Brave New World: Title

Brave New World by Aldous Huxley

"There was a yell of ironical applause," (Huxley, 255).

John, the savage, makes references to the works of William Shakespeare often throughout the novel, but none so impactful or prevalent than that of the title "O brave new world." Miranda from William Shakespeare's The Tempest exclaims:
"O wonder!
How many goodly creatures are there here!
How beauteous mankind is! O brave new world,
That has such people in't."

How ironic. Author Huxley uses this irony to highlight the sadness that becomes of John's collision with the civilized, modern culture. The stories of Miranda and John are parallel in many ways; both are disillusioned by the truth of society and are "baptised by fire" as they are thrown into a new society with new dynamics that they have to make sense of. But, as Miranda's reflection on humanity reveals, she adjusted well to the society that was presented to her (the play follows her first encounter with mortal men) while John rejected the society he was forced into.

I watched an interview with author Aldous Huxley where, at about 11 minutes in, he describes the use of propaganda and drugs (such as Valium which was popular among women during this period) as potentially threatening to society, bringing up Adolf Hitler's effective brainwashing of an entire nation as a warning to modern society as not to be "taken by surprise." The interview was conducted in 1958 and concludes with the statement that "the price of freedom is eternal vigilance." I wonder sometimes, if we have kept up this necessary vigilance.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3TQZ-2iMUR0

Brave New World: Insanity

Brave New World by Aldous Huxley

"...it was not to sing and enjoy himself that he had come here. It was to escape further contamination by the filth of civilized life; it was to be purified and made good; it was actively to make amends," (Huxley, 247).

What do you do when everything in your world has been destroyed by powers far outside your control? Each individual has their own ways of dealing with grief and insanity. For those in civilized society it's simple: take a soma holiday, but for John, the baseness of this response disgusts him. He instead returns to the customs that he knows: to self purify through suffering and self-denial. Because these concepts are so foreign to the civilized people, they again claim him as a novelty and send media crews to catch footage of the savage harming himself in strange ritual that he can't explain. In the end, it becomes too much and John can no longer live with himself in the knowledge that he has been a part of the society and can't escape from it.

Brave New World: Them All

Brave New World by Aldous Huxley

"'I claim them all,' said the Savage at last," (Huxley, 240).

Them all; everything. John claimed everything about life. The good, the bad, and the ugly. He saw what life looked like whittled down to the most basic it could be and hated it. A world without disease, without pain, without struggle, without death even could not satisfy him because it came at a high price. Relieving the world of disease eliminates the heroism that comes from suffering; removing the causes of pain comes at the price of intoxication; no struggle means no reward; and no understanding of death means no understanding of life. Fully knowledgeable of both sides of life, John chooses to have everything in order to have the good. Literally and figuratively, he refuses to swallow the pill that the Controller offers him.

Brave New World: control

Brave New World by Aldous Huxley

"The Voice of Reason, the Voice of Good Feeling. The sound-track roll was unwinding itself in Synthetic Anti-Riot Speech Number Two (Medium Strength). Straight from the depths of a non-existent heart..." (Huxley, 214-215).

Controlling the masses has been the object of civilized societies since the start of organized living; the hand of rational society that reigns us back in when we succumb to our most base desires. The Romans accomplished this with bread and circuses and those of this society accomplish it with soma. Citizens are dependent on the release from even the modified reality they live in. The quote I chose was extracted from the scene where the police dissipate the riot against the Savage and use the recording to calm the subconscious unrest of the angered citizens. It reveals how mechanical and planned the society is. Huxley chooses to add that the recording comes "straight from the depths of a non-existent heart," saying that the supposedly well-intentioned, sweet words about happiness and harmony really have a sinister purpose of absolute control.

Brave New World: Limits

Brave New World by Aldous Huxley

"I mean, when a child asks you how a helicopter works or who made the world - well, what are you to answer if you're a Beta and have always worked in the Fertilizing Room?" (Huxley, 122).

How often do we allow our surroundings define who we are and what we know. Here, Linda claims that she doesn't know how to answer her son's questions because, as the saying goes, they are "out of her pay grade." Adaptability is the essence of human innovation and survival. The creators of the utopia have reduced their citizens to not needing the skill of adaptability, as proven by Linda's odd experience getting left on the reserve to fend for herself, and pregnant at that. Limits are supposedly drawn where we set them and while that may not be totally true in our society, our freedom and democratic government ensure it to a great degree. But, in Bernard's world, people's limits are pre-determined through manipulation of embryo development and subconscious conditioning.

Brave New World: Adults All The Time

Brave New World by Aldous Huxley

"'It suddenly struck me the other day,' continued Bernard, 'that it might be possible to be an adult all the time,'" (Huxley, 94).

Bernard's statement seems paradoxical, but the idea is actually novel to someone with his carefully planned conditioning. He is beginning to discover that the free way that people use one another in his society may be irresponsible and base (he describes this as how a child would act). His attempts at self control are not easily understood or accepted by Lenina and she ponders turning him into the psychologists or authorities for his refusal to follow the mainstream way of doing things. Often, novel thinkers are responded to like this because their ideas are so contradictory to what we have been conditioned to accept and prefer.

Brave New World: The Wilderness

Brave New World by Aldous Huxley

"The mesa was like a ship becalmed in a strait of lion-coloured dust," (Huxley, 107).

This simile describing Bernard and Lenina's vacation home points out the dissimilarities the savage reserve has from the society from which they came. For the first thing, there's dust. Lenina continuously points the uncleanliness of the savages, having never experienced it herself. They, in many ways were like the "ship" out of place in the middle of a desert; visitors, not unwanted, but strangely mechanical and out of place. During their stay, the pair also experience the horrors of the elderly. Growing old similarly holds a sense of fear and dread for our society. The young fear senility and the senile dread the declination of the bodies. This society thinks that they have found the solution but their system of disposing of the elderly carries a high, but invisible, price.

Brave New World: Sex

Brave New World by Aldous Huxley

"He was utterly miserable, and perhaps (her shining eyes accused him), perhaps it was his own fault," (Huxley, 86).

But he shouldn't be miserable, according to society he was doing everything right. In the aftermath of a soma-induced orgy, Bernard feels the opposite of what he should: empty. Unknowingly, Bernard is challenging the rules by which he has been conditioned to play the game of life. In this modern and structured society, sex has been reinvented as a manner of occupying citizens' minds and hands. Children are deemed "queer" if they don't participate in "erotic play" and adults are monitored to ensure that they are sleeping with multiple partners. People are conditioned to loath the idea of procreation and childbirth because society leaders don't want strong bonds to form between individuals or families. It's really all about control; individuality breeds thought and thought breeds revolution. A fabricated proverb is whispered to children as they sleep: "Everyone belongs to everyone else." But, as Bernard begins to realize, the ways of sleeping around and polygamy of  relationships don't bring him happiness when the drugs wear off.