Revisiting Again: Brave New World Essay, Research Paper

Reading Aldous Huxley?s dystopian novel, Brave New World, is a chilling adventure through his prophetic dream of western democracies. Since its publication in 1932, it has been somewhat blotted out by 1984, George Orwell?s dystopia about the future of Marxist despotism; however, in America at least, the present much more closely resembles what Huxley wrote about. Huxley sets his cautionary novel 600 years in the future, but experts agree that it is approaching years ahead of that estimate. Brave New World uses the year 1914 AD, the year in which Henry Ford installed the first conveyor-belt assembly line, as the primordial year After Ford, or A.F. 0, in the new timeline. In the fictitious present, 632 A.F, or 2546 AD ?industrial civilization is only possible when there [is] no self-denial…Otherwise the wheels stop turning? (Huxley, Brave New World 243). Therefore, the idea of instant gratification is key in the world of this horrific time. The World Controllers use this motivation to keep control through destroying identity followed by hypnop?dic conditioning and then the drug soma to ensure tranquillity. In short, the overwhelming and instant self-indulgence of people in the Society of Aldous Huxley?s Brave New World qualifies this dystopian novel as a warning for what may be right around the figurative corner.

The idea of the individual as opposed to the mass is of paramount importance to a proper understanding of the novel. It is precisely this idea that the brave new world cannot tolerate. “To be extraordinary or to be individual is to be criminal; thinking or feeling deeply are punishable offenses” (Firchow 266). In Brave New World, leaders achieved control by making people isolated integers with essentially a single homogenous personality. The individual has no family since life begins as an egg fertilized on a petrie dish and is then transferred into a bottle where the living human remains until ripe for decanting. Nature “has been displaced by technology to the extent that the citizens of the World State are literally conceived by science, not by individual men and women” (Baker 80). The terms parents, father, and especially mother are smutty enough to make young men blush and stammer. There is a scientific “advancement” in this future called Bokanovsky?s Process. This is a method of increasing the rate of ovulation from one to ninety-six and thus creating up to ninety-six identical humans from one ovum and one sperm. By using only inferior genetics for such budding, this process allowed for the introduction of castes into Society. Alphas, Betas, Gammas, Deltas, and Epsilons, identified further with plusses and minuses, not only received uniquely formulated heredity, but also varying care as fetuses, infants, and toddlers to prepare for predetermined adult lives. This is particularly ironic in that it equates cultural “progress” with the technical means to induce arrests of development. The interpolation of bokanovskification and neo-Pavlovian conditioning is uncanny because, by the second decade of this century, the German Nobel Prize winner, Hans Speman, made experimental embryology one of the most exciting areas of study. Moreover, Pavlov and Watson had developed psychology into an experimental science.

What seems to trouble Mr. Huxley most of all about the future is that, “with all passion turned to even-tempered happiness, with tragedy gone the way of social and sexual instability, there will be no room for the dramatist” (Chamberlain 232). People in this Society wear colorful polyester double knits and the State does not have to treat them as potential insurrectionists. Their tummies are full and their minds are empty because even when they are alone, they are not alone. They are constantly being entertained and diverted by games, shows, and happy drivel. The socially unconditioned “Savage,”? John, brought up on “Othello” and other Shakespearean plays, is not satisfied. He wants “?God…poetry…real danger…freedom…goodness…[and] sin?” (Huxley, Brave New World, 246). He wishes to retain the right to be unhappy and yet preserve his passions. Society considers this an anti-social taboo and eschews him.

The motto of the Brave New World was “Community, Stability, Identity.” One method of control used by the Fordship, the ruling body of the Huxleyan world, was hypnop?dia. Hypnop?dia is a method of instilling moral lessons into people by repeating certain statements while they are asleep. The Director of Hatcheries and Conditioning (D. H. C.) claims it is “[t]he greatest moralizing and socializing force of all time” (28). Hypnop?dia was a very real fad of the 1920s and 30s AD; however, since the development of the electroencyclograph, which can measure the depth of sleep, evidence of the effectiveness of sleep-teaching is largely negative. Huxley points this out himself by a story of early hypnop?dia cases. A Polish-speaking child heard a London radio program while he slept and, the following morning, recited the broadcast in perfect English. Thinking him mad, his parents contacted a doctor who happened to understand what the boy was saying and discovered what had transpired the previous evening. Obviously, the Polish boy did not understand what he was saying; therefore, it is impossible to teach pure science or any rational material in this fashion. However, since “[m]oral education…ought never, in any circumstances, be rational[,]” it was possible to use sleep-teaching to homogenize moral thinking (26).

Huxley used hypnop?dia in his utopia as a way of preserving peace among social classes and maintaining happiness. A whispering voice taught children to have satisfaction with their particular caste by hearing over and over a lesson such as the following:

ALPHA CHILDREN WEAR GREY. THEY WORK MUCH HARDER THAN WE DO, BECAUSE THEY?RE SO FRIGHTFULLY CLEVER. I?M REALLY AWFULLY GLAD I?M A BETA, BECAUSE I DON?T WORK SO HARD. AND THEN WE ARE MUCH BETTER THAN THE GAMMAS AND DELTAS. GAMMAS ARE STUPID. THEY ALL WEAR GREEN, AND DELTA CHILDREN WEAR KHAKI. OH NO, I DON?T WANT TO PLAY WITH DELTA CHILDREN. AND EPSILONS ARE STILL WORSE. THEY?RE TOO STUPID TO BE ABLE TO READ OR WRITE. BESIDES THEY WEAR BLACK, WHICH IS SUCH A BEASTLY COLOUR. I?M SO GLAD I?M A BETA.

(27) As a result, all of the people in the Utopia came to be complaisant in their social levels. When comparing the two, one will see a strong and eerie resemblance between hypnop?dia and television?s effect on society. Just as hypnop?dia conditioned people, television also has the power to affect how people think. This is obvious by the success of advertisement and propaganda. In addition to influencing people to buy a product, television is capable of instilling morals into people by reinforcing stereotypes. Like hypnop?dia, television has the ability to homogenize people to think and act the same. Even the inhabitants of Brave New World might cringe at what enters the heads of Americans day and night. With the advent of the communications satellite and cable television, the circus never stops.

Another method of control used in Huxley’s utopia was the distribution of a drug called soma. Karl Marx said, “Religion is the opium of the people.” In Brave New World, this is reversed; opium, or rather soma, is the religion of the people. In the lower Delta and Epsilon castes, soma was the reward for a day of hard work without grouse. Upper castes had more readily available access because of special privilege. John, the Savage, tried to liberate one hundred and sixty-two Deltas from their “poison” distribution, but the people cared not for freedom, only for the physical pleasure derived from the soma. When the Savage destroyed their precious drug, they fell “silent, petrified at the spectacle of this wanton sacrilege” (219). Soma was a tranquilizer the people took to avoid stress and over-thinking. The ethereal voices of hypnop?dia had assured them “a gramme [of soma] is better than a damn.” Whenever an inconvenience or over-demanding thought invaded a person, they took a “soma-holiday” in order to escape their discomfort. On this mental vacation, the person abandoned serious thought and allowed the drug to envelop them in a blissfully fantastic dream world. Today, doctors prescribe literally billions of tranquilizers and other mood altering drugs every year. In addition there is the illegal drug traffic, the suppression of which seems to have less to do with what is good for people than with power and profit. The government undertakes no serious effort to get people off drugs, only to get them off drugs sold by freelance entrepreneurs. Narcotics, like violence, are to be a monopoly of the State. It is all about power and control. Huxley would later write that “the systematic drugging of individuals for the benefit of the state (and incidentally, of course, for their own delight), was a main plank in the policy of the World?s Controllers. The daily soma ration was an insurance against personal maladjustment, social unrest, and the spread of subversive ideas” (Huxley, Brave New World Revisited, 82).

There is nothing wrong with pursuing happiness; however, in 1998 AD as well as A.F. 632, the quest for happiness has become a quest for instant gratification. This quest eliminates everything bothersome–character, reason, and feeling–along the way. Mustapha Mond, one of the World Controllers in Brave New World, said about his utopia, “?One can?t have something for nothing. Happiness has got to be paid for?” (Huxley, Brave New World, 235). At what price, Mr. Mond? Art and science, thought and feeling, truth and beauty because, of course, such things are incompatible with happiness and comfort and stability. As a result of this sacrifice, not only do people lose art and creativity, but also history. In the brave new world, “[h]istory is bunk” (34). Instead of holding beliefs and traditions sacred, people are becoming immersed in the here and now.

It is Mr. Huxley?s habit to be deadly in earnest. Brave New World is not a novel of what-if-pigs-could-fly science-fiction, but an imminent forecast of what could be. Huxley “includes a multitude of details common to our everyday knowledge, but he changes them, places them in new context and new combination so that while they remain familiar, they are also startlingly new” (Clareson 237). A prevalent theme that sprouts in the middle of this dismal satire is the absolute goodness of the individual. Although controlled and manipulated, there are characters that can look around and realize the degradation of such a life. The bottle-breeding, the sleep-teaching, and the nostrum soma cannot fully pacify every person, every time. Yes, the World Controllers prevail in Brave New World; however, they do not win each battle. Critic Peter Firchow notes that “[i]n spite of all the efforts of technology and psychology directed at reducing man to an automaton, some semblance of humanity and individuality still survives–even if only accidentally” (266). Huxley believed that people have free will and can apply their free will to the making and the remaking of society. Nevertheless, it may be that at some point in the building of the brave new world it will be impossible to turn back because there are too few people who want to do so. Pop half a gram of soma and forget it. There are days on this side of the Atlantic when it seems people are that gone, but they really are not. There is an underground of people who will not turn on their television, and who, when no one is looking, flush their daily soma ration down the lavatory. Huxley concludes Brave New World Revisited with the following warning: “Perhaps the forces that now menace freedom are too strong to be resisted for very long. It is still our duty to do whatever we can to resist them” (143).

Works Cited

Baker, Robert S. Brave New World: History, Science, and Dystopia. Boston: Twayne: 1990

Chamberlain, John. ?Aldous Huxley?s Satirical Model T World.? Contemporary Criticism. 35: 232-233.

Clareson, Thomas D. ?The Classic: Aldous Husley?s ?Brave New World.?? Contemporary Literary Criticism. 35: 237-238

Firchow, Peter. ?The Satire in Huxley?s ?Brave New World.?? Contemporary Criticism. 8: 266.

Huxley, Aldous. Brave New World. New York: HarperPerennial, 1932.

—. Brave New World Revisited. New York: Harper & Row, 1958.