According to the professor of English at the university of Arkansas, M Keith Booker, an, “ Anti - Utopia (is) a non existent society described in considerable detail and normally located in time and space that the author intended a contemporaneous reader to view as a criticism of utopianism or some particular eutopia” (3). Aldous Huxley’s Brave New World falls under this genre. It depicts a society in which throws conventional morals out the window and citizens finds happiness through drugs and constant entertainment. Huxley’s novel partially takes inspiration by current events (pre world war two) and problems, but, also satirizes of Plato’s Republic. The similarities between the two are obvious, the difference is Huxley over-exaggerates
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Towards the end of The Republic, Plato uses Socrates to disparage artists, especially poets. He tries to invalidate them by suggesting that, “they may not have remembered when they saw their works that these were but imitations thrice removed from the truth, and could easily be made without any knowledge of the truth,” (Plato Book X). Furthermore, he explains why there should be censorship by explaining that if society would, “allow the honeyed muse to enter, either in epic or lyric verse, not law and the reason of mankind, which by common consent have ever been deemed best, but pleasure and pain will be the rulers in our State,” (Plato Book X). In Brave New World, Mustapha Mond explains the extreme censorship of the regime to John the Savage by arguing that art and culture are, “ the price we have to pay for stability. You’ve got to choose between happiness and what people used to call high art. We’ve sacrificed the high art. We have the feelies and the scent organ instead.” (Huxley 220). Mond later goes on to reveal that the World State (government) even restricts scientific advancement highly restricted when he remarks that that, “ all our science is just a cookery book, with an orthodox theory of cooking that nobody’s allowed to question, and a list of recipes that mustn’t be added to except by special permission from the head cook.” (Huxley 225). The level of censorship takes a step-up from Plato’s. In The Republic’s utopia has art gone, but people can still pursue knowledge, However Brave New World allows neither. It goes to show how censorship is a slippery slope. It can result in art, as well as science and many other forms of expression, being banned because they could oppose the ideals of the regime, by not painting the picture needed and exposing its flaws. This view of censorship leads to
Towards the end of The Republic, Plato uses Socrates to disparage artists, especially poets. He tries to invalidate them by suggesting that, “they may not have remembered when they saw their works that these were but imitations thrice removed from the truth, and could easily be made without any knowledge of the truth,” (Plato Book X). Furthermore, he explains why there should be censorship by explaining that if society would, “allow the honeyed muse to enter, either in epic or lyric verse, not law and the reason of mankind, which by common consent have ever been deemed best, but pleasure and pain will be the rulers in our State,” (Plato Book X). In Brave New World, Mustapha Mond explains the extreme censorship of the regime to John the Savage by arguing that art and culture are, “ the price we have to pay for stability. You’ve got to choose between happiness and what people used to call high art. We’ve sacrificed the high art. We have the feelies and the scent organ instead.” (Huxley 220). Mond later goes on to reveal that the World State (government) even restricts scientific advancement highly restricted when he remarks that that, “ all our science is just a cookery book, with an orthodox theory of cooking that nobody’s allowed to question, and a list of recipes that mustn’t be added to except by special permission from the head cook.” (Huxley 225). The level of censorship takes a step-up from Plato’s. In The Republic’s utopia has art gone, but people can still pursue knowledge, However Brave New World allows neither. It goes to show how censorship is a slippery slope. It can result in art, as well as science and many other forms of expression, being banned because they could oppose the ideals of the regime, by not painting the picture needed and exposing its flaws. This view of censorship leads to