Brave New World themes

Dystopia and Totalitarianism

BNW differs from traditional totalitarian dystopias

• BNW envisions a future totalitarian society wherein individual liberty has been seized by an all-powerful state

• While other dystopian novels, such as George Orwells 1984, envision these totalitarian measures being carried out through forceful tactics, such as surveillance and torture, BNW rather argues that the most powerful totalitarian state would be one that doesn’t suppress and frighten its citizens, but instead manages to convince its citizens to love their slavery

People are conditioned to like their predestined roles within society, rather than enforced with surveillance + brutality

• “That is the secret of happiness and virtue—liking what you’ve got to do. All conditioning aims at that: making people like their inescapable social destiny.”

• People chemically and psychologically conditioned to love roles that are predestined for them

• However conditions remain to be enforced, even when people made to be happy, as destinies are inescapable—made to believe destinies are what they want

• Totalitarianism exemplified by hive-like atmosphere of London hatchery

• “Buzz buzz! The hive was humming, busily, joyfully. Blithe was the singing of the young girls over their test-tubes, the Predestinators whistled as they worked, and in the Decanting Room what glorious jokes were cracked above the empty bottles!”

• Dehuminises workers, more likely insects behaving instinctively rather than variable human beings

• Workers are not robotic, mindless cogs, rather lively and cheerful with only outward appearance of personality

• This veneer of personality makes Brave New World’s totalitarian regime more unsettlingly than the environment of a more outwardly coercive dystopia—easy to understand why controller want this, for world at peace

• However remains to be dystopia as people lose something core to their humanity—people do not suffer from issues such as poverty, disease like those in traditional dystopia, yet people in BNW do not know what it is like to live in a world where they can choose who they want to be and how they want to live—they have no freedom

Punishes those who do not conform—threaten stability

• World State to punish those displaying non-conformity to maintain a brainwashed compliant society

• Shown when Director prepares to publicly Bernard for unorthodox behaviour

• “Consider the matter dispassionately, Mr. Foster, and you will see that no offence is so heinous as unorthodoxy of behaviour. Murder kills only the individual—and, after all, what is an individual? We can make a new one with the greatest ease—as many as we like. Unorthodoxy threatens more than the life of a mere individual; it strikes at Society itself.”

• The cost of conditioning contradicts utopia guise world controllers try uphold

• When a personality emerges that threatens “orthodoxy,” must be eliminated

What happens to individuals in this society—the Savage unable to survive in World State

Method of enforcing conformity so effective that those who do not conform are pushed to edge of society, or eliminated entirely

• This ostracisation how the Savage becomes societal curiosity + casualty

• Society cannot make room for or comprehend the Savage as he refuses to be happy following World State belief—John rather chooses solitude, emotion, self-denial and suffering instead of shallow happiness, conformity, and mindless indulgence

• Civilisation reaction extension of World State mindset

• Sees self-flagellation as mere entertainment stunt, when witness the pain he inflicts on Lenina and himself, respond with what they are conditioned to do—“orgy porgy” Solidarity dance

• Overall, the Savage’s suffering must be neutralised by being absorbed info pleasure-obssessed, conformist mindset State has painstakingly created

• In novel, totalitarianism ultimately wins, and the only hope offered is that, somewhere, perhaps there are more “anomalies” like Bernard, Hemholtz, or the Savage who might survive.

Technology and Control

Advances in science means government to restrict scientific findings, use to control behavior

• BNW raises idea that advances in biology + psychology could be used by government to develop technology to change how people think and act

• Once this happens, never suggests totalitarian government will cease to allow pursuit of actual science, and truth that science reveals will be restricted + controlled

• Huxley argues the more humans harness technology to reach human happiness, the more they will be enslaved by technology, neglect higher human aspirations

Example of technological control—conditioning

• World State technology very effective in creating complacent citizens

• Shown in student tour lead by Director explaining hypnopaedia—recordings explaining World State beliefs for sleeping children to subconsciously absorb

• “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!”

• Hypnopaedic recordings are chilling as they shape a developing child’s thought processes + their perception of the world

Conditioning is reductive—Bernard + Hemholtz show there is more to the human condition than what conditioning seeks to control

• At the same time, technology is inherently reductive—the use of conditioning falsely suggests humans can be reduced to ethical sayings they’re exposed to

• Conditioning effective in maintaining stability, however presence of characters such as Bernard and Hemholtz, who resist aspects of their conditioning + long for something more than what World State allows them—shows that conditioning is not completely effective

• There is more to humanity that the mind’s ability to ‘judge and desires and decide’, and the World State technology is unable to control that ‘something more’ as effectively as it forms children’s likes + dislikes

Stability may be threatened if technology is changed too much—why scientific + technological findings censored and kept hidden

• As technology limited in this way, World State must control its advancement—when Mustapha Mond explains to the Savage that technological + scientific advances are suppressed for social reasons, says:

• “Every change is a menace to stability. That’s another reason why we’re so chary of applying new inventions. Every discovery in pure science is potentially subversive; even science must sometimes be treated as a possible enemy.”

• Meaning technological changes a mean the undoing of conditioned stability + make people recognise and resist enslavement. Mond continues to explain:

• “We can’t allow science to undo its own good work. That’s why we so carefully limit the scope of its researches—that’s why I almost got sent to an island. We don’t allow it to deal with any but the most immediate problems of the moment.”

• Mond does not question value of science, but as he knows science’s potential, makes sure to limit its ambitions so stability can be maintained

Overall, science not allowed to continue as it would eventually reach point where it will be used by humans to remove negative feelings

• “In our Ford’s time, they seemed to have imagined that [science] could be allowed to go on indefinitely, regardless of everything else..”

• Mass production demand the shift [from truth and beauty to comfort and happiness], Universal happiness keeps the wheels steadily turning; truth and beauty can’t.“

• Mond’s reminiscence on 20th-century technological progress is one of the most prophetic notes in the novel. Huxley suggests that his readers should not assume that such progress can last forever, especially when it is allowed to remove concerns about aspects of the human experience besides shallow happiness, like truth and beauty.

• The more human beings use technology to secure convenient happiness, the further enslaved they will become by it.

The Cost of Happiness

How happiness is ensured + how happiness maintains stability

• World State citizens ensure happiness of civilians to maintain stability—satisfaction of getting what they want would make them happy

• Ensures universal happiness in three ways:

  1. Psychological conditioning—ensures not only each citizen is suited to their job, but genuinely like + enjoy their job

  2. Promiscuous sex + elimination of families and monogamous relationships—no one will face unreciprocated emotional + sexual desire

  3. Soma—gives users an escape from reality to erase all negative feelings that may still remain

• All methods effective in maintaining happiness

Characters, Bernard, Hemholtz, Mustapha, ask what cost this happiness comes

• However through Bernard, Hemholtz, John and Mustapha, BNW asks at what cost does happiness come? What is lost when individual desires are immediately met?

• Novel answers that satisfaction of every desire creates superficial + infantile happiness that creates stability by eliminating deep thought, new ideas and strong passion

• Without these, humanity loses possibility of more significant fulfilments that can be reached through pursuit of art and science, or pursuit of love and understanding with others

• Novel argues that guaranteed happiness + stability is not truly valuable, making adults to mere infants who do not care about truth or progress

Close relationships inevitably include negative emotions—unhappiness means instability

• In beginning student tour, Mond portrays past as revolting place where people were under burden of suffocating relationships + constant suffering

• Pre-modern world “didn’t allow them to take things easily, didn’t allow the, to be sane, virtuous and happy. What with mother’s and lovers, what with temptations and lonely remorse, what with all the diseases and isolating pain, what with all the uncertainties and poverty—they were forced to feel strongly. And feeling strongly… how could they be stable?”

• Sums the way citizens are made to consider life—feelings brought by close human bonds + struggles have no positive aspects

• When stability equated with happiness, anything that undermines stability—things once considered enriching + character forming—rejected as harmful

Lack of happiness leads to shallow individuals unable to comprehend what life is like without constant happiness

• Idealisation of comfort and stability as most important values effectively impacts entire populations, leaving them unable to critically think or conceive taking risks for their freedom

• Bernard tries to say to Lenina about happiness: “What is would be like if I were free—not enslaved by my conditioning […] Yes, ‘Everybody’s happy nowadays.’ We begin giving the children that at five. 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.”

• Conditioned Lenina distressed by these words and strange ways that Bernard finds happiness, lacks capacity to make sense of his thoughts

• This conversations illustrates disconnect between someone who questions World State happiness and those who have not considered anything else

• To Lenina, who clings on infantile happiness, the freedom to
  “be happy in some other way” merely frightening nonsense

Enforced universal happiness means removal of negative emotions such as grief and connection

• When unhappiness taken away, things like deep connection, grief, remorse are absent too.

• When Linda dies, Savage’s outcry shocks nurse: “Should she […] try to bring him back to a sense of decency? Remind him of where he was? Of what fatal mischief he might do to these poor innocents? Undoing all their wholesome death-conditioning with this disgusting outcry—as though death were something terrible, as though any one mattered as much as all that!”

• Idea that death is terrible, that individual human lives have value, would unsettle children’s conditioning by opening possibility of deep relationships, which are inevitably complicated and unstable

• Not being conditioned, Savage threatens State’s views of human life with strong grief

Irony that John ‘the Savage’ more developed than civilians of State, underdeveloped due to happiness leading shallow, superficial content

• One of ironies of novel that Savage, figure that Society objectifies as uncivilised due to lack of conditioning, is more advanced than they are.

• Savages frequent tears, Shakespearean outbursts, self-imposed exile shows he is different

• Differences are rooted in his strong emotions about the world and personal desire for goodness—things that inevitably mean a willingness to endure unhappiness if it means being free

• World State conception of stability and happiness are at total odds with John’s characteristics

• Savages death suggests there is no room for a free thinking individual in the World State

Industrialism and Consumption

Criticises economy it was written by exaggerating its values

• Novel criticises industrial economic system of era it was written by imagining those systems pushed to their extremes—where individual happiness defined as the ability to satisfy needs, success as a society equated to economic growth and prosperity

Consumption crucially needed to support stability of economy—people conditioned to always want to consume

• Industrial revolution beginning in the second half of 19th century and accelerated through 20th allowed for mass production of new goods

• No value in producing goods that no one wants, so willingness of masses to consume new goods was crucial in economic growth + prosperity

• Then became important to make people always want new things, as if people were satisfied with what they had, would not consume enough to keep wheels of industrial society turning

• Consequently, World State made consumption one of cornerstones of stability—all citizens conditioned to consume: throw out worn clothes instead of mending them, prefer complicated sports with mechanical parts rather than simple games, refrain from activities that do not involve payment of money for goods (like reading)

• By portraying World State economy in this way, Huxley argues, according to logic of industrialism, people end up serving their economy rather than the economy serving people

Industrialism and consumption everpresent—how people are made

• Industrialism + consumption integral in World State—even plays a part in the production of people

• Novel begins with explanation of how humans are mass produced

• Bokanovsky’s process, a single egg “was in a fair way to becoming anything from eighty to ninety-six embryos—a prodigious improvement, you will agree, on nature.” Director continues to say: “Ninety-six identical twins working ninety-six identical machines! […] The principle of mass production at last applied to biology.”

• Literally, citizens mass produced to keep machinery of the World State economy running

People conditioned to serve economy in their everyday lives—expensive activities

• Problem now to make people serve economy in their everyday lives

• “The problem now was to find an economically sounder reason for consuming transport than a mere affection for primroses and landscapes […] We condition the masses to hate the country,’ concluded the Director. ‘But simultaneously we condition them to love all country sports. At the same time, we see to it that all country sports shall entail the use of elaborate apparatus. So that they consume manufactured articles as well as transport.’”

• Elaborate steps taken to avoid what’s natural to degree that those who prefer simpler pastimes are considered suspicious

• Mere affection + enjoyment of natural things do not help to support economy

• Necessary to go great lengths to make people like + pursue things that will sustain economy

Economy uses the people, people serve the economy

• Under this system, humans becomes pawns of consumerism and industry—people exist to serve the economy, the economy does not exist to serve the people

Simple, easier pleasures unnatural—pleasure must serve higher purpose of helping economy rather than being a goal itself

• Director says: “strange to think that even in Our Ford’s day most games were played without more apparatus than a ball or two […] Imagine the folly of allowing people to play elaborate games which do nothing whatever to increase consumption.”

• Shows disconnect of conditioned people from simpler pleasures; enjoyment no longer seen as an end reached, rather something used to serve ‘higher’ economic purpose to be justified

Search for truth and beauty cannot sustain economy, rather than happiness gained from overconsumption

• Savage, outsider to industrialised society discusses consumerism with Mond—Mond admits: “Mass production demanded the shift [from truth and beauty to comfort and happiness]. Universal happiness keeps the wheels [of industry] steadily turning; truth and beauty can’t.”

• Through conditioning people to seek happiness from consumption of goods, State ensures economic survival

People desire this life as they prefer comfort over suffering hardship

• Relatively easy to make people want this kind of life: Mond explains after Nine Year’s War: “People were ready to have even their appetites controlled then. Anything for a quiet life. We’ve gone on controlling ever since [..] One can’t have something for nothing. Happiness has got to be paid for.”

• Citizens have accepted price for happiness on State terms

• They’re conditioned not to be aware of it, but their happiness acts to serve the state, not to serve them.

Individuality

Individuality interferes with State stability

• Ultimate goal of World State to eliminate individuals from society—meaning conditioning of people so they do not think of themselves as individuals

• Individualism, encompassing awareness of ones own opinions and abilities, joys of personal relationships, accompanying sorrows of loneliness and isolation, suppressed as aggressively as possible to maintain stability

• However conditioning is not fully successful, as characters such as Bernard + Hemholtz become aware of their individuality, suggests that human individuality is irrepressible

• Through many wins and losses of his characters, Huxley argues that even when individuality resists external pressures, will not thrive in a society that views individuals as dispensable and dangerous

How individuality considered by Director and Mond, why sought to be removed

• Director + Mond admit individuality dispensable within system

• Difference between them is that Mond sees the reality and value of individuality, yet willingly sacrifices this for orderly state

• When Director reprimands Bernard for unorthodoxy, does so on grounds that individuality undermines stability: “We can make a new [individual] with the greatest ease [..] Unorthodoxy threatens more than the life of a mere individual; it strikes at Society itself”

• Perhaps more sinister Mond’s admission that, while had option to be sent to an island to pursue science, ultimately preferred to be a World Controller, in charge of determining happiness of society at large

• Recognises individuality as a real, valuable thing, yet prefers suppressing individuality (while having privilege to privately indulge in reading Shakespeare) to keep people comfortable, happy and complacent

• Both men see individuality as a threat, neither denies existence of individual

Bernard + Hemholtz show conflict with awareness of their individuality

• Example of citizens conflicted with awareness of their individuality include Bernard + Hemholtz

• Bernard: individuality is forced upon Bernard by un-Alpha physical traits, responds to these by resisting aspects of World State’s consumerist and hedonistic culture

• Hemholtz: Truly superior in ability, realises constraints of Society will not let them fully exercise those abilities

• “A mental excess had produced in Helmholtz Watson effects very similar to those which, in Bernard Marx, were the result of a physical defect […] That which had made Helmholtz so uncomfortably aware of being himself and all alone was too much ability. What the two men shared was the knowledge that they were individuals.”

Hemholtz thrives in society yet still unhappy

• Despite how Hemholtz thrives in his society, Hemholtz remains unfulfilled: he “was interested in something else. But in what?”

• Contrasts to Bernard as Hemholtz is rather standout example of excellence by World State standards—by these standards, Hemholtz should be model of happiness—instead, he is restless with realisation that success may be form of mediocrity. Exploring his potential for more involves acknowledging individuality, and inability of state to facilitate that individuality

Bernard burdened by individuality, yet happy to be individual if he does not suffer consequences

• Bernard rather accepts individuality uneasily; experiences it as a burden, sets him uncomfortably at odds with his society—when Bernard had the chance to toss individuality aside to be accepted, he does

• Bernard wins popularity with John: Success went fizzily to Bernard’s head, and in the process completely reconciled him […] to a world which, up till then, he had found very unsatisfactory. In so far as it recognized him as important, the order of things was good.”

• He continues to “parade a carping unorthodoxy” as long as people pay at least superficial attention to him, but it is all mostly show

• Bernard overall is happy to be an individual as long as it does not cost him anything

• When Mond threatens to send him to Iceland for unorthodoxy, he quickly dissolves into cowardly groveling, showing that despite his criticisms of society, he does remain to desire outward safety the state provides

John ultimate outsider due to individuality

• Savage is the ultimate outsider of novel

• Even in upbringing of Savage Reservation, never truly belongs—excluded from ritual, secretly studying Shakespeare

• In John’s case because his appearance does not match those of his community. As the New World prizes identity based on being identical to others in one’s group, so the reservation holds to the same definition of identity. Huxley is saying that society by definition is identity with the whole. True loners—true individuals—like John will inevitably be lost.

• When he visits ‘new world’ he belongs even less, as due to deep desires, knowledge, sense of morality, find no sympathy among those who outwardly look more like him

• In the end he is not able to live as an outsider—when he attempts to live in solitude, people are drawn to the spectacle of his individuality, and he finally succumbs to mob mentality

• Huxley suggests that individuality cannot flourish in a world that targets individuality as a threat to its existence