Setting the Stage: The Themes in Chapters 1-3
Aldous Huxley's Brave New World is a hybrid between a manifesto of ideas, brought forth by characters with only a patina of depth, and a story with the depth closer to a graphic novel than that of a traditional tome. The opening three chapters bring the majority of the significant themes or ideas at work in the book. The director explains how this particular Utopia provides people bred to order, using artificial fertilization to grow babies inside bottles. Ultimately, they are not born but instead are decanted. Each new person is assigned to one of five social castes, from the Alphas, who have the most intelligence, to the Epsilons, who have almost none and are bred just to complete the tasks that no one else in society is willing to complete. A budding process multiplies members of the lower classes, making as many as 96 identical clones and more than 15,000 siblings from one ovary.
Each baby receives conditioning, both chemical and physical, while in the bottle, followed by psychological training after decanting, that makes them content citizens in their society, having both a talent and a predisposition toward the work they ultimately will do. One technique in use is hypnopaedia, which involves teaching people who are asleep. Rather than teaching analysis or facts, this involves inculcating suggestions that cause people to act in particular ways. The director particular indicates that sex provides happiness and is an activity that people enjoy with anybody who pleases them.
The controller is on the committee of ten who manage the world. He explains a few of the ideas upon which this Utopia has been founded. One idea claims that “history is bunk.” As a result, the society places limits on the knowledge that people have of past events so that they cannot make any comparisons between the present and any other time period. The reason for this is that people might want to make changes to present society if they had other time periods with which to compare it. Another central idea is that emotions are dangerous, especially the painful ones. Simple happiness is a necessary condition for social stability. The drug called soma is one element in society that guarantees happiness, because it keeps you calm and gives you a high without the negative consequence of a hangover. Another calming influence is the “feelies,” which are movies that engage the sense of feeling as well as hearing and sight. The soma is an idea reflected in other dystopian novels, such as Lois Lowry's The Giver, in which adolescents begin taking a medicine that robs them of the passions as soon as they enter their teenage years. The notion of interactive programming as a form of distracting entertainment appears in many dystopian works as well, including Ray Bradbury's Fahrenheit 451, in which people save up money to buy screens for all four walls in their television rooms, so that their television programs can be broadcast in three dimensions.
The Real Story Begins
It is not until these ideas have emerged in the opening three chapters that the real plot begins. Bernard Marx, who is an Alpha, is about to fall head over heels for Lenina Crowne, a worker in the Embryo Room. She has been going out with a scientist named Henry Foster, but her friend Fanny is bothering her because she hasn’t been out with any other guys for the past four months. Lenina thinks that Bernard is all right, but she’s not crazy about him. Because having sex with everyone is the norm in the Utopia, falling in love is actually a transgression, and Lenina likes to follow the rules.
On the other hand, Bernard is not a conformist. He is unusual in several ways, in fact. He’s fairly small as far as Alphas go, particularly in a world in which all members of the same class are the same. He prizes his areas of uniqueness, but he does not have the gumption to stand up for his own individuality. His friend Helmholtz Watson stands in stark contrast. Even though he is a success in community activities, sex and sports, he still lacks satisfaction because his only job is to produce propaganda rather than to write something significant and powerful.
Bernard goes to one of the solidarity services held by the Fordian religion, which is a satire of British Christianity in the years between the First and Second World War. The service ends in an orgy, but unlike the other 11 people in his group, Bernard does not feel the same sense of rapture. Then, he takes Lenina to see a Savage Reservation over in North America. While the Director does give permission for Bernard to go, he also tells Bernard how he took a young lady to London to that same reservation when he was a young man. The young lady disappeared and ended up being presumed dead. Then he threatens to send Bernard to Iceland for being a nonconformist. Unlike other members of his society, Bernard does not spend all of his leisure time getting all the pleasure he can.
Once Bernard and Lenina get to the Reservation, they meet John, a Savage who also appears to be the Director’s son. The woman whom the Director had ferried to the reservation had developed pregnancy through a mishap that, according to the mores of Utopia, would have been termed an obscenity. John has learned the works of Shakespeare and believes them to be a realistic guide to life in England. The woman (John’s mother) not only did not disappear but is still alive on the reservation.
Showing some political acumen, Bernard asks the Controller for permission to bring John and his mother, Linda, to London. The Director had already arranged for a meeting to send Bernard into exile, but when Linda and John arrive in London and call the Director lover and father, they make him a joke. Bernard remains in London and, as John’s guardian, becomes very popular, because the Savage is someone whom everyone is interested in meeting. Linda falls into a soma coma after years away at the reservation. While John sees all the sights of the new world, he does not particularly like them. He does enjoy disputing with Helmholtz about these sights, as well as Shakespeare.
In the meantime, everyone thinks that Lenina is having sex with the Savage, and so she becomes popular. Everyone wants to know what the experience is like. However, John has fallen in love with her and now wants to wait to have sex with her until marriage. After reading Shakespeare, he has gotten the notion that lovers should remain pure until matrimony. She does not understand this, so in desperation she goes to his apartment and removes her clothing. He kicks her out and calls her a whore because he believes her to be immoral, although he wants to be with her badly.
At this point, the reader learns that Linda is dying. In the hospital one sees Utopia’s perspective on death, as the whole emphasis is on the elimination of pain and grief. When John visits Linda, he experiences devastation, and when he shows grief, he unfortunately frightens a class of kids being shown that death is natural and pleasant. This makes John so mad that he attempts to bring morality and sanity back to Utopia by interrupting the daily soma distribution to workers in the Delta class. The ensuing riot leads to the arrest of Helmholtz, Bernard and John. They confront the Controller, who then explains a few more of the principles of Utopia. The conversation shows that Utopia has wrought happiness through the sacrifice of religion, art, science and other items that we value in reality. The Controller ends up sending Bernard to Iceland and shipping Helmholtz to the Falkland Islands. John remains in England, but he moves to a secluded area where he can live as a hermit. However, Utopians want to come and watch him suffer in his existence, as though he were some sort of sideshow. When John sees Lenina in this mob, he commits suicide.
An Exploration of Theme
There are several important themes at work in A Brave New World. While the novel purports to be about a Utopia, or an ideal place, the truth is that this is really about a dystopia, an awful state. This makes the themes as significant as the plot, if not more so. Most of the themes come from the basic principles of the Utopia.
Community versus Individual Freedom. The World State’s motto is “Community, Identity and Stability,” which are the three main goals of society. Community comes from the other two, and the society achieves it by practicing a religion that is a satire of Christianity. It exhorts people to find community through sexual orgy. Another way for producing community is to organize people’s lives so that they are virtually never by themselves. Identity comes from genetic engineering and through teaching everyone the importance of conformity. This makes anyone with even a slight bit of individuality feel odd or outcast instead of simply different. Stability is the last of the goals, but it is foundational to the other two. Stability comes from producing a lot of people who are genetically identical, from the theory that genetic likeness will produce fewer disagreements.
Control through science. While it does not feature as much of the future’s technology as, say, the works of Bradbury or Asimov, Huxley’s book also fits into the sci-fi genre. Instead of predicting the future of science, the theme has more to do with scientific advances as they influence humans. Huxley’s focus is more the misuse of physiology, biology, and psychology to change the behavior of individuals than the creation of futuristic weapons. One source of irony in this book is the fact that the government’s total control of human behavior even ruins the scientific progress that has granted such control in the first place.
The dangers of genetic engineering. In our own time, genetic engineering has associations with the manipulation of DNA or RNA to achieve particular ends. While this vocabulary was not available when Huxley was writing this book, the stratagems for breeding people to carry out particular tasks and to have particular qualities are already at work.
Happiness without moderation. It was the Roman emperor Juvenal who said that “the people who once bestowed commands, consulships, legions, and all else, now concerns itself no more, and longs eagerly for just two things – bread and circuses!” While general happiness is important for the stability of a society, when it is carried to an extreme, it means that society has to eliminate all pain. The problem with this is that it means the elimination of all deep emotions and passions. Ultimately, this makes the happiness less rewarding. In the story, this leads to the ironic point where the members of society want to watch someone suffer.
Removing sex from emotion. Taking the relationship and connection out of sex is quite common in dystopian visions of the future. Logan’s Run, for example, begins with the main character spinning through a human rolodex of potential sexual partners. This shows that, while pleasure is readily available, it does not come with any of the deeper pleasures of commitment. In Brave New World, promiscuity is not only not taboo, it is the encouraged form of behavior. Children learn that “everyone belongs to everyone else” through your nighttime conditioning. From their point of view, what we consider “true love” would create passions that would border on neurosis and the sort of family life that would threaten the stability of the Utopia. The fact that birth has become separate from sex means that sex is just a matter of physiological pleasure.
The use of soma. All you have to do is drive down a main street or visit a supermarket or convenience store in modern times to see that this element of Huxley’s critique was accurate. The sale of liquor, beer and wine has different regulations in different states, but in almost no area with a heavy concentration of poverty do you find it hard to purchase these items. Along with cigarettes and such illegal drugs as marijuana, cocaine and the like, the human impulse to remove pain through the use of substances is a common practice. A difference in Huxley’s story is that, rather than being illegal, the use of drugs to maintain happiness is a requirement. While Huxley did believe that it would be possible to invent a drug to allow people to transcend themselves and find a true knowledge f God, he turned soma into a dark parody of that opportunity.
Conclusion
Of the major dystopian novels written in the middle of the twentieth century, Huxley’s was the most accurate in terms of the way that society would structure itself. While Orwell’s vision of a people who would mindlessly turn each other in did not quite translate into reality, Huxley’s vision of humanity divided into social classes, separating themselves into (ethnic if not genetic) conclaves and using drugs and sex to keep them from having to face any significant decisions or challenge any unpleasantness in life turned out to be more than accurate. The implications of his vision are only too apparent in some of the problems that our society faces today.
Works Cited
Atwood, Margaret. “’Everybody is Happy Now.’” The Guardian 17 November 2007.
http://www.theguardian.com/books/2007/nov/17/classics.margaretatwood
Ball, Philip. “In Retrospect: Brave New World.” Nature 503: 338-389.
http://www.nature.com/nature/journal/v503/n7476/full/503338a.html
Horan, Thomas. “Revolutions From the Waist Downwards: Desire as Rebellion in Yevgeny Zamyatin’s
We, Goerge Orwell’s 1984, and Aldous Huxley’s Brave New World. Extrapolation 48(2): 314-339. http://liverpool.metapress.com/content/7872325174572g5j/
Nicol, Caitrin. “Brave New World at 75.” The New Atlantis Spring 2007.
http://www.thenewatlantis.com/publications/brave-new-world-at-75
Roberts, M.S. “Brave New World Revisited – Again: Resistance, the Unreal and the Real. IJBS 9(1).
http://www.ubishops.ca/baudrillardstudies/vol-9_1/v9-1-roberts.html
