BRAVE NEW WORLD: A REFLECTION

November 14, 2021

Aldous Huxley’s Brave New World (1932) depicts a utopian/dystopian (depending on where you stand) world where the society is based on the technological enhancement, Henry Ford-driven “civilization” that imposes the mass production of test-tube babies, genetic modification of human bodies, drug distribution, polyamory, hypnopaedia educational program, to name a few. Under this administration, individuals are not allowed to read poetry and books, to like flowers and landscapes, to believe in the old God, to be in a monogamous relationship, to show individuality or critical thoughts, and so on. All the books related to philosophy, religion, art, are locked up in the safe and everyone here does not read anymore and instead, they are programmed into following the ideologies of Ford:

God isn’t compatible with machinery and scientific medicine and universal happiness…Our civilization has chosen machinery and medicine and happiness. (281)

Happiness has lost its relation to family and romantic relationships. Instead, medical science provides all the happiness one needs. The magical “soma” is the universal happy pill. Pop a few and you are good for everything. No more sadness or anger or remorse. “Soma” is the ultimate ecstasy/MDMA. But “soma” here represents more than just pleasure. It’s blended into the system of morality and human rights as well. It’s what everyone takes in order to be “human” in this Brave New World. As the Controller notes,

In a properly organized society like ours, nobody has any opportunities for being noble or heroic…Where there are wars, where there are divided allegiances, where there are temptations to be resisted, objects of love to be fought for or defended–there, obviously, aren’t any wars nowadays. The greatest care is taken to prevent you from loving any one too much. There’s no such thing as divided allegiance; you’re so conditioned that you can’t help doing what you ought to do. And what you ought to do is on the whole so pleasant, so many of the natural impulses are allowed free play, that there really aren’t any temptations to resist. And if ever, by some unlucky chance, anything unpleasant should somehow happen, why, there’s always soma to calm your anger, to reconcile you to your enemies, to make you patient and long-suffering. In the past you could only accomplish these things by making a great effort and after years of hard moral training. Now, you swallow two or three half-gramme tablets, and there you are. Anybody can be virtuous now. You can carry at least half of your morality about in a bottle. Christianity without tears–that’s what soma is.” (285)

So, there is still a chance that you might fall in love with someone. This does not change. But in Brave New World, “when the individual feels, the community reels” (110). Personal attachment is seen as a risk to society’s stability and unity. And if you behaved differently from others, you will be punished: they will send you to a harsh place like Iceland where you will join all the “unique” individuals (whom we should consider “normal” in the real world).

Bernad, the main character in the novel, is considered a “unique” individual as he wants to know “what passion is” and wants “to feel something strongly” (107). As he notes,

“Don’t you wish you were free, Lenina?”

“I don’t know what you mean. I am free. Free to have the most wonderful time. Everybody’s happy nowadays.” 

[…]

“But wouldn’t you like to be free to be happy in some other way, Lenina?” In your own way, for example; not in everybody else’s way.” (107) 

What Bernad wishes to feel is the individuality of happiness. Sadly, this is prohibited in Brave New World, where “every one belongs to every one else,” which means that everyone can fuck everyone (46). Sounds amazing, yeah? (I am sure some “utopian” communities in our world have this). But still, under this “equal” rule, women are still in an oppressed position.

“I once had to wait nearly four weeks before a girl I wanted would let me have her.”

“And you felt a strong emotion in consequence?”

“Horrible!”

“Horrible; precisely,” said the Controller. “Our ancestors were so stupid and short-sighted that when the first reformers came along and offered deliver them from those horrible emotions, they wouldn’t have anything to do with them.” (53) 

So, you see. In the pre-modern world (which is our modern world), in most parts, women can reject men. While in Brave New World, because everyone belongs to everyone, you gotta say yes when you are asked. It’s basically the commodification of sex or free prostitution. When guys are talking about Lenina, Bernad ground his teeth and states,

“Talking about her as though she were a bit of meat.”

“Have her here, have her there. Like mutton. Degrading her to so much mutton.” (53)

Words such as “meat,” “degrading,” “mutton” show that women are seen as sex objects, lower classed, nonhuman creatures. So yeah, Brave New World remains a patriarchal society, just like The Handmaid’s Tale or other dystopian novels. Similar to The Handmaid’s Tale, whereby women are divided into several categories based on their reproductive ability and ages, Brave New World divides its citizens into different groups based on intelligence:

“Alpha children wear grey. They work much harder than we do, because they’re so frightfully clever…Gammas are stupid. They all wear green, and Delta children wear khaki. Oh no, I don’t want to play with Delta children. And Epsilons are still worse. They’re too stupid to be able to read or write. Besides they wear blacks, which is such beastly color. I’m so glad I’m a Beta.” (30-1)

Those who are born as Alpha are doomed to be superior to others while those who are born as Epsilons are considered inferior, dumb, low-value beings. Racial and class hierarchy. Same things as today’s world.

From my perspective, the thing that is kinda twisted in Brave New World is “soma” and “death”: while “soma” is EVERYTHING (cash money, spiritual guidance, anti-depressing medicine, sex, food, happiness) but ultimately, it is nothing but a drug that makes you a mental cripple. As to “death,” because the concept of family and partnership do not exist anymore in Brave New World, people die alone at the hospital. When Linda, John’s mother, dies, John (the Savage) “fell on his knees beside the bed and, covering his face with his hands, sobbed uncontrollably” (247). This is considered a normal phenomenon since empathy is the core element that makes us human. But in Brave New World, this act is considered “anti-social” and “wrong” (247). As the nurse, who is observing John’s behavior, calls his act “disgusting outcry—as though death were something terrible, as though any one mattered as much as all that!” (247). I find this interesting as it is some kind of distorted, perverted psychology that we are seeing here in Brave New World. It is pretty sick. But yeah, normality is just next to abnormality. It’s all about perception. Utopia can be dystopian for some and vice versa. Like for Lenina and Linda, Brave New World is a utopia while for John and Bernad, it is the opposite.

Another interesting point I find is the propaganda programming of education. Well, this is happening all the time. Brave New World just exaggerates it 100 times! So, they start announcing all the Fordy ideas to the babies all the time and the babies just memorize all that craps naturally, without having the ability to question anything. As the Controller notes,

“Till at last the child’s mind is these suggestions, and the sum of the suggestions is the child’s mind. And not the child’s mind only. The adult’s mind too—all his life long. The mind that judges and desires and decides—made up of these suggestions. But all these suggestions are our suggestions!” (32)

Exactly, the babies, who then grow up to be members of society, are programmed to function the way the governor wants in order to achieve “unity” and “stability” and bring benefits to only a certain group of people: normally, the upper class. The trick here is to make people feel as though they have power and agency and yet, they do not. They cannot recognize this false consciousness and there is no way to self-realize this since no critical thinking or thoughts are allowed. You are born and trained as a worker of a specific department. After work, you get some “soma” for compensation. You can date multiple people but are not allowed to connect to anyone in a deeper sense. All end the same way, then. The Lost Generation in Brave New World.

A good novel always has a counter-narrative. Here are some I find interesting:

Words can be like X-rays, if you use them properly—they’ll go through anything. You read and you’re pierced. That’s one of the things I tried to teach my students—how to write piercingly. (83) 

I think the character I like the most in the novel is Helmholtz. He is caring and warm from the start to the end. His description above leaves a strong impression on me. I like the connection between writing and piercing. Just like writing and penetrating.

Another counter-narrative that I find interesting is from John. When he is reading Shakespeare, he claims,

The strange words rolled through his mind; rumbled, like talking thunder; like the drums at the summer dances, if the drums could have spoken (156)

Words have sounds; they make noise in your head. They have rhythm and they move with beats. They penetrate us and they live through us. Word can be seen as independent of the human agency once they are out of our head/hands. The Death of the Author. Same concept.

The last part of the novel is one of the most interesting parts. The Controller, who I thought is a bad person, turns out to be a “unique” individual of the community, just like Bernad and Helmholtz. He claims that he would like to go to an island and do his science but he chooses to stay and be the Controller in order to serve the community: “That’s how I paid. By choosing to serve happiness. Other people’s–not mine” (274). So, there is a plot twist here. Bernad’s changes throughout the novel are also a twist. He started as a “unique” individual until the half of the story and then begins to become like one of the people who chases for power and girls, which then ends up taking “soma” just like others.

The clashing of values is certainly one of the main themes of the novel. This can be seen in the interaction between John and Lenina, John and Linda, for example. John represents the pre-modern society while Lindan and Lenina the Ford society: London. John, who thought that London is a utopia world like Linda describes to him, wants to leave that place and be alone after seeing how people actually live their lives. He tells the Controller,

“But I don’t want comfort. I want God, I want poetry, I want real danger, I want freedom, I want goodness. I want sin.”; “I am claiming to the right to be unhappy.” (288)

Meanwhile, he still dreams of the Other Place. Even though it is London where Linda refers to, John separates this Other Place from London and recreates another utopia that only exists in his mind.

…the lovely music that came out of a box, and all the nice games you could play, and the delicious things to eat and drink, and the light that came when you pressed a little thing in the wall, and the pictures that you could hear and feel and smell, as well as see, and another box for making nice smells, and the pink and green and blue and silver houses as high as mountains, and everybody happy and no one very sad or angry, and ever one belonging to every one else,…and babies in lovely clean bottles—everything so clean, and no nasty smells, no dirt at all—and people never lonely, but living together and being so jolly and happy…” (151) 

The description above is important because this is one of the happiest times John has when he is with Linda, the woman he calls his mother. Finally, I love the episode when Linda sings for John and she teaches him words.

A, B, C, vitamin D  

I will not forget this line.

At last, two more quotes from the novel that I like:

“The religious sentiment will compensate us for all our losses. But there aren’t any losses for us to compensate; religious sentiment is superfluous. And why should we go hunting for a substitute for youthful desires, when youthful desires never fail?…What need have we of repose when our minds and bodies continue to delight in activity? of consolation, when we have soma? of something immovable, when there is the social order?” (280-81)

Mother, monogamy, romance…My love, my baby. No wonder those poor pre-moderns were mad and wicked and miserable. Their world didn’t allow them to take things easily, didn’t allow them to be sane, virtuous, happy. What with mother’s and lovers, what with the prohibitions they were not conditioned to obey, what with the temptations and the lonely remorses, what with all the diseases and the endless isolating pain, what with the uncertainties and the poverty—they were forced to feel strongly. And feeling strongly (and strongly, what was more, in solitude, in hopelessly individual isolation), how could they be stable? (47-8)

Work Cited:

Huxley, Aldous. Brave New World. New York: The Modern Library, 1923.