Towards the middle of the novel a new character, John (Savage), is introduced. He quickly supplemented into this Utopia after living his whole life inside the Reservation. The Reservation is a place where the Indians live in freedom to do whatever they please. They worship God, make sacrifices for the good of the group, and are knowledgeable, to a certain extent, about science. After being introduced into the World State, John strongly questions a lot of the morals of the people and leaders in the parallel universe outside of the Reservation. He is especially appalled about the idea of freely having emotionless sex out of wedlock. His morals from the Reservation are that a man must show himself worthy to marry a woman, than marry the woman to begin having intercourse. This aspect truly bothered him. Later in the book, after his mother dies, he decides to try to free the people by destroying their ration of soma. Soma is a drug that everyone in the World State has an addiction for. It takes away their negative emotion or thoughts and replaces it with a happy elusion for a period of time. John is obviously a driving force in this book when it comes to truth, that he believes is good morals and freedom, against happiness, which is supposed to be no pain or strong emotion.
At the end of Brave New World, the debate of happiness versus truth can be pretty much summed up into a single quote. The Controller said, “…People are happy; they get what they want, and they never want what they can’t get” (Huxley 220). It is widely thought that the root of all happiness is to be content with what you have. Much like the quote used earlier in this essay, this shows that the view from the World State is that contentment is the key to happiness, and that the truth would only make people become less content and want things they could not have. This would obviously create unhappiness.
In this novel, one of the main themes is happiness versus truth. It evolved over the course of time due to statements and characters. This truly was a book far ahead of its time, and worth thinking about its logical yet scary plot. In one hundred years, this could very well become reality.
Works Cited
Huxley, Aldous. Brave New World. New York: HarperPerennial, 1998. Print.
Cited: Huxley, Aldous. Brave New World. New York: HarperPerennial, 1998. Print.
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