Society and the individual in Brave New World

Student: Stef Monica, Masterat, anul I

TMSAF

Aldous Huxleyʼs novel, Brave New World, is considered to be one of the most
influential novel of the twentieth century, not merely because of its literary value, but
mainly because Huxleyʼs intentions to rise political, social, psychological, scientific and
psychological issues. Many of the ideas exposed in the novel came from the essays he
wrote in ten years prior its publication. Actually, he inspired contemporary philosophers,
namely Horkheimer and Adorno, and that is clearly shown in their essay, The Culture
Industry. He was an important figure in the British literature in the 1920s and his novels
were read by almost every under-graduate of the time. His novels of ideas areabout moral
dilemmas, and in the 1920s, his characters embody the very meaninglessness, and, to
quote D.G.Izzo, they ‟secretly – or – openly, seek a vehicle to give meaning to a world
that has realized that science, technology and industry are not the answers”.
The title of the novel has become an ubiquitous term, but also a threatening one.
Huxley knew what kind of world he was living in and what world the future generation
will be living in. Therefore, the threats depicted in the novel have turned into reality,
rather than fantasy. Read now, it describes much more truly the current world than the
world of 1932, the year when the novel was published.
The novel opens in 2632 A.F, which means After Ford, and after civilization was
destroyed by a world war. Dictatorship, repression collapse and a second war follows,
which is the beginning of the Brave New World and which gives birth to a society lead
by pleasure, instead of fear, a world where the spirit does not exist and there is no need
for God. As the novel opens, Huxley throws at the reader a whirlwind of activity,
centered around the production line of products and services, including human
reproduction. In the Brave New World society, scientists propagate the human species
through the Bokanovsky Process, which, in short, produces standardized human beings in
an assembly line that mirrors Henry Fordʼs production of the model T. Specifically,
society found male-female reproduction too random and too inefficient and replaced it
with a more favorable system that produces people in mass quantities Conditioned by
chemical addictives these brave new worldians accept their status in life as willing
consumers of the pleasures of social class, sex, and sport. Society accomplishes this feat
by ‟conditioning” the test-tube baby prior to its ‟hatching” into its predestined lot in life,
then continues the conditioning through ‟hypnopaedia” or sleep teaching. Through the
Bokanovsky Process, directors condition a population of individuals who know and are
satisfied with their roles and positions in life and who hate any variable outlet that retards
the progress of the nation state. This conditioning by society through educational and
pharmaceutical means drives society forward, from one task to the next, all in an effort to
control and restrict their actions. Citizens are not allowed to idle or to stop, since it
retards the productive forward movement of society. Whether or not stopping is good or
bad, the Brave New World mirrors the world view that Luther presented when he stated
that citizens should not change from the professions they were born into.The society
ignores manʼs weaknesses and the ultimate defeat of death. The pleasures of family life,
in which one loves other people, and recognizes one’s position in a cyclical pattern of
birth and death, are denied to citizens in the year of Our Ford 632. Mottoes as ‟even
Epsilons are useful” signal isolation and anonymity. The amalgamation of the individual
into the social structure of the novel is accomplished by denying him specific recognition
and also the pleasure of withdrawal and reflection. The loudspeakers and other
mechanical means of imposing society’s norms, remind us that privacy and reflection are
not possible in the brave new world. There is no character in Huxleyʼs novel, who, as a
visitor from the past observes the future society and fully perceives the disparity between
man’s real place and the view of that place presented in the narrative. According to Ellen
Douglas Leyburn, this fact significantly affects the position and function of the reader of
the satire: Huxley is ‟willing to dispense with the dreamer from our day who is
transported into the new world”.
In order to identify the stereotypical levels of society, Deltas wear Khaki,
Epsilons (manipulated to be stupid), wear black. Hard-working Alphas wear gray and
upper-caste Gammas wear green. These austere colors serve utilitarian purposes and
mirror clothing worn by either those living a monastic life or engaged in the armed
forces, people who have made choices in their lives to negate the self in favor of the
group. However, where Luther sees one’s profession as an assignment from God, the
civilization of Brave New World no longer worships Luther’s God, but the spirit of mass
production as founded by Henry Ford. Huxley drives this point into the minds of the
reader by setting Brave New World society in the year A.F. 632- 632 years after Ford
created the model T. In addition, Huxley skews the idea of Ford as God, so that industrial
production creates human beings desiring comfort and happiness rather than truth and
beauty. A society revolving around Fordian and Freudian ideas is the society that
capitalism has founded and has allowed to flourish through consumerism which had lead
everyone to buy and sell themselves as slaves. When confronted with this worldview,
John the Savage, outsider and free thinker, reacts with violent retching behind a clump of
laurels. He is appalled by this mechanical control of the people into specialized classes.
To force people into social-caste systems limits citizens to associate only with those of
their own caste, and with capitalism, society has forced people into two classes: the haves
and have-nots.
After providing an overview in the first two chapters of the current world state
that emphasizes how the world controllers program happiness through prenatal treatment,
drugs and hypnotic suggestions, Huxley shifts his emphasis to Bernard Marx, Helmholtz
Watson and John the Savage, three individuals who are not doped up on soma and
oblivious to the controls placed on them by society. In freeing themselves from the mind-
numbing motto of the Brave New World society, ‟Conformity, Identity and Stability”,
these nonconformists forge their own identity and selfhood apart from the state, where
everyone who conforms is part of the mechanism of capitalistic society. Because they
seek change, these individuals will face exile from this community since their mere
presence and thoughts create instability. In the character of Bernard Marx, Huxley
catapults the reader further into the theme behind his novel; for in the naming of Bernard
Marx, Huxley draws upon the name of Karl Marx, author,(along with Friedrich Engels)
of Das Kapital who denounces capitalist society. Whereas Karl Marx challenged
capitalism from a philosophical point of view, Bernard Marx lashes out at the Brave New
World society because it proves hostile to him. From a conversation between Lenina and
Fanny, the reader learns that Bernard has a bad ‟reputation” because he ‟doesn’t like
Obstacle Golf” and because ‟he spends most of his time by himself– alone”. Aside from
the information that other characters reveal, Marx himself admits to being disgusted with
society’s view of Lenina as a ‟piece of meat”, of her belonging to everyone else. In
addition to these dislikes, which could possibly be attributed to the fact that ‟somebody
made a mistake when he was still in the bottle ‒ thought he was a Gamma and put alcohol
into his blood surrogate”, Marx represents a failed component of the Brave New World
society, in that he, an Alpha male, when in contact with ‟members of the lower castes
always (is) reminded painfully…or physical inadequacy. ‛I am I, and wish I wasn’t’; his
self-consciousness was acute and distressing. Each time he found himself looking on the
level, instead of downward, into a Delta’s face, he felt humiliated…the laughter of the
women to whom he had made proposals, and the practical joking of his equals among the
men…made him feel an outsider; and feeling an outsider he behaved like one, which
increased the prejudice against him and intensified the contempt and hostility aroused by
his physical defects.” His reluctance to act on his ideas brandishes him as a coward and a
hypocrite. Despite his reluctance to act, he is still recognized as a partner in crime with
the two other heroes, which resigns him to a fate, foreshadowed earlier in the novel, of
exile to Iceland.
Unlike Bernard Marx, Helmholtz Watson, his friend and fellow soul searcher, is
not an outcast in society and recognizes that his mental capacity and individuality sets
him apart from other human beings. Aside from steering clear of his willing role s
consumer of sex and sport, Helmholtz, as a lecturer at the college of emotional
engineering, has been diverging from orders to write phrases that adhere to the company
line in order to write ones containing a bit of ‟propaganda”. He shows that he has
advanced more than Marx, because he is able to articulate his selfhood when he when he
joins with John the Savage in the soma incident and when he creates a poem that
celebrates silence and the presence of a spiritual being. As a direct result of the incident
with John, Helmholtz is exiled to the Falkland Islands, where, as the Controller explained
to him earlier, ‟he’ll meet the most interesting set of men and women to be found
anywhere in the world”. All the people, who, for one reason or another, have got too self-
consciously individual to fit into community-life. All the people who aren’t satisfied with
orthodoxy, who’ve got independent ideas of their own. Everyone, in a word, who’s any
one. I almost envy you, Mr. Watson”. For Helmhotz, his exile gives him the freedom to
pursue his interests without the interference of the nation state.
Finally, John the Savage is an outsider in civilization, the one who is to provide
understanding to the situation. He is not only the outsider to the Brave New World, but
also to those on the ‟Savage Reservation”. His mother’s amoral behavior and her present
circumstances as a woman of the new world shift to her son John, who is despised and
chastised by his peers on the reservation. This inheritance that Linda gives to John also
makes John an outsider in the new world, where natural birth by a mother is abhorrent.
As an oddity in the new world, John befriends Bernard Marx, who identifies in the other
great pangs of loneliness that each feels because of the way people perceive them.
Huxley’s satiric vision of scientific utopia introduces Shakespeare as a symbol of
high art , which has lead some critics to accuse the author of cultural arrogance. The
freethinking individual is asked to prevail upon blind, unthinking compliance with
capitalism, totalitarian rule, and to reject a future in which individuals are reduced to
genetically engineered and emotionally conditioned mass-beings. A liberal society is one
who privileges individual freedom and expression above social well-being and stability
for all. There is a clear correlation between, on the one hand, individual freedom and the
high culture that Shakespeare stands for with its associated privileging of individual
freedom and, on the other, low art, mass culture and mass being.
In Huxley's dystopia, the drug soma also serves to keep individuals from
experiencing the stressful negative effects of conflicts that the society cannot prevent.
Pain and stress — grief, humiliation, disappointment — representing uniquely individual
reactions to conflict still occur sometimes in the brave new world. The people of the
brave new world "solve" their conflict problems by swallowing a few tablets or taking an
extended soma-holiday, which removes or sufficiently masks the negative feelings and
emotions that other, more creative, problem-solving techniques might have and which
cuts off the possibility of action that might have socially disruptive or revolutionary
results. The irony is that individuality is the greatest threat to the stability of society, yet it
is also required in order to maintain this stability. Individuality must exist, yet it must
exist outside the main population, either on islands, where Bernard and Hemholtz were
destined to spend the rest of their lives, or in positions of power, as Mustapha Mond had
chosen. Huxley is saying that the main goal of a society is stability, which will come
from a feeling of happiness in all inhabitants. When people are happy, they have no
desire for change, and have no need for freedom. People only desire freedom when they
are controlled in a way that limits their happiness. John the Savage saw the lack of
freedom in utopia because he was not conditioned to be happy in that utopia; instead he
was happy in a reality that included the full range of human emotion, rather than just a
dull happiness. He could not bring freedom into the utopia; his attempt at a revolt failed
miserably. He could not leave the utopia; Mustapha Mond wanted to continue the
"experiment" of introducing a savage to his society. John tried to leave, but society
followed him, in the form of reporters and spectators. Without freedom, without
happiness, and without any way to escape, John had only one choice. The reporters found
his lifeless body spinning slowly in the breeze, and would probably never understand
why John could not continue to live in a world that they thought was perfect.
The individual was sacrificed so that the society could continue unchanged.

Bibliography:
1. Izzo, David Garrett, and Kirkpatrick, Kim: Huxley’s Brave New World: Essays,
edited by, Mc Farland, 2008, pp. 3-15;
2. Bloom, Harold, Aldous Huxley’s Brave new world, Philadelphis, Chelsea House,
2003, pp. 97-99;
3. http://mttlg.net/stuff/sufficiency.html