Elements of Brave New World briefly identified and explained for significance:
feelies: Modern equivilant to films, however involing the use of other senses other than sight and sound, namely touch and smell. They are often the destination for dates of couples, including John and Lenina.
The Savage Reserveration: The home of many so-called "savages" including John and Linda. Bernard and Lenina vist and watch a ritual which inolved the sacrafice of a young man by way of whipping. This unfamiliar scene is seen as especially terrorizing by Lenina.
soma: The "perfect drug" of the current times. It is used as a relief from any situation involving even the slightest stress or agony to the user. It is often compared to religion or God, and is definitely a key part of the World State.
freemartins: Seventy perfect of women who, at point of "creation", are sterilized.
Alphas: The highest social caste (exception: Alpha Plus) among their society of social hierarchy: Alphas, Betas, Gammas, Deltas, and Epsilons. They have been conditioned to have jobs that involve thinking, unlike the hard labour conditioning of Epsilons, for example.
hypnopedia: The conditioning treatment discovered long before their era. It is used in their times to reinforce social order and morals by repeating various phrases over and over while the patient is sleeping.
Solidarity, Community, Identity: The main motto of their society that expresses much that "everyone belongs to everyone else" to create a better, more orderly and fair society for all residents.
Malthusian belt: A belt which holds contraceptives and encourages more "social interaction." Linda is given one by Henry.
Solidarity Meeting: A gathering of Alphas. They sit around a large table, switching positions by sex at every seat (female, male, female, etc). They sing hymns and indulge in doses of soma. They often end in an orgy that involves everyone that is present at the meeting.
Mustapha Mond: Resident Controller of Western Europe, who keeps forbidden texts (bibles, Shakespeare, etc.) locked up in his room. In the end he relates to John by discussing relgions and the whole circumstances behind the "perfect" World State.
Ford: Seen as their "god" (for lack of a better term) for having introduced the production line and releasing the Ford Model T ('T' symbol used as equivilant to Christian cross). They era begins with the release of the Model T (A.F. - 'After Ford').
Linda: Mother of John, banished from society to the Savage Reservation when her contraceptives failed and she was impregnanted by who we later found out was Thomas (The Director). She is large and not particularly attractive and eventually dies in the hospital with her son at her side.
John Savage: Son of Linda, grows up on the Reservation but eventually goes to society and is deeply disturbed by the conditions. He makes an attempt at rebellion by throwing away the soma rations of a group of workers. He later becomes "friends" with Mond through similar interests in Shakespeare and discusses the current state of the society (hierarchy, religion (or lack thereof), etc.)
The Director: Used in the beginning of the novel to lay out the background information of how their societ works, especially in the creation plants. He explains to a group of students how certain conditioning is achieved through electric shock, hypnopedia, et al.
Fanny Crowne: Friend of Lenina, she encourages her to be more sexually open and should not limit herself to just one man, just as is proper in their society.
Freedom in Brave New World
One of the most common reoccurring themes in Aldous Huxley’s Brave New World (BNW) is freedom vs. happiness. It’s obvious that the people in Huxley’s “World State” really don’t know any better about their freedom (or lack thereof). They are happy with their “day in, day out” lives of working, sex, and drugs. However, the character of John quickly challenges these innate morals by the end of the novel. In chapter seventeen of the novel, John admits, “I don't want comfort. I want God, I want poetry, I want real danger, I want freedom, I want goodness. I want sin." With this one single line we are instantly struck with a great deal of consideration for the comparison of their liberty and ours.
We see the characters of the novel happy with their ignorance, as it were. From their conception they are given a job that they will have to perform for the rest of their lives, no questions asked. Quite obviously, this doesn’t leave much freedom for anything. To be conditioned from conception to do a particular job certainly provides a lot less worry that we face today in society: finding what interests you, going to a good school, getting good grades, finding a good job. Although giving up the worry for a complete lack of free will, especially in something as routine as your job, is hardly a fair trade. I couldn’t imagine being pre-chosen for a specific job, even from conditioning, knowing that there is potential for being some more had I been made as a Gamma.
When not working away like drones in their predestined jobs, they put forth very few sexual morals compared to what we have; pretty much anything goes. This may sound good for those who would be so inclined, that’s a given. To everyone else, this is really destroying a beautiful thing. Sex, in the World State, is no more of a thoughtless activity (maybe even chore) than doing the labor they had been unearthly assigned. Sex, as far as I’m concerned, is exactly the opposite of what this is. People may see the sexual “freedom” from BNW as a godsend, but to get such freedom also means a complete downgrade of what sex should be.
Drugs seemed to be the most prominent theme of the novel. Whether it was the intention of Huxley or not, reading the use of soma on just about every page of the book really made me think of drugs in our own society. With this in mind, it quickly became clear that I am so thankful we do not have such freedom. Besides the fact that we do not any such “perfect drug” equivalent to BNW’s soma, I’d hate to imagine that drugs are what everyone goes to with every little not-so-ideal situation. Just because there are no side effects does not mean that there should be excuse to enter some other, hallucinogenic-induced world every time you face hardship even in the slightest.
I suppose most – if not all – of what I’ve said is simply stating the obvious. But sometimes saying what everyone already knows really puts things better into perspective. I know I’ve said that million times before, and I have no problem saying it again. And now that I’ve written this journal, I really see there is a great mix of freedom. They do indeed have freedom – sex and drugs, as mentioned – but these lack of restrictions only seem to restrict them more, as it were. What we consider to be “sin” in terms of drugs and sex in our society only seem to be the norm in theirs. John said it best, in what I feel is the most significant quote in the entire novel, when he didn’t want comfort, he wanted freedom, and he wanted sin.
What is our goal, and will we like it if we get it?
Brave New World’s “World State” is the perfect example of a horrific dystopia. Whether intended to be completely serious or not, Aldous Huxley has offered us some form of commentary on the future of society in his novel. While we may laugh at some (or even a lot of) the reoccurring principles and morals of their perfect society, we still have to consider that some of these may not be too far from the truth of our future. We may laugh at the overwhelming sexual promiscuity or the blatant reliance on gateway drugs, but we also have to cringe at the, although exaggerated, bleak look at consumerism and governmental obstruction.
With this view of their world against ours, we can come to ask ourselves one important question about our future: what is our goal, and will we like it if we get it?
One thing I certainly asked myself was, what was the goal of the World State? This is certainly arguable, but assuming they had actually achieved their goals, they might’ve been: less social restraint, secure job placement, definite social structure and hierarchy, stable health of the population, complete globalization, et al.
On paper these all sound like wonderful goals, but we can look at BNW’s extreme examples to quickly change our minds. Do we really want a sexually licentious society where such a thing as “love” hardly even exists? Would we trade all of our personal freedom or potential for a job we which we are absolutely conditioned to perform? Do we really want a strong social structure (where “everyone belongs to everyone else”) if it means each social class is practically opposed to the other? Would we really prefer to live without fear of disease or sickness only to die at the age of 60 in the same day-in, day-out lives? Do we really want to have a completely globalized planet run only by a select number of like-minded leaders? For me, these questions are all about as rhetorical as it could get.
We have to know that whatever goals we make almost always turn out to turn against us in the end. Obviously we see this in Brave New World, but it’s been more than common in our own history. Look at communism, socialism, capitalism, absolutism, and the bunch. They all had fairly, I hate to say, reasonable goals for what they wished to accomplish, but obviously these all failed in their own right.
I think the key for the World State is simply the fact that the people don’t know any better. They have been conditioned to only do their job and live their lives, any outside texts (namely Shakespeare and the bible) have been banned to avoid any sort of rebellion, and anyone who does rebel finds themselves banished to Iceland. Maybe our goal is really ignorance of the population?
(Though probably not.)
The three of of these were written for my Grade 12 Writer's Craft class. The first part was actually a test a wrote, and the second was one of three journals written in response to the novel (another can be found in the soma node), and the third was a final journal entry written based on Absolute Zero's write-up in this same node.
Node your homework.