People Of The Brave New World example essay topic

I wrote this paper in my english class after reading 'A Brave New World': On the very last page of Aldous Huxley's book, A Brave New World, he describes John as swinging slowly in circles after hanging himself (Huxley 259). It's believed that Huxley's main point of this ending to his story was to tell his readers that after all John's effort of trying to change the brave new world, it was profoundly hopeless and the only thing left to do was to give up. This image creates a belief that Huxley was trying to warn his readers that the future was going to hold a extreme amount of advance technology in science, that would eventually turn into a dystopian world. When Huxley stresses the high amount of sex / drug usage and conditioning in his book, it was to show that these are highly used to help people live in a better society.

The scary part is that most of Aldous Huxley's predictions on the future were closely factual. Although Huxley wrote many forms of literature, they all held the common theme of "meaning and possibilities of human life and perception" (Huxley 260). After the disease Huxley received when he was 16 years old that ended his dream of becoming a doctor, he also remained essentially scientific in his literature. Julian Huxley, Aldous Huxley's brother, believed that "science and mysticism were overlapping and complementary realms in Aldous Huxley's mind" (Huxley 262). This explains where Huxley came up with the idea of Hatcheries and Conditioning. Which was an excellent way he began his book in a utopian world.

The first chapter in A Brave New World starts out with the director and his assistant giving a tour to a group of boys of the Hatching and Conditioning Centre (Huxley 3). At the centre is where the boys learn all about the Bokanovsky process and how they " re conditioned into five different caste. The director then explains that this conditioning helps each person love what caste they are conditioned into, whether they become leaders or factory workers. Later, when Mustapha Mond and John Savage discuss the outcomes of conditioning, John expresses that he disagrees with it all. John explains how conditioning only manipulates peoples minds and how it takes away their right to make their own decisions (Pradas par 11). In a way, Huxley speaks out a lot through John's character in this chapter.

Huxley almost knew the world was turning into a highly conditioned society and he wanted to warn his readers not to be manipulated by it. When John Savage, moves to this "Utopian World" he is mostly appalled by the vast amount of drug usage and promiscuous sex he perceives. He finally learns that the reasoning is for the people to avoid their problems and not face them and that the promiscuous sex is supposed to enhance the societies happiness. John also learns that using soma helps people avoid having any negative feelings or confrontation and he is upset when his mother attends to them permanently (Pradas par 17). John is mostly so appalled by all of this because it's nothing like that in the savage world he lived in. In the savage world, everyone has parents and gets married.

They also have the right to feel different feelings and to encounter their own problems, even though it could lead to unhappiness. John expresses that he rather be unhappy than live superficially (Pradas par 17). Huxley's main point, when explaining John's feelings, is that our society shouldn't be manipulated into thinking that drugs and sex are the solution to a utopian world. Huxley's book is idealistic of a world that hopefully will never exist. Some of Huxley's readers believe that it's not really a story at all, but an endearing oratory on the dangers of social engineering through biological tampering and psychological conditioning (Brian par 2). Nevertheless, Huxley makes his readers think that soon our world could be controlled by technology, and there's not much to do to stop it.

A Brave New World is usually discussed in terms of ideas, rather its appeal to the imagination (Murray par 1). In the end, this book defiantly forces it's readers to appreciate the "savage" world we live in, because it could be worse, it could be utopgine a world where all of your fantasies can become reality. Imagine a world without violence or hate, but just youth, beauty, and sex. Imagine a world of perfect "stability" (42) where "everyone belongs to everyone else" (43), and no one is unhappy or left out. This sounds like the perfect world. But it's not.

Looks can be deceiving as proven in Aldous Huxley's novel, Brave New World. In his novel, he introduces us to a society that strives to satisfy everyone's wants and needs by inflicting pleasure in order to bring stability. However, in order to truly achieve this stability, old world ideas relating to art, history, and religion are abolished, and are replaced by new age technology. As a result, the people of the Brave New World now worship Henry Ford instead of God, use test tubes instead of natural birth, and use a hallucinogenic drug called soma instead of facing reality and the everyday responsibilities of adulthood.

Although the appeals of this world are alluring and attractive, they are only a distraction to cover up a hidden truth that can even be seen in today's society. The fact of the matter is, as technology advances, people are becoming increasingly more dependent on it, resulting in the loss of their own individuality as they inevitably fall to conformity. In turn, society inevitably succumbs to the oppression of what it has come to love, all to achieve stability. But is stability worth the cost of individuality?

No. Without individuality, our emotions, opinions, and personalities would be nonexistent. In fact, it's these characteristics that define the kind of people we are. Without them, we are not humans: we are simply mechanical clones. For instance, take the people of the Brave New World.

Their rationality does not come from their hearts or their own minds, but from a machine that feeds them pointless, repetitive rhetoric to keep them happy, under control, and unaware. It is because of this that the people of the Brave New World are shallow, cold, and have no compassion for anyone else, but themselves because they are "conditioned" (40) to be that way. This is clearly evident with the way they react to death. They do not mourn the dead or conduct a funeral like we would. Instead, they burn and destroy the bodies the same way they try to destroy their past. They purposely forget people to prevent individuality.

They live in a society that "objects to anything intense or long-drawn" (40), and they believe that "ending is better than mending" (52). It is for these reasons why marriages, parents, and natural births no longer exist in their world. In turn, the people have become completely self-centered and egotistical. What kind of person in their right mind would want to live like this?

Clearly, individuality is not worth stability because it's our emotions, whether they " re good or bad, and our freedom to chose what we want to believe that separates us from machines, and makes us human. Furthermore, as technology advances, we are gradually losing control of ourselves. In the Brave New World, technology has become the deciding factor of their judgement's, and because of this, the people can not think for themselves and are not individuals. Their entire lives revolve around technology from the decanting process to the conditioning process, which serves as the basis for their entire knowledge. When the people become unhappy and stressed, they immediately turn to soma, which is a symbol of technology in itself. It is almost as if they are "slaves" (216) to it.

In addition to this argument, the Solidarity Service is another example of how technology controls their lives. When Bernard goes to the Solidarity Service, he and twelve other people are "fused" (80) into one, so that they would "lose their twelve separate identities in a larger being" (80). In a sense, the service is like a factory and the people have become mass-produced identical products. Technology plays such a major role in their live that it seems impossible that they could live without it.

Their dependence has become an addiction, and because of this, they have become products of technology: mindless machines. Clearly, one can now see that Huxley was trying to warn society about the dangers of becoming too dependent on technological advancements in order to achieve stability. As technology advances, we lose the drive to become individuals because of it's many alluring distractions. As a result, we inevitably fall to it's oppression.

Our dependence on technological advancements is an addiction, one in which if it is not stopped, we can easily lose control of ourselves like the people in the Brave New World. Our individuality is not worth stability, and technology is not a substitute for human nature. If today's society continues to rely on new technology like the people of the Brave New World, then we will become products of technology: mindless, shallow robots.