Brave New World: Influential Dystopian Novel?

The novel Brave New World is definitely one of the most influential and important dystopian pieces of literature in history. The society in Brave New World has been conditioned to think that their world is a utopia, but in reality it is a dystopia. The “rulers” of the nation realize that the world they have created is flawed, but want everyone to be pleased with their lives. Aldous Huxley's novel can also be seen as a criticism of the human race's enthusiastic adoption of technology. The fact that technology is so advanced in the novel that the humans have found out how to clone and mature fetuses rapidly depicts the futuristic setting of this novel. Aldous Huxley has essentially written an exaggeration on modern technology. Humanity has unfortunately become “slaves” to electronics and regrettably has succumbed to the prediction that Aldous Huxley has made.

Nancy Wigston compares Aldous Huxley’s Brave New World to our own society in her article “Brave New World: Aldous Huxley’s Predictions Seem To Be Upon Us.” She explains that Huxley’s forecast is looming above us, threatening to fully turn our society into the dystopia he created. Aldous created a novel concerning an “infantilized, drug-dependent, science-controlled, consumer society” (Wigston), which is extremely similar to the civilization we live in now. Aging is also unknown among the population in Brave New World. In current civilization, the general public (mostly women) has discovered a way to slow the aging process. The method is known as Botox, which is commonly used cosmetically to remove wrinkles and to treat certain muscular conditions. Women of celebrity-status can mysteriously “regain their trim shapes with astonishing, and much admired, speed” (Wigston). In the last years of his life, Aldous Huxley had constantly “urged us to ‘wake up’” (Wigston). We could possibly be running out of time to follow his instructions.

Besides using his novel to warn us of the future, Aldous Huxley creates a society where there is “no such thing as a divided allegiance” (Huxley 217). This promotes collectivism, except for the fact that the clones know only their work and of nothing else. The leader of the Central London Hatchery and Conditioning Centre tells the students that they enhance the clones so as to make them exceedingly useful in whatever position they have been assigned. This creates a sort of civilized happiness, where people can never find sadness because they are exceedingly skilled at the tasks they perform.

The new community in Brave New World is set up to be full of a kind of civilized happiness, and they follow a “motto”. The motto was “Community, Identity, and Stability.” Community, defined in Webster's Dictionary as a unified body of individuals, is completely lacked in the world existing in this novel. The idea that “every one works for every one else” (Huxley 77) does not promote a community working together, but instead a dysfunctional one. Even though the humans do not necessarily have equality they all gain it after death. The people in the lowest caste are as much needed as those in the highest caste. The next word in their motto is “Identity”. Identity is stolen from the characters in this novel. They are all treated the same, and the way the community is organized is similar to a communist community as I aforementioned. The citizens are conditioned for what they do and they essentially have no choice but to follow orders. They are not allowed to create themselves. Stability is referring not to personal stability, but instead economic stability. Instead of fixing broken items, new ones were bought. “Ending is better than mending. The more stitches, the less riches” (Huxley 55). Mending something is considered to be antisocial. Also, this is used to mock those who are greedy, especially the rich, who just toss belongings away when they could be fixed very effortlessly. This society is extremely broken.

The entire nation in Brave New World...