Comparing The Anti-Utopias Of Brave New World And 1984 Essay, Research Paper

Both Aldous Huxley s Brave New World and Geroge Orwell s 1984 present to the reader anti-utopian societies; societies which, when taken at face value, seem perfect, but really are deeply flawed. Both authors wrote their books because they felt that the world was on a course to disaster and they wanted changes to be made before a society resembling the ones that they wrote about was made into reality. I will now take those two societies and attempt to point out their differences.

One of the most striking differences between the two worlds is the amount of technology that is present in each one. Brave New World s society relies heavily on technology. It is an integral part of life there. Without it, babies would not be born, people would not accept the lives that were assigned to them and life could not go on. In fact, the cornerstone of the Brave New World is a technological revelation that has drastically changed out lives today Henry Ford s assembly line. 1984 s society uses technology, such as telescreens and food dispensers, but could conceivably exist without it. This difference in levels of technological advancements most likely stems from Huxley s great love for science.

Another difference between the novels lies within the methods in which the government seeks to control the people. Brave New World takes a person at birth and inbreeds within them an uncontrollable need to follow society doctrine while 1984 uses fear of death as the method of control. The societies use completely different methods to control emotion within the populace. Brave New World surrounds its inhabitants with luxury and satisfies their every desire. When a person s desires cannot be satisfies, the government urges them to use drugs that make them forget what they desired in the first place. 1984 takes all pleasures away from people and then redirects the strong feelings of desire that they have towards ideas that support the government. An example of this point within the books is the societies attitudes towards sex. In Brave New World, sex is taken for granted. Everyone is encouraged to have sex with everyone else and monogamy is viewed as being strange. In 1984, sex is viewed as being necessary only for reproduction and is generally looked down upon. Teens are strongly urged to be celibate and sex is described is being joyless and mechanical.

A third way in which the societies differ lies within the idea of religion. In a society, religion is used to make people feel like there is a purpose to life that goes deeper than anything that they can grasp and serves to answer questions that people have that are otherwise unanswerable. In Brave New World, a head of the government says that soma is their society s replacement for religion. A person s deep need for spiritual fulfillment is not dealt with in any tangible way. It is instead drugged away to the point where a person does not care any more and has no need to see a purpose to life. In 1984, religion is just altered and redirected at Big Brother instead of at God. All people worship and are made to love Big Brother and the purpose of everyone s life is just to serve him.

Brave New World and 1984 are two very similar novels. They both presented worlds in which emotion and longing was stamped out and life had no purpose other than to guarantee the existence of life in the future. They differed in the ways that their callous societies were carried out, but both had the underlying idea that feeling and emotion are very important and that we should never allow anyone to take those things away from us.