Aldous Huxley

– Brave New World Essay, Research Paper

By: Aldous Huxley Brave New World opens in a technically

advanced future

world. In the beginning of this book, we see the Director of

World

Hatcheries lead the new hatchery students on a tour of a

Conditioning

Center in London where babies are produced in bottles and

pre-sorted to

determine which class level they will be born into. These

class level

range from Alpha-plus, the highest level, to Epsilon-minus,

the lowest.

There are no parents, and babies are conditioned from birth

to learn certain

behaviors. All diseases have been eliminated, and when

people are feeling

down, they just take soma, a wonder drug. Also, people are

conditioned from

birth not to love one person, so there is no marriage and

most people have

many lovers. There is no God; instead, Henry Ford is

worshipped as the god

Ford. Another accomplishment of this society is the

elimination of aging.

Bernard Marx has unorthodox viewpoints and is outcast as

an eccentric. He

likes being alone, but in this society being alone is

discouraged. His

isolation from society has made him very different from

everyone else. His

only friend is Helmholtz Watson, an accomplished intellect

who writes

government propaganda. Watson has grown war of life as

it is, and his

supervisors have him under close watch. Two co-workers

are discussing

Lenina Crowne, another worker, in a changing room. They

act as if she were

property, able to be bought and sold. Bernard is disgusted

by this, so he

decides to ask Lenina to go to a Savage Reservation in New

Mexico. Bernard

visits the Director for permission to go. The Director tells a

story of when

he went to a Savage Reservation with Linda, a pretty

colleague. During their

visit,Linda was lost, and the Director had to leave. So

Bernard and Lenina

go to the Savage Reservation, which is inhabited by Indians.

They quickly

find Linda among the Indians. At first they do not realize

who she is, but

she explains what happened. Linda is aged and obese. Also,

Linda has a son

named John who is the Director’s child. John is educated

and mature, having

read

Shakespeare (forbidden in civilization). Bernard takes

the two back

to London for study. Once back, Linda takes too much

soma, so she falls into

a coma. John is displayed by Bernard, who becomes a hero.

But "the Savage"

(as John is called) is frightened by the new world he sees.

The fear and

oppression he experiences make him long for his old life.

Lenina becomes

infatuated with John, and her candid attempts to make him

love her end with

his becoming angry at her openness. John vows never to

take soma, or to

succumb to civilization. John believes he can save himself if

he avoids this

brave new world. John enjoys conversations with Helmholtz,

and Bernard

becomes jealous. They soon realize that the three of them

are different

from the rest of society. At the bedside of his dying mother,

John becomes

enraged and throws the hospital soma supply out the

window. Helmholtz and

Bernard arrive, and Helmholtz helps John destroy the

narcotic. Bernard

deserts the two and calls a guard. The three are taken to see

Mustapha Mond,

an elder wise man. Mond knows that all three harbor

revolutionary minds, so

he tells them that their only option is to live on an island with

other such

people. Mond then explains how society has developed

without

public knowledge of history or literature. He explains that, in

order to

keep society at a balance where everyone is happy, only

certain people can

read these books. The two men leave for the island, but

John takes up

residence in an abandoned lighthouse. He tries to "purify"

himself from

this awful society. Crowds soon come to see him, among

them Lenina, whom he

mauls terribly. He is given soma. When he awakens, he

realizes what he has

done, and he hangs himself. Huxley did an excellent job of

portraying the

possible future. The most prominent theme is alienation.

Helmholtz, John,

and Bernard were shunned for not having conventional

beliefs. The future

presented by Huxley is almost frightening, because in order

to achieve

happiness, individuality and knowledge had to be sacrificed.

Huxley wrote

this book to warn us. He wanted us to know that society

should not be

controlled, and that there is a price for a peaceful society.

Since society

is still the same in the end, Huxley shows the same

hopelessness that George

Orwell showed in 1984. I liked this book because Huxley

paid attention to

detail and created a thoroughly engrossing literary

masterpiece. Huxle

"predictions" have begun to become reality. For instance,

soma is strikingly

similar to prozac. Huxley’s thinking was truly ahead of its

time.