Sunday, August 28, 2011

The Brave New World Was Not the Best New World (BNW)

Huxley's Brave New World turned out to be a very interesting and relatable novel. It was a mere resemblance of our own world, only with more exaggerated problems. The main key point of this story, I believe, is stability. The question I prosed was, "To what extent will these people go through in order to achieve that World State stability?" Well in this case, they had to eliminate basically any and everything that could jeopardize one's happiness. This ranged from emotions to equality and most importantly, truth. 


The indication that truth may jeopardize one's happiness clearly meant that the World State was composed of lies. The truth does hurt after all hence, the creation of soma. Soma is a drug (almost like anti-depressants or happy pills) that causes one to hallucinate. By shrouding one's realities, social stability is promoted. John was one of the very few (if only) resident of the World State that chose truth over happiness. His loyalty to himself and his morals led to his tragic death. He is also the only person that has not and refuses to take soma.


By artificially creating human beings and 'programming' them to complete certain tasks without questioning exemplifies the fact that they are in a sense, robots. From this I concluded that pure humans in the World State was nothing more than an inconvenience to the ever growing society. 


Towards the end of the novel, the values and beliefs of the World State were more clearly discussed. A central idea that kept the World State successful was the concept of consumerism. This is the reason why pieces of literature such as Shakespeare is not allowed due to the fact that his work is timeless. Therefore, it doesn't encourage the consumption of new goods which plays a vital part in the growth of the World State.

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