Brave New World- Question #1 Values/Attitudes

The novel Brave New World reflects Aldous Huxley's wariness against the government using new and powerful technology in order to control society.  This is shown through the Bokanovsky Process, sleep-teaching or hypnopaedia, and soma.

The Bokanovsky Process is used to mass-produce identical human beings.  This is used for lower-caste citizens of the World State including the Gammas, Deltas, and Epsilons.  The government deprives these citizens of their individuality through not only their identical appearances but also morality and personal interests.  Conditioning is used throughout all castes to teach citizens how to behave, what kinds of things to spend money on, and to keep them from threatening the government's power.  This is done by a machine that whispers propaganda to everyone while they sleep and eventually the information is accepted as the truth after enough repetitions.  (Huxley 34)

"Mother, monogamy, romance. High spurts the fountain; fierce and foamy the wild jet. The urge has but a single outlet. My love, my baby. No wonder those poor pre-moderns were mad and wicked and miserable. Their world didn’t allow them to take things easily, didn’t allow them to be sane, virtuous, happy."  (Huxley 31)  This passage shows the World State's disapproval of the previous values of society that the World State has gotten rid of entirely.  Instead of gaining happiness out of families or love, this society achieves happiness by instant gratification of every desire.  

From the contrast between John, the hero of this novel, and the citizens of the World State, we can see that Huxley values strong feelings over superficial happiness.  John tells Mustapha Mond, a World Controller on the subject, "'I don't want comfort.  I want God, I want poetry, I want real danger, I want freedom, I want goodness, I want sin.'"  (Huxley 167)

Initially, the author writes from the perspective of Bernard Marx, an outcast of the World State society because of his physical appearance and height.  Later the book follows John "the Savage", who was brought back from an uncivilized part of America to the World State because he too felt like an outcast among the Native Americans as the son of a former civilized woman. (Huxley 100)

Huxley, Aldous. Brave New World. New York: Harper Perennial Modern Classics, 2006. Electronic.