Brave New World

Future Predictions…Anyone?

Although many similarities exist between Aldous Huxley's A Brave New World and George Orwell's 1984, they are more divergent than alike.  A Brave New World is a novel about the struggle of Bernard Marx, who rejects the tenants of his society when he discovers that he is not truly happy. 1984 is the story of Winston who finds forbidden love within the hypocrisy of his society. In both cases, the main characters are in quiet rebellions against their government, which are eventually found to be unsuccessful.

Huxley wrote A Brave New World in the third person so that the reader could be allotted a more comprehensive view of the activities he presents.  His characters are shallow and cartoon-like in order to better reflect the society in which they are entrapped.  In this society, traditional notions of love and what ideally should result have long been disregarded and despised, "Mother, monogamy, romance. High spurts the fountain; fierce and foamy the wild jet. The urge has but a single outlet". The comparison to a wild jet is intended to demonstrate the inherent dangers of these activities. Many of the “Brave New World's” social norms are intended to “save” its citizens from anything unpleasant by depriving them of the opportunity to miss anything overly pleasant.

The society values, “A COMMUNITY, IDENTITY, STABILITY,” take the place of everything else in a combined effort.  Soma, the magical ultimate drug is what keeps the population from revolting. "What you need is a gramme of soma...All the advantages of Christianity and alcohol; none of their defects".  The drug is at the forefront of their daily lives supposedly providing freedom from life's every problem. The drug is used as a form of recreation, like sex, and its use is encouraged at any opportunity, especially when great emotions begin to arise. They are conditioned to accept soma to calm and pacify them should they begin to feel anything too intensely. The conditioning also provides them with their place or role and prevents them from participating in social activities. Class consciousness which Americans are so reluctant to acknowledge is taught through hypnopжdia which is the repetition of phrases during sleep similar to post hypnotic indoctrination and this is done for all social classes. In Brave New World, each name is a class or caste as Alphas and Betas remain individuals and only Gammas, Deltas, and Epsilons are bokanovskified.

The conditioning is begun at an extremely young age and is in our modern real-world standards cruel. “The screaming of the babies suddenly change the tone. There was something desperate, almost insane, about the sharp spasmodic yelps to which they now gave utterance". The children's "Pavlovian" conditioning with electric shocks is later compared to the wax seals which used to grace the seams of letters, "Not so much like drops of water, though water, it is true, can wear holes in the hardest granite; rather, drops of liquid sealing-wax, drops that adhere, incrust, incorporate themselves with what they fall on, till finally the rock is all one scarlet blob."  The entire society is conditioned to shrink away from intense emotion, engage in casual sex, and take their pacifying soma.

In 1984, a first-person book partly narrated by the main character's internal dialogue or thoughts, the great party leader is "Big Brother."   Big Brother is a fictional character who is somewhat more imposing than the leader "Ford," of Huxley's book, named after the industrialist Henry Ford. One could almost compare “Big Brother” to our present day personifications of “Uncle Sam” with all the posters and the slogans.  The main character Winston fears Big Brother and is much more aware of his situation than any of the characters in A Brave New World who are constantly pacified by soma.  In A Brave New World history