In today’s day and age, it is almost impossible to feel completely “free”. No matter where we go or who we interact with, there is always someone more powerful than ourselves watching our every move, just waiting for us to slip up. Whether it’s your boss, law enforcement, or a strict teacher, these figures never fail to make their omnipresent looming known. These themes are constantly prevalent in our media, including books such as Aldous Huxley’s Brave New World. Throughout Aldous Huxley’s “Brave New World”, there is an abundance of symbolic patterns and hidden metaphors.
Whether discussing the dark intentions of the drug “soma”, or what it truly means to be happy, it is impossible to become bored with the web of meaning Huxley has created. In Brave New World, we are introduced to the concept of originality, or in this case, the lack thereof. When you’re preprogrammed to be as normal and predictable as possible, any sudden changes or abnormalities stick out like a sore thumb. Any unique thoughts, personal ambition, or mindfulness of the flawed World State is seen as rouge and extremely dangerous.
Which is why it becomes the leaders of the world state’s job to prevent that from ever happening. With a seemingly flawless reproduction, placement, and education programs, the leaders of the world order take control over the population like that. Leaving (almost) zero room for error in their pre-designed, perfectly orderly system. The leaders of the world state actively control their citizens into being mindless workers by discouraging them to think freely, which is Aldous Huxley’s way of trying to make the reader realize that they are in the same situation.
From Alphas to Epsilons, any gender can theoretically fit into any of the classes of the social order. However, as the story progresses we have no interactions with any female characters above Beta status. The female characters of Brave New World, although seemingly uneducated and inferior to the male characters, make a big statement about how the World State is designed. Most are stripped of their ability to reproduce, and are encouraged to date, sleep with, and interact with as many men as possible– a concept drastically different to ones we see today.
Because these women are socially forbidden to have monogamous relationships, most have zero problem with taking some soma and enjoying a night-in with hubby # 34. The hypnopaedic phrase “Everyone belongs to everyone else” (Huxley 46) validating these backwards re ng these backwards relationship standards: become as natural as breathing when you’re taught to “explore” those around you. But, like most things in Brave New World, this concept wasn’t created by the public. As children, the citizens of this new world were subjected to “Erotic Play” in the garden to desensitize them to the ultimate distraction– sex.
The concept is so deeply embedded in their self conscious, that even when Lenina has a second to consider monogamy, Fanny Crowne convinces her that “One’s got to make the effort, one’s got to play the game. ” (Huxley 46) Women, similarly to soma, are never seen in positions of power because they are being used to distract men (especially alpha men) from noticing anything imperfect or unusual about their controlling society; playing the game Fanny Crowe suggests. Think about it, for most of their lives the population spends their time doing three things, working, having sex, or taking soma.
Soma is already used outside the workplace to displace any bad feelings or thoughts, and sleeping with women is just the same! All they do outside of their hypnotically repetitive jobs is feel good and forget– the perfect distraction. The concept is so perfectly selfish that there is no choice but to ignore the world around them, to succumb to the illusion of normality and perfection. Also, because the women in Brave New World never seem to do anything extraordinary, this may be Huxley suggesting that all women are the same – mindless, impressionable and ultimately powerless.
As the delusion continues, many find themselves turning to soma. The words “Euphoric, narcotic, pleasantly hallucinant”(Huxley 55) only begin to scratch the surface of this irresistible drug. In Brave New World, the drug Soma is everyone’s best friend. It is a hallucinogenic drug which main goal is to transport the user to a happier place at the slightest sign of discomfort. “Holidays” as the public like to call them, consist of a day, week, or even month of a hallucination that makes the user forget about any problems they may have encountered.
The phrase “Take a holiday from reality whenever you like, and come back without so much as a headache or a mythology” (Huxley 56) providing an excuse to ignore life’s simplest problems; by pretending they’re not there. Now, as much as I would like to blame the citizens on their evident government approved drug addiction, the only person to blame is Mustapha Mond himself. Mustapha Mond (also known as the biggest hypocrite ever) used to be an independent scientist who used to read Shakespeare and the Bible. However, at the same time he also censors unique ideas and controls a tyrannical state.
For Mond, humankind’s ultimate goals are stability and happiness, but in the process he has singlehandedly helped destroy the identity of the world. By endorsing and helping perfect Soma, Mond essentially took an eraser to the complexity of man. In an instant, Mond took away religion, family, democracy, and individuality, by training the human race like dogs to worship a small red pill. By using soma to repress any remotely negative thoughts, Mond has the whole of Western Europe in the palm of his hand, controlling the people like puppets on strings.
In this bland world of diversion and distraction, it only makes sense that the people of the World State are as bland as the world around them. But once again, there is only Mustapha Mond to blame. The People of the World state weren’t just raised the same, they were born the same. Rather than every citizen having a unique set of genes, using what the New World calls the “Bokanovsky’s Process”, 96 twins are produced from the same egg. This process, deemed effective and progressive, strips the public of their individuality before they take their first breath.
This so called “major instrument of social stability”(Huxley 6) ensures that ninety-six identical twins are working ninety-six identical machines; living the same, identical lives until they die. The Director of this specific process called it perfect, mentioning that “You really know where you are. For the first time in history. ‘ He quoted the planetary motto. ‘Community, Identity, Stability. “( Huxley 6). But it seems even the director has been fooled by a higher power. When thinking of the phrases “Community, Identity, and stability” the last thing I think about is this dystopian tragedy.
The phrase reads like a fictitious math problem, adding to the illusion of stability to keep the public oblivious. Let’s begin with community; the only sense of community the citizens of the new world have is sex, and to be apart of a community is much more than that. The word community means “a feeling of fellowship with others, as a result of sharing common attitudes, interests, and goals”. However, none of these brainwashed victims even have goals. Like, mice running on a wheel these people do the same assigned job everyday before having meaningless relationships with faceless suitors.
They have no ambition, and are never around long enough to learn too much about their partners. In fact, anything besides satisfying the selfish itch of lust is seen as socially unacceptable. These people don’t have dreams or goals, they’re walking zombies only concerned about their appearance and crude activities; the last place to be considered a community. And as far as Identity goes, it goes without question that the unique are extinct. These people, who have been designed to copy, know only what they have been told. As babies, they were electrically shocked to create instincts against or for what their “batch” is designed to do.
As children they were subjected to hypnopaedia telling them what to like and what to do. They were desensitized to death and sex, finding their only form of enjoyment in the later or soma. They lived out their days following these encoded instructions until they died in the same illusion they were provided in life. The so called “stability” the world lived in, was based on a rigged system, where nobody was allowed any space to think or be individuals. And the creation of this book was most likely Huxley’s attempt to make us realize that we are in danger of sharing that same fate.