As human’s life has been developed due to the significant improvement in science, people are more reliable on machines and technology. The more people find those new developments are helpful that they cannot have such a good life without them, the more they invisibly control human’s life. The book “Brave New World,” written by Aldous Huxley, illustrates the impose of science on human’s life and how their innate characteristics are destroyed. The novel points out the vision of a futuristic society which science and high technology are abused, leading to the over-control above human.
Since people are assigned to be born in the World State, they have to accept their destinies living as servants for the Director, who creates the society and even the people. Unlike the normal society, people here are made, not born. They, hatcheries, are crafted in the laboratories. Their personalities and behaviors are informed before birth, which defines them to automatically follow the rules of the society and stay in the right castes. Different people are arranged in different groups in order to serve the World State and satisfy their needs. As can be seen in the novel, the Gammas and Deltas are the groups of those who enjoy outdoors and have high survivability in the heat.
They are needed to work in fields in Africa. The Betas are those who work in factories as managers. Both of them are the progress of the Bokanovsky’s Process, which creates 96 identical embryos from a single ovum, run by Henry Ford. The society is full of clouds of twins looking, thinking, and acting as they are trained to do so. The people are created to be the future machines that have humanities but emotions and feelings are controlled by the leader, as they are born to fill the working positions that the terrifying world allow them to live but force them to only follow the rules. “Everyone belongs to everyone else.” (43)
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People are surrounded by others who share the same thoughts and acts. John Savage’s worries at the “nightmare of swarming indistinguishable sameness” clarify that the World State has taken off the ability of the human to be different individuals (209). When the society is surrounded by identical twins, people lose the chance to be themselves and recognized. “If one’s different, one’s bound to be lonely.” (137) They are trained to be a community of identical twins to be servants. Therefore, except for the headquarters, the one who is different from others would live the rest of his life with discrimination and isolation.
On the other hand, “Brave New World” is thought to be a satire of a utopia that people are made to be happy instead of feeling happy by enjoying their life. In the current society, happiness is worthless, comes from any little things in life. However, it is considered the opposite way people evaluate happiness. The World State creates a perfect formula to bring people happiness. People’s needs and want are met and they have anything that they wish for except for real love, real feelings for others. Nothing actually belongs to the people there. Huxley’s novel, with his scathing voice and ironic description, reflects a terrifying reality in the future marked by oppression and control. A world of controlling freedom and miserable happiness is thought to be a utopia even though by the way it guides people and forces them to have the illusive happy-feeling.
It is stated in the novel that “Actual happiness always looks pretty squalid in comparison with the overcompensations for misery. And, of course, stability isn’t nearly so spectacular as instability.” (221) Happiness is no longer the state of contentment and being joyful. It is now the state of people pretend to be happy without their actual behold. They are encouraged to take “soma” – a type of drug that people take to escape from pain, discomfort, sadness, anger, and even to forget others’ lost – to have the overall sense of well-being and feel consoled. “Euphoric, narcotic, pleasantly hallucinant” is what Mustapha says of soma (53).
Soma heals people’s pain and brings them the feeling of happiness. The people in the World State is enslaved without them knowing they are under control by a strong government that seems to only mastermind their thought and act, but their whole life. Making people feel happy seems to be a good way to treat its citizens, however, over-controlling others feelings is how the government mistreats people in the World State. Moreover, people only feel happy because they are engineered. They are those embryos that operated to be strong. They serve the World State as it serves their demand without complaint.
They are the future machines that created in order to work and make profits. Being inspired by Henry Ford – the precursor of industry, the World State has become a scientific-industrial society that human is the tools that keep machines functioning. While detecting the artificial genetic population, Huxley’s novel has a role of a warning sign about the danger of how fast scientific developments take control over us and affect human behavior. Because the hypnopaedia perfectly form human’s brain by those assigned thoughts, people automatically allocated in the right working positions. Once they are born to be member of the World State, nothing can be adjusted. “We don’t want to change. Every change is a menace to stability.” (224-225) People seem to reluctantly accept their life as smart puppets who have humanity.
Even children are displayed to the form of unconscious teaching. They learn to think and act the way they should, and learn to love the World State as they spend their whole life working and sacrificing for it. “Brave New World” is a novel that regarding to the scientific feature of the World State, human are controlled by science and the illusion of happiness. As human’s life has been improved as a result of the development of science-industry, it is also can be destroyed by the over-invade of scientific control. By oppressing people and preventing them from having emotions, the World State uses science to guide its citizens to follow the society’s standard.
References
- https://www.britannica.com/topic/Brave-New-World
- https://www.cliffsnotes.com/literature/b/brave-new-world/book-summary
- https://genius.com/Aldous-huxley-brave-new-world-chapter-1-annotated
- http://peachyessay.com/blog/how-to-write-an-amazing-analysis-for-the-content-of-a-novel/
- https://www.patheos.com/blogs/peterenns/
- https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Aldous_Huxley
