Premium Essay

Aldous Huxley's Brave New World

Submitted By
Words 1731
Pages 7
During Aldous Huxley’s young adult life, he was apart of what many historians like to call the “Roaring Twenties”. This era and time period during the 1920’s led into the stock market crash of 1929, causing the Great Depression. Huxley had a general discomfort for the economic upheavals and rejection of traditional values by the youth of the generation (Napierkowski and Stanley). Deciding to write out against these feelings, Huxley wrote one of his best works, Brave New World, in 1931. Brave New World is a dystopian novel that takes place in a futuristic setting where extensive improvements to science and technology has created a world that is foreign to all readers. Throughout Huxley’s adult life, his interpretations of Henry Ford and the …show more content…
The Ford Model T was the “world’s first automobile for people of limited means” (Carey and Friedman), meaning anyone of the average work class could afford to buy the car. The mass production methods employed to create the Model T’s is the foundation for why the new World State creates new citizens the way they do. Henry Ford’s goal was to make every American family to have Model T, so he automated the process and integrated every aspect of the cars production (Gordon). This production strategy laid the groundwork for how the World State developed and sped up the process for new members. For the Ford Model T, there was a different place along the assembly line for each stage of production, getting the production time down from 728 minutes to just 93 minutes (Gordon). In the ‘Central London Hatchery and Conditioning Centre”, the assembly line has changed into a way of creating babies, not cars, in a quicker more efficient way. The scientific progress made has allowed them to create anywhere from 8 to 96 for each embryo and every embryo is fully developed in just 276 days (Huxley 7-12), allowing the World State to manufacture whatever type of person they need, whenever they want …show more content…
This special drug is considered the ‘perfect drug’ and is a euphoric, narcotic, and a hallucinogen (Huxley 53). Also, one hypnopediac saying that made citizens like the drug more is, “And do remember, a gramme is better than a damn”(Huxley 55). This quote seems to suggest that every one in the new world is brought up to love the drug and use it as an escape for any situation. Soma essentially enslaves the population and ensures more control for the government; without the drug, hypnopedia would all but be useless since hypnopedia is what is tricking them into using it so often and soma is what is tricking them into being happy. This is just another example Aldous Huxley uses to show governments having too much control over the people can be a bigger issue than most would

Similar Documents

Premium Essay

Aldous Huxley's Brave New World

...Aldous Huxley’s “Brave New World” in the Contemporary Context As the dominant intelligent being on earth, the human society has evolved to increasingly sophisticated yet convenience-oriented faction of the earth’s population. The various challenges that faced ancient man have been decimated significantly by the modern progresses. These developments are somewhere along the estimations of Huxley in his book “Brave New World” despite its futuristic setting, 600 years from now. The similarity of his fictional society to the current world is worryingly accurate, let alone the concerns that he claims to plague the society at the time. Furthermore, the increasingly liberal nature of the modern society is akin to that of the future described by Huxley,...

Words: 1387 - Pages: 6

Premium Essay

Technology In Aldous Huxley's Brave New World

...the use of empty entertainment to keep a community thriving, Aldous Huxley’s Brave New World depicts a distorted society by over exaggerating the use of new technological advances and unemotional lifestyle. Throughout the novel, a futuristic, highly advanced world is illustrated based on the activities the people of the new world society partake in and the creation and decanting of the humans. This brave new world created is an exaggerated form of life today by emphasizing high technology and erotic and i satisfying entertainment distort life and create a false sense of a pure, perfect society. Continually, the use of technology plays a large part in the society because the use of technology...

Words: 734 - Pages: 3

Premium Essay

Hypnopaid In Aldous Huxley's Brave New World

...On average, humans sleep twenty-two years of their life away within their life span (Mckanna 2). This to most is time well wasted, but what if we could make use of that time. In many science fiction novels such as Aldous Huxley’s Brave New World, the people of the future use hypnopaedia or sleep-learning to make better use of this time simply slept away. Hypnopaedia is the playing of a recording repeatedly while an individual is sleeping so that they learn and retain the information. However, the latest theories on its further applications do not exactly meeting its ideal purpose. While we sleep, our mind is constantly sending neurological impulses in our hippocampi that allows us to store memories (Robson 1). This storing and processing...

Words: 593 - Pages: 3

Premium Essay

Aldous Huxley's Brave New World

...In the book, Brave New World, by Aldous Huxley the society represents many aspects of today’s world that were mere predictions. Huxley focuses on the process of conditioning to change the children’s mindsets. As our world is changing, we can see some of the same results as the conditioning in the book creates. The conditioning that is constantly shown throughout the whole book is very scarysacry for the fact that in our world, some of these practices are shown in some way. One of the conditionings that are seen early in the book is when the children are getting electrocuted after seeing certain objects, in this case, flowers and books. The children are taught to hate specific objects by showing that pain is associated with them. Once the Director...

Words: 275 - Pages: 2

Premium Essay

Abortion Rights In Aldous Huxley's Brave New World

...Throughout history, the technological world has continued to evolve and grow to new heights. Sometimes, these technological advancements are controversial and present a multitude of issues that make call into question its benefits. Aldous Huxley’s novel, Brave New World, features the birth of babies in artificial wombs as an alternative to natural pregnancies. Huxley describes new problems arising such as Although this controversial device could be available in the far future, it is currently only being researched as a way to treat and care for premature babies who would not survive outside of the womb. With these new technologies, it is possible to have positive impacts on the health of unborn babies without encountering negative effects such...

Words: 946 - Pages: 4

Premium Essay

The Caste System In Aldous Huxley's Brave New World

...One of the primary themes in Aldous Huxley’s dystopian novel Brave New World is the idea of social stratification and the caste system. Within this universe, people are engineered at birth to fit into a certain caste in order to maintain stability. At first it may seem that the upper castes hold the power over the lower castes. However, because the lower castes enjoy their position in society, this cannot be the case. Instead, Huxley makes the argument that although the lower castes seem happy with their lives, they do not know any better due to the World Controllers’ conditioning, and are not leading full lives at all. None of the conditioned castes are allowed to enjoy the same sort of intellectual and personal freedoms that the upper class World Controllers do. In this way, the World Controllers are the elites who maintain total power over the lower social castes. Taken at face value, it may seem as though the power inequalities occur within the individual castes. The upper-caste Alphas and Betas do not associate with the lower Gammas, Deltas, and Epsilons, believing themselves to be superior. Furthermore, the lower castes...

Words: 634 - Pages: 3

Premium Essay

A Taste Of Change In Aldous Huxley's Brave New World

...A Taste of Change Aldous Huxley’s Brave New World examined many idea’s in the search to create a perfect society.  Although some of the problems from Huxley’s time still exist today, some of them found their way out of society for the better.  Huxley questions the role of women in society, stereotypes, and racism. One of Huxley’s major issues was the role of women in society.  When the 20th century started women were not thought of to be performing the jobs they do now.  Out of the 1,933,014 employed women in the early 1900s, 1,740,800 were “domestic servants” (Trueman).  Women were not given the opportunities men were given.  They  were “barred” from being able to vote in presidential campaigns (Lee).  The “priority” of a woman in the...

Words: 615 - Pages: 3

Premium Essay

Consumerism In Aldous Huxley's A Brave New World

...In the novel A Brave New World the future society is considered a consumer society, but if you think about it our society mirrors that very closely. Consumerism started to grow in our country around the 1920s when big business was booming. In our society people always buy something newer than its previous model when it comes out; people also generally seem to consume more and more every day. Are we really happy with this kind of society, or are we digging ourselves deeper into a dark hole. This, honestly, could be affecting people in a bad way psychologically, even though many seem happy on the outside. It is the same thing in A Brave New World because they convince people to believe something is good or bad so they will buy a product or never touch it. In our society today people are affected by the mass production of consumer products. People shop day and night just to be able to show that they always have the newer stuff. Every time a new iPhone comes out people with perfectly good iPhones buy the new one just to buy it....

Words: 775 - Pages: 4

Premium Essay

Analysis Of Aldous Huxley's 'Brave New World'

...“There is only one corner of the universe you can be certain of improving, and that’s your own self.” (Aldous Huxley) The reason I chose this quote is because it is a valuable, meaningful, along with the quote saying something significant. This quote means that no matter the location in the universe, you won’t progress further than what your own self can do for yourself. In other words, the quote means that the only way you can be certain of improving is by having one’s self find out ways to advance what your current self is capable of plus enhancing so that it will be to reach higher and that no matter where you are, it doesn’t change the fact that the only way to develop is to train one’s self. When I read the quote and imagine it, the...

Words: 401 - Pages: 2

Premium Essay

A Perfect Society In Aldous Huxley's A Brave New World

...The desire to create a perfect society has been alive for centuries. The effort to make a utopia can be seen throughout history. In the novel Brave New World, Aldous Huxley writes about the idea of a flawless community. During Huxley’s time, the Nazis were in pursuit to establish their pure nation forcibly by using violence to organize a world of only fit Germans. Attempts to design a ideal society can still be seen today such as in America and North Korea. The paths of building a faultless society can happen in many ways. In the 1930-40s, there was a well known movement to form the perfect society. A group in Germany, called the Nazi’s, had a certain idea of a unblemished race and tried methods of constructing a society with only the “perfect”...

Words: 583 - Pages: 3

Premium Essay

Dystopian In Aldous Huxley's A Brave New World

...Everyone dreams with the ridiculous idea of having a perfect world without problems, without suffer, without greed, and even with immortality, but what if we found what we were looking for, would it still be perfect. Many talented writers attempted to illustrate the opposite idea that people had about a perfect world because it would create sense into a broken society that just needed a little healing. Before it could be too late, Aldous Huxley wrote Brave New World with dense dystopian characteristics that certainly painted some sort of dark image in the minds of readers about the type of world that they would face in a distant future. Dystopian novels essentially illustrate a futuristic world that seems perfect in the eyes of others, but...

Words: 1037 - Pages: 5

Premium Essay

Happiness In Aldous Huxley's Brave New World

...If you gave someone the choice between getting what they wanted and not getting what they wanted, they'd choose getting what they wanted every time. This satisfaction of desire, the person would believe, would make them happy. In order to maintain its stability, the State in Brave New World ensures that all its citizens get exactly what they want all the time. In other words, the State is designed to make people happy. According to Tom Stewart, this universal "happiness" is achieved in three ways: “The first is, state uses biological science and psychological conditioning to make sure that each citizen is not only suited to its job but actually prefers that role to anything else. Secondly, through the promotion of promiscuous sex as virtuous...

Words: 810 - Pages: 4

Premium Essay

Brave New World

...Brave New World by Aldous Huxley Brave New world is a dystopian novel written in England in 1931 and published in 1932 during the Modernism literary period. The setting of the novel is in London and New Mexico ruled under an imagined future one-world government called the World State. The World State of Brave New World is a totalitarian dystopia that uses technology to, deceive its citizens into loving their slavery. Dystopia is a society, in this case the World State, that is an imaginary society organized to create ideal conditions for human beings, eliminating hatred, pain, neglect, and all of the other evils of the world. Huxley wrote Brave New World as a dystopian novel due to the rise of technology and science in the 1930s, focusing on the totalitarianism evils (meaning centralized or dictatorial). Huxley imagined a future of a totalitarian state where there is no such thing as freedom of anything and happiness was forced through manipulation, called conditioning in the novel. When Huxley wrote Brave New World, it was just a little over a decade since World War I. During this time, totalitarian states were popping up in the Soviet Union and Fascist parties were gaining power in Europe. Also, there were advancements in science, technology, and the relationship between the two as the world became more industrialized. Aldous Huxley was born in Surrey, England, on July 26, 1894, to a well-known family of scientists, writers, and teachers deeply rooted in England’s literary...

Words: 1273 - Pages: 6

Premium Essay

A Brave New World

...The novel A Brave New World by Aldous Huxley was a story written about society that was thought to be a utopia, but in actuality this twisted world was anything from perfect. The society Huxley portrayed in his novel was in some ways a Marxists dream and in other ways a Marxists worst nightmare. Aldous Huxley did a brilliant job connecting with the Marxist point of view while also embodying numerous fears of Marxists in his critically acclaimed book A Brave New World. Marxists believed in a totalitarian government somewhat like a dictatorship. The government in Huxley’s novel used tactics such as adolescent brainwashing, drug administration, and the use of technology to keep total control of the public population. Much like Marxist societies the society in Aldous Huxley’s A Brave New World chose to alienate their young instead of nurture them like a normal world. Children in this novel were alienated at an early age, they were also trained to hate nature and music or anything that promoted any type of free will. Children were not raised by a mother and father because in the World State there was no such thing as marriage or even love. In Marxist cultures children were separated from their parents and taught to formulate their view of the world based on only Marxist teachings rather than “outdated” views. In a Marxist society the upbringing of children was not handled by parents but rather by the entire community so there were such things as family bonds in Marxism. Marxist...

Words: 941 - Pages: 4

Premium Essay

A Brave New World: Character Analysis

...Savannah Morris Faris Honors English IV 09 January 2015 A Maggot-Less World A Utopia is an imaginative place that is beautiful in every aspect and is the author’s perspective of a “perfect society”. Aldous Huxley creates this Utopia in his novel, “Island”. He creates a perfect society with limited technology and a union of all people to work together. Huxley creates this Utopia during a time period of corruption and new discoveries. As the nation enters the literary time period of “the beat period”, Huxley's unconscious idea of a Utopian society is displayed uncensored in “Island” as opposed to “Brave New World” and he provides his personal solution to the world’s problems. In “Island” by Aldous Huxley the main character, Will Farnaby,...

Words: 1978 - Pages: 8