The author of Brave New World, Aldous Huxley, uses satire and irony to engage the audience. Huxley uses satire, a technique used to criticize something within a literary work, to criticize the materialistic attitudes that were common both in his time and in ours. The World State, the dystopia which Huxley describes, is an extreme version of a consumer society, in which everything a citizen does is done in favor of the economy. For example, because the Central London Hatchery and Conditioning Center conditions every infant, they are able to determine each individual's interests so they can predict which products these citizens will buy in the future (Huxley 17). This results in complete control over consumption and the economy.
Irony is also used throughout Brave New World because the reader knows things that most of the characters don't. The citizens of the World State are not told anything that is not necessary for their work. "For particulars, as every one knows, make for virtue and happiness; generalities are intellectually necessary evils. Not philosophers but fretsawyers and stamp collectors compose the backbone of society." (Huxley 5) This quote shows that the government does not want its people to be aware of any 'particulars' because they don't want their people to think about society since this may lead to the desire to change it. For example, readers are aware of Christianity while the World State's citizens are completely clueless as to what that is. Instead they are forced to practice a meaningless religion in which they praise Henry Ford and have no morals or values (Huxley 37).
Huxley, Aldous. Brave New World. New York: Harper Perennial Modern Classics, 2006. Electronic.
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