Brave New World Essay, Research Paper

Chemistry is an important key to achieving a world of ?Community, Identity, and Stability? in Aldous Huxley?s novel, Brave New World. Huxley himself said that the main theme of his novel is “not the advancement of science as such; it is the advancement of science as it affects human individuals.? Huxley was obviously rather concerned with the use and misuse of science. As to getting his point of the amazing advancement of science across, Huxley uses a lot of detail in his settings. He uses the decanting process, the conveyor belt at the Hatchery, chemical persuasion, and the new terminology, such as the Bokanovsky Process, involved in just about everything.

In a way, I see it as Huxley trying to tell us that too many great leaps in science can lead to human lethargy, taking-everything-for-granted, and forgetting real human values. While science is not quite the physical downfall of men, and it does increase material pleasures, it eats away at what makes us human. The very values and morals we have held close for generations are swept away at the enticing prospect of a “vacation” with soma and living only for comforts. Chemical persuasion has been used in this society to control the men and women to make them more sensitive to suggestion. Science, according to Huxley, is a necessary evil today, which will grow to uncontrollable yet irrefutable stature in society. He uses his novel to criticize our obsession with science over moral values.

The setting of Brave New World uses science and chemistry to justify and establish a society designed by eugenics to improve the quality of the human race in breeding. People poisoned as fetuses perform menial, low paid work. As the Director says, Epsilon workers must have an Epsilon heritage, as well as an Epsilon environment. He voices the assumption that Epsilon embryos are genetically “inferior.”

Even the happiness is drug-induced by a drug called soma. Whenever anything upsetting occurs the society has been trained to reach for their soma. There never any instability because once something goes wrong there is the possibility of going on a soma-holiday.

The very idea of Neo-Pavlovian Conditioning was used to create a society of ?Community, Identity, and Stability.? A community in which the idea of individualism and independent thought are dangerous to the balance of society. As soon as someone starts to have individualistic thoughts they’re shipped off to an island. An identity where chemistry is used to make everyone be thought of as part of a group in their own class system. “I don’t like Gamma’s. They wear green. I’m glad I’m not an alpha, they do so much work but that’s because they’re so bright.” Everyone in the society knows exactly who he or she is and what he or she likes. There is no questioning. Everything is certain and the same in their own class system. A stability in the society is to keep the ?civilized world? strong enough to resist the outside reservation life not living by the same standards.