Brave New World By Huxley (1197 words)

Brave New World By Huxley
The peak of a writer’s career should exhibit their most profound works of
literature. In the case of Aldous Huxley, Brave New World is by far his most
renowned novel. Aldous Huxley is a European-born writer who, in the midst of his
career, moved to the United States and settled in California. While in
California, he began to have visions aided by his usage of hallucinatory drugs.

His visions were of a utopian society surviving here on earth. In his
literature, Huxley wanted to make this utopian society as much a reality as
possible. “In framing an ideal we may assume what we wish, but should avoid
impossibilities.” This quote, written by Aristotle, perfectly describes
Huxley’s attitude towards the creation of his imaginary utopia. His only
problem was establishing a value system that would not seem too unattainable.

Huxley has two novels that have the theme of utopia, Brave New World and Island.

Brave New World , which was written before Island , has ideas that are quite
far-fetched, but in Huxley’s eyes, still close to reality. Huxley’s first
portrait of utopia involves having a controlled society of people all being
alike. The year is A.F. 632 (After Ford; Ford is the equivalent to God in Brave
New World ) and with the available technology, citizens are mass produced.

Island is a product of the rethinking of Huxley’s utopia. The ideas are a lot
more real because the people are just ordinary human beings. Both of these
novels have an underlying theme in common. The stability of Huxley’s utopian
societies are centered around the loss of individualism. Individuals are
considered a threat in Huxley’s utopian novels. In the novel Island, the
utopian society is on a small island, named Pala. The leader of the utopian
society, Murugan, is an individual apart from the community. His plans are to
modernize and charge the way the people of Pala live. The reason he has thoughts
that are different from the rest of the community is that he was raised outside
of Pala. He grew up in Switzerland and the neighboring island Rendag, both of
which have been modernized and corrupted by the outside world. Therefore,
Murugan’s mind has been corrupted by his staying in those two places. “Pala
is thus threatened by the outside world,” explains critic Frank Magill,
because Murugan is introducing the modern way of life to this small island and
it is damaging the stability of the community. Rendag was once the same as Pala
but since it has ports for ships to embark, it was exposed to the outside world
much more quickly. Pala has no ports so it was safe from the invasions of the
Arabs, Portuguese, Dutch and English, which Pendag fell victim to. There are
five times types of people made in Brave New World. Alphas, Betas, Deltas,
Gamma, and Epsilons. Bernard Marx, the main character of Brave New World is an
Alpha. Alphas are supposed to be the smartest, most well-built, most
intellectual, and well-conditioned of all the five of the groups made. Yet
Bernard speaks with individualistic ideas that are unheard of in this society
molded around the loss of being a unique person. Bernard’s friend, Helmholtz
Watson is also one who threatens the utopia of Brave New World. Huxley explains
the friendship of the two men: “What the two men shared was the knowledge that
they were individuals.” They are the only characters which openly discuss
their personal ideas. Ideas that in a sense are considered sinful in their
society. In the end Bernard and Helmholtz are ejected from society by being
shipped off to some foreign island so that they will finally be free to expose
their individualism. Through mass production of people, individualism is lost.

In Brave New World, all of the people are products of mass production. “Racks
upon racks of numbered test tubes.#”, [p. 5] is the only way to describe them
before their actual birth. They have no family to give them a background
different from anyone else’s. They all come from the same green bottles. Even
when they are born, all they are given is a name chosen out of a small group of
common names. In our world, having a name is one of the millions of ways we use
to tell people apart and give them a feature unique to themselves. The frequency
of having the same name with so many other people, takes away from a person’s
individuality. Sometimes, “ninety-six identical twins” [p. 7] are produced.

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