In Brave New World, by Aldous Huxley, all of the babies are conditioned to be a certain way, to like certain things, and to be in a certain caste. In this world so far, we have not met anyone who was raised by parents - the students have no notions of what families, mothers, fathers and siblings are. They are created in a lab and are taught in their sleep, play outside with each other sexually from a very, very young age, and are conditioned from conception by different substances and once a baby often shocked using electricity. The Director, who is the most informed is even a product of this fertility center. He is an alpha (the highest caste). At first, It didn't appear he was created using the machinery, but then he reacts just like all of the other alphas. The controller appears to have not been created in the center. He has a certain aggressiveness, that does not really seem to fit in with this system. He (the controller) even says to the students "our ancestors were so stupid and short-sighted that when the first reformers came along and offered to deliver them from those horrible emotions, they wouldn't have anything to do with them" (45). He strongly believes in the cause of how this universe was started, and more importantly understand it. He seems to understand it more than the Director. The students, the workers, Lenina, Fanny, and Henry Foster all seem to be just paper cut outs of the system: people with no troubling emotions, with only the responsibility of doing their work and pleasing themselves. They have no responsibility or emotions for anyone else. This society is an oddly selfish society and yet utterly cohesive because no desires are unknown and each one is provided for, and everyone belongs to each other.
The only character who seems to not completely understand the system yet still resent it at the same time is Bernard Marx. He keeps to himself and is deemed odd by the other members of the society. While most behaviors have changed, the most petty ones have stayed the same. Henry Foster and his friend bully Bernard Marx, and Fanny tells Lenina that "they say somebody made a mistake when he was still in the bottle-- thought he was a Gamma and put alcohol into his blood surrogate. That's why he's so stunted" (46). Bernard Marx is different from the others in the way that he seems to want to be on his own, and he doesn't "belong to everyone else", and he hates Henry Foster and does not like the way he talks about Lenina. He does not seem to fit the mold that everyone else fits, and he will have to be watched as the book continues.
I'm intrigued by your comment that the controller seems different from the citizens. He does express more emotion, which is an undesirable quality in the normal individuals. I wonder if he is a tool that Huxley uses to deliver his message more powerfully?
ReplyDeleteI also like your suggestion that they are both selfish and cohesive. It seems contradictory but also entirely true in this world. Perhaps because they can control the nature of that selfishness, and it is the same selfishness in each person, there is not the discord that comes from different needs or wants.
I've never read this book, but from what I can tell from your blog post about it, Huxley's view of a dystopian future is based around assimilating everyone to be alike within their group. The disturbing aspects of it are the sexuality, the lack of a traditional family structure of a mother and a father for the new generation, and some sort of social Darwinism. Often in dystopian literature, the focal point of the book is a societal fear from the time it was written played up to an extreme. Since Brave New World was written in 1931, I can only guess that it was concerning to people at the time that people were being divided up into castes, or afraid of a lack of social mobility. It will be interesting to see how the protagonist, if there is one, will fight back against the system.
ReplyDeleteMarx is an interesting last name... What is that suggesting about this society, that this is what Karl Marx would have imagined as the Society after the dictatorship of the proletariat? Or is suggesting that this character, Bernard Marx is dissatisfied with the status quo like Karl Marx was? Or was that name choice a complete coincidence? That aside, all the dystopian novels I have read so far in this class (besides the Road) have all had some sort of message about freedom and choice. This book seems to be dealing with freedom at basic level, as the men and women in this society have their destiny determined before they are even born. A Clockwork Orange is has something to say about the importance of being able to choose good. I guess that says something about what Westerners value, as all these books are written by westerners. Liberty is very important to us.
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