Brave New World Essay, Research Paper
Aldous Huxley’s Brave New World is a fictitious story about a future
utopian society where people are mass-produced in laboratories. People have
no emotions in this world where drugs and promiscuous sex are greatly
encouraged. People are given labels according to their pre-natal intelligence
assignment. These different classes all have specific roles within society and
nobody is unhappy with their place. The Brave New World he was a fictitious
story that sets up a symbolic mirror to our world that shows the reader what our
world is slowly evolving to.
As young children, the utopians are conditioned to practice certain rituals,
to later benefit society as a whole through the stability that these practices bring.
One of the acts that the children are taught to do is begin to experiment sexually
at a very young age. This will prevent sexual anxiety in their adult years. Sexual
play is greatly encouraged to the point that a special time is set for children to
experience an erotic play. “In the garden it was playtime. Naked in the warm
June sunshine, six or seven hundred little boys and girls were running” (Huxley
30). As they grow older, sexual promiscuity becomes a requirement among the
adults. In order for them to keep a stable society, the utopians cannot risk strong
emotions among its people, if it is allowed people will be preoccupied with
emotion thus leading to under production. The attitudes of the utopians support
ideas of no monogamy. As one character said, “You ought to be careful. It’s such
horribly bad form to go on and on like this with one man” (Huxley 41). Huxley
commented on his story’s relevance to the current time (Huxley’s book was
published in 1932), with respect to the sexual attitudes of the people of the
Brave New World. He said, “Nor does the sexual promiscuity of Brave New
World seem so very distant. There are already certain American cities in which
the number of divorces is equal to the number of marriages” (Huxley forward).
Huxley is saying that although our society would like to think that it is sexually
stable, there is a lack of monogamy among the general population.
Another aspect of the Brave New World culture that is symbolically similar
to our own culture, is the very distinct caste system. People of the Brave New
World are “born” with a specified intelligence level. This level of superiority (or
inferiority) is group into different castes. For example, Alphas are the smart
superior individuals, where as the Gammas are among the lower castes that are
mass-produced to be almost identical. This is their way of classifying people
according to each individual’s biological makeup. Huxley comments on the
biological caste system in his forward, “the equivalents of… the scientific caste
system [of the Brave New World] are probably not more than three or four
generations away.
which biology determines personal worth. Many of today’s highest paying jobs
go to those of biological superiority. Biologically superior supermodels receive
millions of dollars because they were born with a pretty face. Athletes get
respect and money for playing sports. Biology helps the football player because
it makes him fast. By giving them physical superiority, such as height, basketball
and volleyball players are assisted by biology. Colleges and universities are
discriminate against those who are biologically inferior because they only allow
people that are extremely intelligent into their facilities. Even though we haven’t
begun making people with a specified biology, we are using the biology that a
person inherits to place them in, above, or below everyone else.
Although Huxley doesn’t believe that we are close to creating people in
the laboratories, as he said in part of his forward, “technically and ideologically
we are still a long way from bottled babies,” however, Joseph Needham believes
we are close to this “bottled baby”. In his 1932 review of Brave New World in
“Scrutiny”, he wrote that, “successful experiments are even now being made in
the cultivation of embryos of small mammals in vitro, and one of the most
horrible of Mr. Huxley’s predictions, the production of numerous low-grade
workers of precisely identical genetic constitution from one egg, is perfectly
possible.” Today there is significant advancements being made everyday in the
fields of genetic engineering. We’ve cloned a sheep, how soon before we clone
humans?
Another very close to home ritual among the people of this utopia is the
use of drugs. The people of Brave New World use a drug called soma to clear
the mind of everything bad and make themselves feel happy. In his forward,
Huxley also wrote about soma. He said, “the equivalents of some… are probably
not more than three or four generations away.” In current society there are many
escapes from reality that allow a person to be happy when they’re down, Prozac
is just one of many drugs with this purpose. Prozac is advertised as something
that can solve any and all everyday blues. Many people in the world use Prozac
in order to make them happy and to take away their problems, just the same way
the people of Brave New World do with soma.
Through out this story, Huxley uses the practices these people do as an
example to show modern day readers by mirroring what our society could
become if we’re not careful. Huxley uses these comparisons to show that the
Brave New World could happen. He writes about this also in his forward, “All
things considered it looks as though Utopia were far closer to us than anyone,
only fifteen years ago, could have imagined.”
Bibliography
Huxley, Aldous. Brave New World. New York: HarperCollins Publishers, 1932.