“Brave New World” is the story of three individuals in an utterly sanitized, “perfect” society. In the future people are produced; embryos are taken from women and treated to multiply into, often large, batches of identical humans. The size of these batches is dependant on the embryo’s
place in
society upon reaching adulthood; after all, the world requires far fewer presidents than it does people to remove gum from toilet seats, and if a society was made up
entirely of the former who would make sure that their bottoms didn’t get gummy? The predetermined status’ of the unborn children are reinforced by strategic mistreatment of the foetuses, creating a visible physical difference in adulthood as well as handicapping mental and practical abilities, then systematically conditioning and forced subliminal learning throughout their formative years.
The end result is a society in which everyone has a clearly defined place and purpose, matched almost precisely to their capabilities. No-one has to feel worthless or lonely, almost everything they could want is available to them immediately, and if despite everything done to prevent it they still get unhappy there’s always soma to make things good again. The drug (presumably named after the Ancient Greek word for “body”), produces roughly the same
effect as an intense religious experience and is abundant, non-addictive and side effect free. One of the phrases drilled into citizens during their childhoods’ claims that everybody is happy, and as far as the conventional definition goes, it certainly seems that they are. The point Huxley appears to be raising in the story is that happiness might not be the ultimate
purpose of our lives, otherwise his “Brave new World” would seem to us a glorious vision of what humanity might one day become, rather than a bleak and featureless nightmare.
The three characters; a misfit, a poet and an outsider, feel out of place in this society. The first two are dully aware that there is something missing in their lives, the arrival of the
outsider brings them two very different kinds of satisfaction while he struggles to remain sane in a society geared almost entirely towards preventing madness.
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