Brave New World

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Brave New World
Brave New World


[edit] In this paper I analyze Aldous Huxley’s Brave New World as it relates to the fears of modernization, dehumanization, and ultimately robotizaton. Is the Brave New World here now?

Aldous Huxley, in Brave New World (1932), satirically examines the ambiguous effects of technology and mechanization over modern life. He contrasts the politics and practices of World State with the more “uncivilized” lifestyle of John the Savage. John has spent his life at the Malpais Savage Reservation, which significantly the World State does not control. For instance, totalitarianism in the brave new world is made evident through the State’s power over reproductive technology, biotechnology, and eugenics. The World State carefully designs embryos in order to construct the populace with “good and happy members of society” (20). In opposition, viviparous reproduction, which is looked down upon with shock and disgust (38), is practiced at the technologically lacking reservation (129). The World State is solely an illusion and its technology is falsely presented as a positive advancement. Brave New World, instead of being a paradise, is an ironic utopia through which Huxley warns of dehumanization, and robotization, as an outcome of technology’s growing impact on society.

The brave new world acquiesces to absolute control in order to reach its ideal state of “Community, Identity, [and] Stability” (18). Nonetheless, Huxley turns the World State’s ideal perception of itself into the abject. He warns of what the new world considers to be advancements by depicting technology as a means of dehumanization. Significantly, in the World State “the principle of mass production at last [applies] to biology” (23). For instance, in the “modern fertilization process” (21) human sexuality is non-existent and biological procreation is referred to as “merely a nuisance” (28). Instead, in the brave new world, eugenics is highly selective by allowing less than one third of embryos to “develop” (28). At the Central London Hatchery and Conditioning Centre, Mr Foster, who is an Alpha male, states that “as many as thirty per cent of female embryos develop normally” (28). Thereby, this selectivity highly interferes with human rights. It is also interesting that discriminatively and hierarchically it is only the good embryos that are chosen (28). Due to this the lack of nature, or natural selection, the World State is strengthened. Notably, this use of technology for the selection of good embryos leaves the other seventy per cent to be manipulated with “male sex-hormones,” which significantly symbolizes the move into the “world of human invention” (28).

Children are mass-produced as commodities and crafted to benefit the overall outcome of society (19). This is illustrated through the Bokanovsky Process in which an egg buds “from eight to ninety-six” times, proliferates, and ultimately divides (22). Set in an eerie tone, the World State’s “progress” is associated with “making ninety-six human beings grow where only one grew before” (22). Significantly, the progress does not result in anything beneficial for the humans, but instead, it results in the production of “ninety-six identical twins [that work] ninety-six identical machines” in order to quickly increase productivity (23). In Brave New World, technology, not humans, have control over reproduction. Sinisterly, the Bokanovsky children also, through their rapid ability to produce, implicitly become machines themselves. The Director describes the multiplied Bokanovsky children as “a prodigious improvement” (22), however, what he does not seem to be fully aware of is the extent of their dehumanization through their loss of individuality. Their anonymity is evident through the great amount of identical “batches” of children (23) that are manufactured. Sardonically and sarcastically, however, Huxley wittily amplifies the invisibility of the individual by taking the reader to the Predestination Room (25). It is there that, ironically, the only individuality that is given to the embryos, which continues to adulthood, is identifications through names, categorization (25), and labels (28). This, of course, is not personal in anyway whatsoever. In fact, Huxley actively aligns the identification of humans with the labeling and naming of lifeless products or commodities. In the World State control is primarily gained through the State’s power over reproduction and the commodification of its people, or its products of society.

Huxley, in his futuristic vision, furthermore places the gestation of embryos on assembly lines to both emphasize the World State’s preoccupation with productivity and its apparent absence of humanity. Significantly, a woman’s body, specifically her uterus, is no longer essential for gestation. Instead, to stress the mechanical way in which children are produced in the World State, bottled embryos are placed on a “conveyor traveling at the rate of thirty-three and a third centimeters an hour” (27). In the new world it is clear that mechanization has replaced what was previously known as “gross” biological reproduction (39).

Further control over the populace is made clear with the placing of the embryo bottles on different racks on the conveyor where different conditioning occurs. For instance, repellent conditioning of oxygen deprivation or alcohol treatment (29) is used to design members of the lower castes who, according to the brave new world, do not need intelligence to be happy (30, 37). Thereby, in the World State freedom is limited and prominent dehumanization occurs by disallowing individuals to be able to make choices about their own lives. In World State, humans only exist physically albeit mindlessly. Hence, Huxley’s vision is a portrayal and warning of humanity’s metamorphosis into mechanized robots.

The brave new world, with its utopian vision, designs individuals to be shallow and unthinking machines. The humans do not question anything, but instead, follow their “inescapable social [destinies]” (31) that they have been assigned pre-birth. The Central London Hatchery and Conditioning Centre divides and produces embryos into five castes [Alpha, Betta, Gamma, Delta, and Epsilon] and each group is predestined to perform different tasks ranging from chemical workers to intellectuals (32). Most importantly, however, in his/her role everyone is designed to be happy with the role that he/she has been assigned. Satisfaction occurs precisely because he/she is unable to perform any other role due to his/her conditioning. Hence, society is stabilized through technological control.

Acceptance of predestined roles through conditioning is central in Huxley’s hedonistic society. Not only does work and happiness, as a means of control, play a dominant role in World State but also technology enforces the permanence of happiness through soma, “the perfect drug” (65). This instant gratification, and clouding of reality, is used to control the populace. In the world of Our Ford [a clever substitute for Our Lord and a reference to Henry Ford, the founder of Ford Motor Company] religion has been replaced by technology as is exemplified through symbolic Christian crosses having “had their tops cut off [to become] T’s” (65).

Habitual consumption of soma (85, 98), and perfect conditioning, results in everyone being happy (100). Nevertheless, as is exemplified by Bernard Marx, who feels “enslaved by his conditioning,” perfect conditioning does not always occur (99). For instance, incomplete conditioning has stunted Bernard’s growth (75). And due to this, since his “physique was hardly better than the average Gamma,” Bernard, as an Alpha male, simply feels inadequate in his caste (75). Huxley’s introduction of Bernard both contrasts and breaks the illusion of the positive advancements of the brave new world. It is Bernard, with his human qualities, who is aware of the problematic rigid caste system that the World State follows. For example, due to an alcohol treatment accident, he has “suffered all his life the consciousness of being separate (78). He also finds “dealings with members of the lower castes” to be distressing (71), which is significant because Bernard’s perceptions have not been completely clouded by the brave new world. Nonetheless, even though “People said of him that he could have gotten through life without taking soma” (71), Bernard paradoxically does consume soma on his way to the Savage Reservation in New Mexico. This signifies that Bernard, despite rebelling against the World State rules, is unable to completely separate himself from the new world’s mind-altering drug practices.

At the Malpais Savage Reservation John the Savage, like Bernard, has also “suffered all his life from the consciousness of being separate” (78). As the Director’s son, who has lived in Malpais, he is not completely part of either one of the societies. However, as also an avid Shakespeare reader (184), who sees art and not solely technology, and who has a dislike for civilization (217), John is able to see the destructiveness of the brave new world. In this sense, John serves as an exemplar of a more recognizable society and the reader is able to empathize with him. For instance, when John states, “In Malpais people get married . . . For always. They make a promise to live together for always” and Lenina does not understand the meaning (191), the reader is able to relate and see the brave new world as a dystopia rather than a utopia.

Aldous Huxley, in Brave New World, satirically portrays his futuristic vision in which control, though mechanics and technology, has replaced freedom. In World State children are created to be robots that are destined to work for the good of society. Henceforth, Huxley warns of a future all-powerful state that, albeit succeeding at creating “Community, Identity, [and] Stability” (18), is drained of humanity.

[edit] References

Huxley, Aldous. Brave New World. London: HarperCollins, 1993.

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