O Brave New World example essay topic

1,351 words
"A Brave New World' "A Brave New World' Essay, Research Paper Imagine living in a world without mothers and fathers, "A Brave New World' full of faceless human clones. This is the society Huxley portrays in his book. Huxley describes a futuristic society that has an alarming effect of dehumanization. This occurs through the absence of spirituality and family, the obsession with physical pleasure, and the misuse of technology. In this world, each person is raised in a test tube rather than a mother's womb, and the government controls every stage of their development, from embryo to maturity. Each new human is placed into a certain class, such as Alpha, Beta, and so on.

The embryos are manipulated chemically to stimulate or to retard their physical and mental growth. By repeating phrases over and over while the children sleep, the government can condition each person to accept his role in the world around him and to behave in what the government deems to be a "safe' manner. This creates a society full of human clones, completely devoid of personality. Every person is conditioned to love three things: Henry Ford, their idol; soma, a wonder drug; and sex.

No art, no love, and no passion, no qualities that define a person as a human beings. When Shakespeare wrote "The Tempest' back in the 1600's, it is doubtful that he would have expected Huxley to use one of his phrases in such a way as to describe a world devoid of life. A world with only a few random scatterings of anything that modern man could even think of familiar. In act five, scene one of "The Tempest,' Miranda, filled with anguish cry's "O, wonder! How many goodly creatures are there here! How beauteous mankind is!

O brave new world, That has such people in't!' With these words, and the sarcasm held within them, she unknowingly shows us the truth of Huxley's "Brave New World,' if we could not see it for ourselves. This brave new world is nothing more then stagnation taken to the farthest possible degree, with the "miracles' of technology, forced upon humanity. In this "Brave New World' mankind is all that is left on the planet, humankind no longer existing, the "humanity' having been conditioned out of humans. A society lost in time, both in culture and technology.

One of the things that makes this society in this "Brave New World's o different from ours today and that of the Savage Reservation, is the lack of spirituality. The pleasure-seeking society pursues no spiritual experiences or joys, preferring carnal ones. The lack of a religion that seeks a true transcendental understanding helps ensure that the masses of people, upper and lower classes have no reason to rebel. What religious ritual they do have, begins as an attempt to reach a higher level of understanding as a community but quickly turns into a chance to please the carnal nature of man through orgiastic ritual. This denies the human soul, which is usually searching for a pleasure not experienced in the flesh but in the mind, and preserves this society they have created based on stale happiness. This society shows the lack of family structure that is an integral part of our society.

A new way to be born and raised has done away with the family and brought in a dehumanizing strict class structure and psychological messages to replace it. There are five rigid classes in this world, each with its own characteristics ranging from jobs to clothing to intelligence level. These classes are enforced from birth through experience and suggestion. A dislike of roses and books, for example, is enforced through electric shock while the children are still babies. The knowledge of the different classes in the world and why it is best to be in the class you are in is implanted in the child's mind through hypnopaedia, a series of hypnotic suggestions played while the child is asleep. Through the suggestions that make up the childhood of the adults in this society, the adults are "raised' by the leaders of the State to think and act as they are told.

Rather than individual parents instilling their own values into their children, the State chooses how and what each child will learn. The parental relationship of a father and mother to a child has become a dirty and improper idea. Feelings have become obsolete. It is this lack of family that helps keep the different classes in their place. They are conditioned to think and act only as a member of their class, rather than as an individual.

Things that create problems in society's class structure, such as the desire of parents to want something better for their children, or people striving for something better for themselves, have been eliminated with the family. The children learn nothing, but are conditioned to remember everything they will ever need to know. They receive no education, seeing as how to learn, one must first be able to think for themselves, and that ability is driven out of them at an early age. In essence, a total lack of true self-awareness and freedoms, but when one does not know what one doesn't have, how are they to miss it?

This "Brave New World' takes a look at human obsessions with pleasure. In this society there are several quick and easy ways of feeling good. First of all, there is soma, a readily available drug used to escape from reality for a few hours or a few days. The "feelies' are a common form of entertainment.

The audience sees, hears, smells, and feels a sort of action-adventure adult movie. Casual sex is a third popular way to spend spare time. Since "everybody belongs to everyone else,' commitment is a non-issue. In the Savage reservations, human pleasures are given into, but in a way more alike to that which we do today.

They have their alcohols and drugs, though not as refined as those used by the inhabitants of the "Brave New World,' they still are just as effective. As for the rest of the human obsessions, they are frowned upon, with the exception of casual sex, though only after marriage. The novel deals also with the effects of advances in science and technology on human society. Technology is a crucial requirement in order for the society of "Brave New World' to form, though they have retarded it's growth and advancement to next to nothing. The World Controller states that science is dangerous to the society, since it can destroy it's stability. He gives examples of how the problems raised by new technology can be solved poorly.

When mass production becomes simple, the "Brave New World's society allows production to increase and requires that consumption increases, a solution that seems flawed by current standards. They deny the technological advancement for the economic gains that they receive for the economic stability that it provides. This "Brave New World' is a constant reoccurring hypocrisy. As a stable society, they are all that anyone could ever want to be, but they can and it seems, will never grow above it. In their search for a "safe' medium, they have begun to fear change, for the instability that it inevitably brings with it.

Until they can stabilize their society while they advance themselves, find a way around the inhuman actions of breeding slave castes, and realize that personal growth is a necessary to society as a whole, they will fester and stagnate until they will reach a time where they do not know how to go back. Then, this "Brave New World's hall crumble to history, and maybe mankind will find its humanity and get a second chance..