Self Identity In Brave New World

“To know our refuse is to know ourselves. We mark our own trail from past to present with what we've used and consumed, fondled, rejected, outgrown.”
― Jane Avrich, The Winter Without Milk: Stories

The theme of self-identity is very important to both Headhunter by Timothy Findley and Brave New World by Aldous Huxley. Against the backdrop of pervasive, ubiquitous and broad reaching societal topics, self-identity aids the audience’s understanding of how the character is thinking, feeling and how they react to certain events that take place throughout the novel. Although both novels are The Theme of Self Identity in Headhunter and Brave New World: A Contrasting Essay written with a theme of self-identity, they differ in how the theme
Brave New World is depicted as a utopian society, a society that is defined as: “any real or imaginary society, place, state, considered to be perfect or ideal” and “any visionary system of political or social perfection.” (Merriam-Webster Dictionary). Throughout the novel of Brave New World the society thrives on political and social perfection. Everyone in the society is to act, think and be like one another. The dictators hold power over the society by conditioning them to be social beings that contribute to procreating and moving the economy along. No one in the utopian society of Brave New World gets disease, is unhappy and almost everything is done in an “efficient” way that assures a place for everyone in the society. This obviously makes it difficult to have a self-identity in a society where everything is about making the social and political world a better place. There are no priorities placed on free will or personal issues because it is viewed that they do not have any. The utopian society is greatly focussed on consumerism and the idea that self identity as well as individualism does not exist nor does it need to exist for the society to succeed. There is a part in the novel where the Director says: “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” (Huxley, 133). Even from the beginning of the novel, the audience is forced to question the idea of mass-production and consumption in terms of humanity and the lack of self-identity. On the other hand, Headhunter is set in a dystopian society. A society characterized by: “human misery, as squalor, oppression, disease, and overcrowding.” This society is controlled by fear of disease, mental illness, death and the fear of losing self-identity in those circumstances. Whereas a utopian society does not