Many people in today’s society believe that the key to everything is money. Yes, money can bring power, but it cannot bring eternal happiness. People tend to confuse money and other material things with happiness and other necessities in life that allow humans to really live. In Brave New World, there is a society, known as the World State, which mistakes human values for science, and believes that one cannot have all necessary values at once. There are three characters in the World State Society, Helmholtz, Bernard, and John, who criticize the quality of their lives due to relations between freedom and stability, power and caste, and truth and happiness. The relations between freedom and stability are most often criticized by John and Bernard.
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To have power in the World Society, the World Controllers have separated their societies into castes so that they have an easier way of controlling their people. Everyone is conditioned to love their caste, but Bernard questions his quality of life in the system. Bernard has a conversation with his friend Helmholtz, and mentions to him, “I am I, and I wish I wasn’t” (64). Bernard looks different among others in his caste and therefore feels like an outsider. Bernard questions his position in the caste system which also threatens the power that the Controllers have over him, as a result he is threatened to be sent to an island. Helmholtz is another character in Brave New World who questions his quality of life in the caste system and the power that the system has over him. Helmholtz feels like an outsider much like Bernard does. Helmholtz does not have a physical deformity but he has a mental one; he is far more intelligent than anyone in his caste, Alpha-plus. It is mentioned in the novel: “A physical shortcoming could produce a kind of mental excess. The process, it seemed, was reversible. Mental excess could produce, for its own purposes, the voluntary blindness and deafness of deliberate solitude, the artificial impotence of asceticism.”(63) Just like Bernard, Helmholtz has a deformity that makes him question the caste system which threatens its power and shows proof of how both characters criticize the quality of their lives in respect to the relation of power and
To have power in the World Society, the World Controllers have separated their societies into castes so that they have an easier way of controlling their people. Everyone is conditioned to love their caste, but Bernard questions his quality of life in the system. Bernard has a conversation with his friend Helmholtz, and mentions to him, “I am I, and I wish I wasn’t” (64). Bernard looks different among others in his caste and therefore feels like an outsider. Bernard questions his position in the caste system which also threatens the power that the Controllers have over him, as a result he is threatened to be sent to an island. Helmholtz is another character in Brave New World who questions his quality of life in the caste system and the power that the system has over him. Helmholtz feels like an outsider much like Bernard does. Helmholtz does not have a physical deformity but he has a mental one; he is far more intelligent than anyone in his caste, Alpha-plus. It is mentioned in the novel: “A physical shortcoming could produce a kind of mental excess. The process, it seemed, was reversible. Mental excess could produce, for its own purposes, the voluntary blindness and deafness of deliberate solitude, the artificial impotence of asceticism.”(63) Just like Bernard, Helmholtz has a deformity that makes him question the caste system which threatens its power and shows proof of how both characters criticize the quality of their lives in respect to the relation of power and