Aldous Huxley’s Brave New World imagines a stark utopia—one that defies expectations and reveals the sinister byproducts of a society powered by efficiency and stability. The novel focuses around three main characters—John, Bernard, and Lenina—whose contrasts communicate important messages about human nature. Written two years after the great American stock market crash of 1929, Brave New World aims to illustrate the effects of technology on social structure. Huxley exposes a more serious reality that hides under the facade of perfect consumerism. In the ‘brave new’ World State, happiness has been leached out of traditional institutions such as family. Instead, it comes in the form of drugs and excessive sex. The novel effectively explores
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Emotions such as love, curiosity, and loyalty find themselves banished from regular thoughts. The concepts of family, monogamy, and romance themselves become associated with atmospheres that are squalid both “psychically and physically.” At the beginning of the novel, World Controller Mustapha Mond tells a group of students that emotion leads to instability and “dangerous, insane, obscene relationships,” (37). He states that notions of ownership and exclusiveness are “narrow channellings of impulse and energy,” and that these emotions act much like a singular hole in a pressurized water pipe (38). Because of the proliferation of such principles, children grow up associating natural happiness as ugly and disturbing. In fact, a commonly promoted hypnopaedic saying declares that “When the individual feels, the community reels,” (94). In order to eliminate thoughts of monogamy, citizens of the World State are repeatedly taught that “everyone belongs to everyone else.” By consequence, people no longer feel jealous or heartbroken and instead embrace man-made ‘designer’ happiness instead of natural happiness. However, the introduction of John the Savage’s character poses a sudden contrast. John, a societal anomaly who was actually born from a woman instead of a test tube, finds joy among pages of Shakespeare while adamantly rejecting the World State’s ideals of pleasure from sex and soma. …show more content…
He takes a unique approach on society to focus on the mental and structural effects of forced utopia. The novel addresses the manufactured happiness that keeps the World State in operation while also considering the possible repercussions when natural happiness tries to find its place among fabricated feelings. It ultimately succeeds at informing its reader of the inevitable dangers that accompany all types of progress—whether technological or
Emotions such as love, curiosity, and loyalty find themselves banished from regular thoughts. The concepts of family, monogamy, and romance themselves become associated with atmospheres that are squalid both “psychically and physically.” At the beginning of the novel, World Controller Mustapha Mond tells a group of students that emotion leads to instability and “dangerous, insane, obscene relationships,” (37). He states that notions of ownership and exclusiveness are “narrow channellings of impulse and energy,” and that these emotions act much like a singular hole in a pressurized water pipe (38). Because of the proliferation of such principles, children grow up associating natural happiness as ugly and disturbing. In fact, a commonly promoted hypnopaedic saying declares that “When the individual feels, the community reels,” (94). In order to eliminate thoughts of monogamy, citizens of the World State are repeatedly taught that “everyone belongs to everyone else.” By consequence, people no longer feel jealous or heartbroken and instead embrace man-made ‘designer’ happiness instead of natural happiness. However, the introduction of John the Savage’s character poses a sudden contrast. John, a societal anomaly who was actually born from a woman instead of a test tube, finds joy among pages of Shakespeare while adamantly rejecting the World State’s ideals of pleasure from sex and soma. …show more content…
He takes a unique approach on society to focus on the mental and structural effects of forced utopia. The novel addresses the manufactured happiness that keeps the World State in operation while also considering the possible repercussions when natural happiness tries to find its place among fabricated feelings. It ultimately succeeds at informing its reader of the inevitable dangers that accompany all types of progress—whether technological or