Perversion Of Society

Perversion of Society

In today's society a person is shaped by family, friends, and past events, but in Aldous Huxley's classic novel, Brave New World, there is no such thing as family, history and "true" friends. The government controls every aspect of an individual from their creation in the hatcheries to their conditioning for their thoughts and careers. In this brave new world the ideas of stability and community reign supreme, and the concept of individualism is foreign and suppressed, "Everyone belongs to everyone else, after all," (47). Huxley perverses contemporary morals and concepts in Brave New World, thus distorting the ideas of materialistic pleasures, savagery versus society, and human relationships. These distortions contribute to the effectiveness of Brave New World, consequently creating a novel that leaves the reader questioning how and why.

In the year A.F. 632 no pleasure is denied to the populous. Hypnopaedia is used as a device to form the moral education of children. What is taught through this method is not true ethics, but warped actions trained by words. An illustration of this is in the teaching of Elementary Sex to children. The society that Huxley created was one where having sex often and with many people was a positive course of action. Anyone who did not have multiple partners, such as Lenina or Bernard, were considered a blight to society. Society as a whole uses the act of having sex as relief from pain and emotions. A person does not have to lust for someone they merely set up a time and place for them to meet and have sex, and it is completely accepted by everyone. When sex is not enough to relieve a person from pain or loneliness they take soma, a drug that stimulates them into happiness. Unlike the drugs of present day there is no set backs from taking soma, no headaches after use, and after all "One cubic centimetre cure ten gloomy," (60). Finally, there is the concept of feelies, movies that you can feel what the actors are doing. These feelies are nothing more than glamorized porn movies giving the participants quick orgasmic feelings without effort. All these materialistic pleasures are used to substitute an individuals basic emotional needs and to give them a false sense of happiness. Huxley used this warped view on what today's society deems morally right and wrong to reveal how shallow the citizens of the brave new world truly are.

John is considered a savage in Brave New World, and is brought back into society because it was of scientific interest to his fordship Mustapha Mond. Huxley uses this part of the plot to show the twisted views of what appears to be civilized culture versus a savage culture. When John first learns he is going to the civilized world he quotes Shakespeare by saying, "O brave new world that has such people it in," (139). He is excited by the thoughts of all the wonderful things his mother, Linda, has told him about. John wants to be where no one is unhappy or every alone, because on the reservation he was an outcast, and was constantly alone and unhappy. When John arrived in this brave new world he was accepted by its people, and even though he was more of a freak show to them he wanted to be around them. The more he found out about their culture, though, the less he civilized he considered them to be. When he first saw a Bokanovsky group he became physically ill, and uttered Shakespeare's quote again, but this time with malice in his voice. The final bit of realization on how dirty and corrupt this society truly was came whenever he witnessed Linda's death. Making death a happy experience is a conditioning factor, and death was considered a good thing because it gave back to the society. John, knowing that death is really something that one should be reverent about, resented the fact that children were let into the hospital for the dying. After Linda's passing he became enraged, and quoted Shakespeare yet again, but