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 …show more content…
As Henry notes in his conversation with Lelina, “Of course (Epsilons) don’t mind (being Epsilons). How can they? They don’t know what it’s like being anything else. We’d mind, of course. But then we’ve been differently conditioned” (70). During the scene in the beginning of the novel when the Director is showing the children through the Hatchery and Conditioning Center, he lets the children hear the tapes played to the Betas in order to conditioned them. In this tape, the Betas are conditioned to believe that they are happy being underneath the Alphas because the Alphas perform more work than them. How can this social inequality between each caste be considered oppression if each member of the caste enjoys their place in