Written by Aldous Huxley in 1930,
Brave New World combines the
elements of a thriller, a tragedy, a farce and (ironically) a love story,
presenting to the reader a disturbingly real vision of an anti-Utopian or dystopian
society.
Far from merely being a
science-
fiction novel, it goes far beyond the realms of
speculation, hinting at a future that, with every passing day, draws near.
Huxley uses a combination of
effective devices to ensure that the reader is drawn into the story at the outset
and that till the end, there will be no exit. He begins by placing the reader
amongst a batch of eager, young students, in a ‘Decanting Room’, about to
witness the process of creation of a human being. Thus, at the very outset, the
reader’s attention is drawn to a potential moral dilemma – that of unchecked genetic
research which allows man to play God. Or is it Ford? The World-
State to which
the reader is introduced is very much religious, albeit the God figurehead has
been replaced by Ford (Henry Ford,
automobile tycoon) and the sign of the Cross has been abandoned in favour of
the sign of the ‘T’ (a jibe at the mass craze in the United States of America
over the introduction, in 1908 of a new car, the Ford Model-T, whose production
continued till 1927). Babies are ‘made’ in test-tubes, and conditioned in
places very similar to factories. So, human beings are assembled, bit by bit and seamlessly
incorporated into the Social strata, akin to cogs in a wheel. The entire setup evokes
visions of the assembly lines where the various parts of machines are put
together and assembled. Birth is passé. ‘Mother’ is an obscene word, best left
unspoken, and as far as possible, eliminated from one’s vocabulary. Promiscuity
is encouraged: a physical relation with only a single partner is frowned at. Both,
the men as well as the women of this society are conditioned to not just accept
this, but to enjoy it. In this manner,
Huxley’s society effectively disposes of women as creators, and lets science
and technology take on their role, robbing them of one of their primary
prerogatives – giving birth.
But as Huxley says, it is a brave, new
world and things are very different here. The author combines images of a socialist
state with ones of a dictatorship, producing an interestingly non-Orwellian
picture of a ‘World
State’, free from War,
disease, famine, and discontent in general. Even happiness can be controlled by
consuming a small quantity of a drug, ‘Soma’ (It is quite likely that this was
influenced by Huxley’s experiences with psychotropic and hallucinogenic drugs). However,
he contends that no Utopia can be perfect. There are still parts of the planet,
where non-World State citizens reside. These people, who still practice Pagan
and Christian rituals, produce progeny in the ‘old-fashioned way’, and who do
not fit into the socio-politico-cultural framework of the World State, live in
special reservations that are isolated from the rest of the civilized world.
These individuals, who still have disease, famine and the suchlike amongst
them, are deemed savages by all those of the World State.
Of
these aforementioned people, a boy named John (called John the Savage) is brought back to the World State by one of the
protagonists of the novel, Bernard Marx and one of his female partners, Lenina
Crowne (later on in the novel, she falls in ‘attraction’ with John, providing a
ladder for the plot to climb to its climax). In this new world, he is exposed
to sights, sounds and experiences that are completely alien to him; as alien,
in fact, as he is to the fascinated people of the dystopian society, all of
whom clamour to shake his hand or just get a glimpse of him.
John
the Savage can be seen as a portrait of the reader who, while fascinated by the
grandeur of the World
State, feels uneasy owing
to its suggestive nature. Huxley banks on the reader’s moral conditioning,
ensuring that the anti-Utopian sights may tempt, but not overwhelm. The
author’s fascination with Shakespeare is evident in John’s conversations with Mustafa
Mond, the Controller (who can be seen as Establishment, personified) as both of
them incessantly quote from many of the Bard’s works. These conversations
consist, mostly in John the Savage trying to convince Mustafa Mond of the
immorality and decadence of the World
State, and the latter
trying to convince the former that such is not the case. The concluding part of
the book doesn’t paint any rosy picture of the soon-to-be future and leaves the
reader with a feeling of acute dejection and dismay, contemplating the bitter
truth behind Huxley’s heavily ironic ideas that translate into sentences that
seem to embody the essence of a paradise, gone horribly wrong.
Aldous Huxley’s Brave New World is a very powerful novel that compels one to
rethink one’s notion of reality, question the ‘absolute’ and wonder whether our
progress is truly that, or whether it is a pseudo-progress, leading us onto a
path where we are bound to collide with ourselves and from which we, as
individuals, might recover, but as a race, may not.
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