...Brave New World by Aldous Huxley Brave New world is a dystopian novel written in England in 1931 and published in 1932 during the Modernism literary period. The setting of the novel is in London and New Mexico ruled under an imagined future one-world government called the World State. The World State of Brave New World is a totalitarian dystopia that uses technology to, deceive its citizens into loving their slavery. Dystopia is a society, in this case the World State, that is an imaginary society organized to create ideal conditions for human beings, eliminating hatred, pain, neglect, and all of the other evils of the world. Huxley wrote Brave New World as a dystopian novel due to the rise of technology and science in the 1930s, focusing on the totalitarianism evils (meaning centralized or dictatorial). Huxley imagined a future of a totalitarian state where there is no such thing as freedom of anything and happiness was forced through manipulation, called conditioning in the novel. When Huxley wrote Brave New World, it was just a little over a decade since World War I. During this time, totalitarian states were popping up in the Soviet Union and Fascist parties were gaining power in Europe. Also, there were advancements in science, technology, and the relationship between the two as the world became more industrialized. Aldous Huxley was born in Surrey, England, on July 26, 1894, to a well-known family of scientists, writers, and teachers deeply rooted in England’s literary...
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...Analysing Dystopia in a “Brave New World” The concept of Dystopia in literature is a form of exploring various interpretations of a different world. Specifically, a dystopian text explores a domain in which a society and way of life may seem ideal (Utopia), yet within the text it is later revealed that the society remain mentally unprepared and incapable of sustaining order in their world. Most dystopian texts illustrate a world which has been resulted in the consequence of humanity and this is one of the main reasons it is regularly visited. It is a genre in which the dystopian texts frequently challenge the views and values of their current audiences. This is because they are judged and critiqued on their depiction of scenes and events that breach sensitive moral and ethical issues. What makes the genre so fascinating both to read and write is to remind ourselves of the capabilities of humanity and just how much we can impact a hypothetical world. It is also a way in which we can ponder the extremes we as a society can reach and reflect the possibilities of the very future of the human race. Another reason why the concept intrigues us is because dystopian texts are subconsciously thought to be renditions of hell. With Utopia being the impression of heaven or an ideal world, Dystopia corresponds as the opposite. These ideas are explored in Aldous Huxley’s classic dystopian piece “Brave New World” [1932]. “Brave New World” by Aldous Huxley is considered a dystopian text due to its conception...
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...Piggybacking on the Information Age came a whole new wave of advertisement, as new social media platforms and methods of reaching the public made it easier than ever before to spread an idea, an image, or a name. These days, there’s an advertisement for something nearly everywhere- in magazines, on television screens, ironed onto tee-shirts, on the sidebar of every website you visit. Companies even hire employees to run social media campaigns over platforms like Twitter and Tumblr, often communicating directly with consumers. These advertisements are constantly urging society to buy this, buy that, conform, consume! Now, most would say that the level of consumerism in our modern society is hardly as bad as in Aldous Huxley’s novel Brave New...
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...In Aldous Huxley's novel Brave New World, a dystopian society clouds the minds of its inhabitants. In fact, the entire novel is bustling with characters who are eager to follow the rules of the society because they are forever afraid of the repercussions they would encounter if they do not. This eagerness has gone to the extreme to the point where the individuals are following rules out of lack of knowledge of the truly moral options that are not provided. In dystopian societies like the one in this novel, the detrimental effects of escapism can be widely discussed to show the impact the rules have on the people and eventually the impact the people have on the rules. Once one looks deeper into the complex hierarchy and mechanisms of such a...
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...During Aldous Huxley’s young adult life, he was apart of what many historians like to call the “Roaring Twenties”. This era and time period during the 1920’s led into the stock market crash of 1929, causing the Great Depression. Huxley had a general discomfort for the economic upheavals and rejection of traditional values by the youth of the generation (Napierkowski and Stanley). Deciding to write out against these feelings, Huxley wrote one of his best works, Brave New World, in 1931. Brave New World is a dystopian novel that takes place in a futuristic setting where extensive improvements to science and technology has created a world that is foreign to all readers. Throughout Huxley’s adult life, his interpretations of Henry Ford and the...
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...Brave New World: Relevant or too Relevant? In the 1930s and 1940s, Aldous Huxley and George Orwell presented notions of a lurid future society in their novels. Huxley’s Brave New World is a dystopian novel that tells a tale of humans born in laboratories who are free to use drugs and have sex at their leisure, which mirrors a few aspects of today’s world. Today, sexual promiscuity and prurience has increased. Substance abuse has also proliferated. Moreover, many rapid scientific/technological developments have been made. Despite Orwell’s 1984 prophesying that telescreens and totalitarianism will be copious, our world is steadily racing toward a society that echoes Huxley’s Brave New World. The eerie resemblance is more than just a coincidence. Whether the circumstance applies to a teenager or an adult, sexual promiscuity has become increasingly common. By human nature, men and women will be aroused by someone whose attributes are in his/her favor (such as a large bosom or wide hips of women for men and muscularity or great hair of men for women), even if they are married and devoutly committed to his/her partner. Monogamous relationships are also threatened by divorce and extramarital affairs. Another reason marriages break apart is due to pornography— men and women may feel unsatisfied in their relationship and/or seek sexual gratification from a third party. A study by the Family Research Council and the Marriage and Religion Institute claims that 56% of divorces...
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...the dystopian future described by Huxley in “Brave New World,” and not the world described in Orwell’s “1984.” He does an excellent job proving facts and disturbing anecdotes, but he lacks showing the audience an opposing viewpoint. Despite this he is able to clearly show is agreement, by proving emotion supported by fact. Postman is able to connect with his audience through his credentials. The student feels that Postman shows a dangerous path that American Culture may be on, and is able to provide a warning to those who listen to his speech. Analysis of Neal Postman’s “Amusing Ourselves to Death” “What is dangerous about television is not it’s junk. Every culture can absorb a fair amount of junk, and, in any case, we do not judge a culture by its junk but by how it conducts its serious public business. What is happening in America is that television is transforming all serious public business into junk.” (Postman, 1984, p. 2) In his speech, "Amusing Ourselves to Death," Neil Postman, Columbia University graduate, and one time chair of the Department of Culture and Communication, made the point that American culture is headed for a culture like that described in Adlus Huxley's "Brave New World," and not the culture described in George Orwell's, "1984." He described the world imagined in 1984 as a place where there were no books, and where the people are prisoners to the government that controls them. In contrast, Mr. Postman describes the culture in "Brave New World...
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...“Community. Stability. Identity.” These three words are the foundation of the dystopian world created by author Aldous Huxley in his novel Brave New World. In this novel, Huxley creates a society known as the World State in which individuals are created and designed to play a specific role in society. Much of the way the society is built reflects the philosophy of Karl Marx. Huxley creates this new world to ironically mirror the ideas of Marxism in how it can ensure social stability. Or can it? Brave New World was written in 1932 during a time with no economic stability or security and after the Industrial Revolution where most of the workforce consisted of cheap labor within factories. It was a time where wealth was distributed only to those...
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...A pill that guarantees happiness “If anything should go wrong, there's soma.” Does this sentiment explored in Aldous Huxley’s classic novel Brave New World now reflect current attitudes towards legal drug use? Have we become a society of self-medicating pill poppers desperate to avoid extreme emotions? Ashlie Hodges examines drug use in our society. Huxley’s novel challenges contemporary social values and expectations, while remaining relevant to the 21st century. The classic dystopian novel Brave New World was published in 1932 and is set in the year 2540. The title is a nod to William Shakespeare’s The Tempest, as the play directly features the words Brave New World. The message of taking legal drugs to avoid mental illness and emotions...
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...Most of the characters in Aldous Huxley’s classic dystopian novel Brave New World and director Phillip Noyce’s film The Giver exhibit behaviors that are forced upon them, and they do not know what has been taken away from them. Our modern society and culture is succumbing to these predictions to only a slight extent because Americans still have the freedoms to be their own person while the characters in the stories do not. The governments in the book and the movie are both over-controlling and try to inhibit natural phenomenon like having free will and the ability to feel emotions. For the most part, Americans are born free and have the capability to feel anything. Conversely, in Brave New World, most of the population is genetically engineered to feel a certain way. Each person is created in such a way that whatever they are predestined to do in life makes them happy. As the Director once put it, “that is the secret to happiness and virtue—liking what you’ve got to do. All conditioning aims at that: making people like their unescapable social destiny,” (Huxley 16). In modern society, no one is...
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...television was all the rage. Being a relatively new form of media, not many people stopped to think of the negative side effects of television, until Postman released his findings. His novel repeats the words “the medium is the message”, which means that the way that we receive messages is going to change the overall meaning of the message. This applied directly to television, as entertainment was the way we received our information. Eventually, we began to prefer receiving our messages through entertainment, nearly cutting off many other mediums. His findings still apply to the more advanced technology we have today, such as the...
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...Brave New World by Aldous Huxley May 2012 Brave New World Brave New World idolizes the perfect future. This utopia seems infallible, but the pieces do not fit together. In this world, people take the easy way out, avoiding pain, and have a way of thinking that is not compatible with human nature. Life, altogether, has no meaning. There is nothing worth living for; no family, loved ones, or even God. Is this truly utopia? In fact, it is a chaotic society in which everyone thinks they are happy. At first inspection, it seems perfect in many ways: it is carefree, problem free and depression free. All aspects of the population are controlled: number, social class, and intellectual ability are all carefully regulated. Even history is controlled and rewritten to meet the needs of the party. Stability must be maintained at all costs. In this dystopian novel, Brave New World, presents a horrifying view of a possible future in which society has become a prisoner of the very technology it hoped would save us. In Brave New World Huxley's distortion of technology, religion, and family values, is much more effective than his use of literary realism found in his depiction of a savage reservation. Through his use of distortion Huxley tells a classic tale with the theme of, be careful what you wish for because it may not truly be what you wanted. Huxley effectively uses distortion in Brave New World through his depiction of social values of the future. For example, when...
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...want real danger, I want freedom, I want goodness. I want sin” (Huxley 240). Brave New World is a novel about a dystopian society that uses power, drugs, and conditioning to control its population. Embryos are genetically modified so that they fit into a certain social caste, and the lower caste embryos are put through the Bokanovsky’s Process to make thousands of identical twins. Citizens of the society are deprived of basic human feelings, such as, love, passion, and freedom. Within the novel, unorthodox characters are introduced seeking a purpose in life. One of those characters is John the Savage. Throughout Aldous Huxley’s, Brave New World, John the Savage proves that he is physically,...
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...Brave New World by Aldous Huxley is a classic literary work that vividly paints the picture of a dystopian society. Huxley’s evident purpose for writing the novel was to show society the contrived effects of allowing its own demise. Modern day readers may shrug after having read the novel and think Huxley’s warnings were in vain in regards to contemporary societies. Surely no real society could even get to the point of the fictional World State. However, given some of today’s avant-garde ideas and advancements, this dystopia could be a reality in less time than people think. There are many shocking similarities and differences between the dystopian World State and reality, including ideas about human life and death, love and marriage, and the consumption of goods and services....
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...addictions including shopping, exercise, gambling, internet, abusive relationships, and many others often do not take the spotlight and are also unhealthy. With the increased awareness about addictions in our world today, its effects are a growing concern for future generations. The word ‘addiction’ does not only apply to substance and alcohol abuse. Recently the “Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders (D.S.M.), the standard reference work for psychiatric illnesses, announced [in the last decade] updated definitions of substance abuse and addiction, including a new category of behavioral addictions (Markel).'' Although substance addictions are accompanied by a variety of...
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