...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...
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...In chapter eleven of Aldous Huxley’s “Brave New World”, one of the main characters, John the Savage finally gets to visit London after being raised on the Reservation; only to be disappointed by the lack of individuality. John’s initial reaction of London before leaving the reservation is of praise: “O brave new world” (121); however, after viewing the internal employee workings of a small London factory John also says “O brave new world…” (139) but following his statement he vomits. This event highlights and foreshadows the importance of John as a character to show the bad in a supposedly utopian society, and relates to the novel’s overall theme of oppression of individual differences. A close analysis of the incident and the details used by Huxley to describe this event reveals that John’s “violent retching” (139) reaction to the Brave New world indicates the individuality of John allowing Huxley through this character to draw attention to the downfalls of the Utopian society....
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...proved both advantageous and detrimental to society as a whole. Technology has helped connect the world and help make everybody happier. However, at what cost? When does technology cease to be beneficial and begin its destruction? Technology has led to the illusion of multitasking, the chronic and widespread abuse of prescription drugs, and the downfall of society as a whole through virtual realities. The article “Why the modern world is bad for your brain”, by Daniel J Levitin shines light on many of the societal norms in Brave New World by Aldous Huxley. “Multitasking has been found to increase the production of the stress hormone cortisol as well as the fight-or-flight hormone adrenaline, which can...
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...Brave New World In Contrast to Aging in the Future The book “Brave New World” brought up many points about the future, and aging. The book is in the Utopia setting where everyone is the same, and robot-like, they take soma to stay happy and emotionally incapable. People do not age, they do not have emotions or feelings either, they are all the same. Comparing to the real world, we do age, we do have emotions, and we do care about others. In Brave New World everyone lives forever because of the medications they take. The question for today is, how long are we going to live in the future? It all depends on medical advances, and technological advances. Some people believe we are going to live longer as the years go on. Some believe that medicines or life styles may decrease our life expectancy. I believe that in the very far future we may end up like Brave New World, taking medications or other modifications to help our bodies live longer. I believe that we will advance medically in the near future, but we will not be advancing rapidly enough to be able to find a medication that everyone in society is going to take. It is far-fetched...
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...The Need for Happiness Vietnamese Buddhist monk Thích Nhất Hạnh once wrote, “Happiness does not come through the consumption of things.” He persists that happiness only comes when one is free from materialistic desire.. The monk also suggests suffering is crucial to perceive true happiness. Brave New World embodies the same concept, does true happiness exist without suffering? Aldous Huxley purposed soma to be the object that eliminates suffering and, consequently, the characters think they are happy due to soma and conditioning. In the consumer utopia of Brave New World, citizens are conditioned to be happy, but do not experience true happiness because they are not willing defy the utopia, are not suffering, and are not liberated from soma. Defying the utopia is not in the best interest of the citizen considering genetically breeding requires little to replace them, but they are conditioned to believe they are in the best situation. “One believes things because one has been conditioned to believe them” (Huxley 234). In chapter two, the Director used a mild-electric shock to condition the children to not like books. If the children would have not been shocked, they would...
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...The Life and Death of Aldous Huxley Through examining Brave New World, one can infer that Aldous Huxley’s fears of the demise of today’s consumer society, rise in use of technology, and reliance on religion entitled him to express his concerns. From his experiences in Italy under an authoritarian government headed by Mussolini to his late life in California, Mr. Huxley always, “played the role of a critical observer of accepted tradition, customs, social norms, and ideals.”(www.egs.com) Aldous Huxley was born July 26, 1894 in Godalming in southern England into a very successful and scientific family. His father was a school teacher/writer, two of his three brothers were scientist, and his grandfather had been nicknamed “Darwin’s Bulldog”...
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...Piggybacking on the Information Age came a whole new wave of advertisement, as new social media platforms and methods of reaching the public made it easier than ever before to spread an idea, an image, or a name. These days, there’s an advertisement for something nearly everywhere- in magazines, on television screens, ironed onto tee-shirts, on the sidebar of every website you visit. Companies even hire employees to run social media campaigns over platforms like Twitter and Tumblr, often communicating directly with consumers. These advertisements are constantly urging society to buy this, buy that, conform, consume! Now, most would say that the level of consumerism in our modern society is hardly as bad as in Aldous Huxley’s novel Brave New...
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...Dystopia: The World Today Introduction Written in 1931 and published a year after, The Brave New World (1932) contradicts the idea of Utopia (perfect world); a type of novel that queries the values of 1931 London using satire to dramatically represent a futuristic world in which occurring fads in British and America have been taken to extremity. People from The World State are living peacefully, free from any kind of war, abhorrence, impecuniousness, illness and physical sufferings. The novel depicts a potentially perfect world, not to mention people can enjoy wealth in terms of material possessions and all form of pleasures. Using high technology, human beings no longer have to conceive. They are created in factories wherein they are being prepared for future lives. The children are raised altogether and minds are controlled through sleep-teaching to further enhance their condition. As they turn to be adults, people are already destined to certain classes. And if one was unfortunately destined to be of the lower class, he would be raised to generally like the kind of life designated to him and be trained not to like nor appreciate - basically to the extent of being manipulated - other roles but theirs. They are subjected to engage or yield themselves in totally harmless entertainment and physical activities as form of leisure. There are several anticipations which were depicted by Huxley in The Brave New World. Although some of them may not be totally proven by this time,...
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...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...
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...Analysing Dystopia in a “Brave New World” The concept of Dystopia in literature is a form of exploring various interpretations of a different world. Specifically, a dystopian text explores a domain in which a society and way of life may seem ideal (Utopia), yet within the text it is later revealed that the society remain mentally unprepared and incapable of sustaining order in their world. Most dystopian texts illustrate a world which has been resulted in the consequence of humanity and this is one of the main reasons it is regularly visited. It is a genre in which the dystopian texts frequently challenge the views and values of their current audiences. This is because they are judged and critiqued on their depiction of scenes and events that breach sensitive moral and ethical issues. What makes the genre so fascinating both to read and write is to remind ourselves of the capabilities of humanity and just how much we can impact a hypothetical world. It is also a way in which we can ponder the extremes we as a society can reach and reflect the possibilities of the very future of the human race. Another reason why the concept intrigues us is because dystopian texts are subconsciously thought to be renditions of hell. With Utopia being the impression of heaven or an ideal world, Dystopia corresponds as the opposite. These ideas are explored in Aldous Huxley’s classic dystopian piece “Brave New World” [1932]. “Brave New World” by Aldous Huxley is considered a dystopian text due...
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...A pill that guarantees happiness “If anything should go wrong, there's soma.” Does this sentiment explored in Aldous Huxley’s classic novel Brave New World now reflect current attitudes towards legal drug use? Have we become a society of self-medicating pill poppers desperate to avoid extreme emotions? Ashlie Hodges examines drug use in our society. Huxley’s novel challenges contemporary social values and expectations, while remaining relevant to the 21st century. The classic dystopian novel Brave New World was published in 1932 and is set in the year 2540. The title is a nod to William Shakespeare’s The Tempest, as the play directly features the words Brave New World. The message of taking legal drugs to avoid mental illness and emotions...
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...a. The brave new world that Aldous Huxley creates overtly deviates from today’s world. However, disturbing correlations between our world and his do exist. The idea of synthesizing all human life in a lab represents a more apparent distinction of Huxley’s world. His society even denounces natural birth as something almost unnatural. Huxley illustrates his society's disgust with natural birth when Lenina, a main character and denizen of the new world, visits a Native American Reservation. The warden of the reservation tells her that, “. . .in the Reservation, children still are born, yes, actually born, revolting as that may seem. . .” (Huxley 102). His society also prevents its people from aging, “[They] keep their internal secretions artificially balanced at a youthful equilibrium,” which emulates another difference of the new world (Huxley 111). One...
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...the time. It was controversial through some literature authors who were against such text. Brave New World is set in future-London 632 A.F. (After Henry Ford). The society is set as utopian times. Humans are produced in assembly lines and are manipulated right away after being born. They develop a hatred for books and flowers or anything that is ordinary in our world that brings...
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...“Community. Stability. Identity.” These three words are the foundation of the dystopian world created by author Aldous Huxley in his novel Brave New World. In this novel, Huxley creates a society known as the World State in which individuals are created and designed to play a specific role in society. Much of the way the society is built reflects the philosophy of Karl Marx. Huxley creates this new world to ironically mirror the ideas of Marxism in how it can ensure social stability. Or can it? Brave New World was written in 1932 during a time with no economic stability or security and after the Industrial Revolution where most of the workforce consisted of cheap labor within factories. It was a time where wealth was distributed only to those...
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...Most of the characters in Aldous Huxley’s classic dystopian novel Brave New World and director Phillip Noyce’s film The Giver exhibit behaviors that are forced upon them, and they do not know what has been taken away from them. Our modern society and culture is succumbing to these predictions to only a slight extent because Americans still have the freedoms to be their own person while the characters in the stories do not. The governments in the book and the movie are both over-controlling and try to inhibit natural phenomenon like having free will and the ability to feel emotions. For the most part, Americans are born free and have the capability to feel anything. Conversely, in Brave New World, most of the population is genetically engineered to feel a certain way. Each person is created in such a way that whatever they are predestined to do in life makes them happy. As the Director once put it, “that is the secret to happiness and virtue—liking what you’ve got to do. All conditioning aims at that: making people like their unescapable social destiny,” (Huxley 16). In modern society, no one is...
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