They reach and condemn those who do not follow their preachings; yet, they are hypocrites of their own beliefs. In conclusion, this paper has proven that in Aldous Huxley’s novel Brave New World there was a numerous amount of dystopia displayed. The first evidence of dystopia of the novel discussed in this paper is presented when the Director of Hatcheries is looses himself in his thoughts of the past. Following that evidence, there is the one where people such as Bernard are not able to express how they feel or how they think. Women can get pregnant and there is no sure way for the scientists to end this process of nature in this dystopia.
The fourth evidence is how soma is used by people to accept their unhappiness even though the world around them is supposed to ensure perfection in everything and everyone. In the conversation and confessions of the controller to John, the controller states that “Shakespeare is forbidden both because it’s old and beautiful, qualities that might make people turn against the synthetic beauty of the brave new world, and because the people wouldn’t understand it” (Baker 132). This is part of the fifth and final proof discussed in this paper where dystopia is displayed in the novel Brave New World written by Aldous Huxley.