Literary Epistle: Brave New World

14 May 2017

Sophomore English  

Room US028  

Dear Students:  

Aldous Huxley's Brave New World can be classified as a novel, but it is also clearly a satire. As such, it represents a form of satire that flourished in the twentieth century and continues to thrive in the current century: the dystopian novel. You all have heard the term dystopia before. It designates a world that is the polar opposite of a utopia (which, after all, is a Greek word meaning “no place”); often it is the result of efforts to create a utopia that have gone horribly wrong. But Huxley doesn't employ the typical dystopian vision where a powerful centralized government exercises absolute control through propaganda and terror. In Huxley's World State, a powerful centralized government exercises absolute control through conditioning and pleasure. The stunningly nightmarish premise of Brave New World is that the inhabitants of the World State voluntarily submit to their own servitude. They don't have to be coerced whatsoever because they are too distracted--being too well entertained--to notice that the price of the continual pleasure they enjoy is their freedom and individuality.

 

The world that Huxley creates for us in his novel is one that is far removed from that of Homer's Odyssey, except perhaps for the island of the Phaeacians. In Brave New World the ongoing struggle for self-mastery achieved through deferred gratification is gone. In Huxley's World State, the subjects are created and conditioned to seek immediate gratification of every appetite. Yet the author whom Huxley chooses to represent the lost world of the self-mastering quest is not Homer, but Shakespeare. In fact, the title Brave New World comes from Shakespeare's The Tempest.

 

One of Shakespeare's final dramas, The Tempest tells the story of Prospero, formerly Duke of Milan, whose brother usurped his title when Prospero neglected his duties to study magic. After being exiled from Milan and set adrift on the sea, Prospero has lived on a deserted island with his daughter Miranda for twelve years. One subplot of the play has Miranda meeting Ferdinand, the son of Prospero's old enemy, the king of Naples, after Prospero magically forces his enemies who are sailing from Africa to Italy to abandon ship and swim to the island. The youngsters fall madly in love with each other. To Ferdinand, Miranda embodies every perfection. To Miranda, Ferdinand is the most handsome and gentle of his sex that she has ever seen. Prospero allows them to become betrothed--indeed, that seems to be part of his plan--but continually warns them to act with restraint and abstain from sexual activity until they can return to Italy and marry. Near the end of the play, upon seeing all of the recent arrivals gathered together before Propsero's cell, Miranda utters the line, "O brave new world that has such people in it." She pronounces this line in wonder because she hasn't seen this many representatives of her race before. What she doesn't realize is that some of the men that stand before her are the very ones that overthrew her father, a couple of whom may still be unreformed. Much of The Tempest has to do with the difficulty of mastering one's impulses and appetites, as well as valuing more highly that which is obtained through great effort and difficulty, and so Huxley's references to it carry a great deal of irony.

 

Huxley sprinkles in other Shakespearean allusions as well, notably from Romeo and Juliet, King Lear, Hamlet, and Othello. Huxley introduces Shakespeare to the novel as a measure of what the masters of the Brave New World have sacrificed in order to attain the goals of "Community, Identity, Stability." Shakespeare, among other authors, has become taboo in the World State. Ingeniously, as with everything else that the Controllers proscribe, they accomplish the eradication of Shakespeare less by actually banning his works than by making them irrelevant. Providing continuous sensual stimulation and satisfaction seems to erase from the inhabitants any inclination to strive for anything more profound than the feelies, synthetic music, obstacle golf, and soma holidays.   

 

Another point of interest about the novel is the odd nature of its protagonist: Bernard Marx. Marx possesses several less-than-desirable traits: He's conniving and self-pitying to name a couple. Yet Marx is sharp enough to detect that something is amiss in the Brave New World, if only because of the mistreatment and discomfort that he suffers. At the Reservation, he makes a connection with John, and immediately devises a plan to exploit John's trust in him to strike a blow against his enemy, the DHC. But the fact that John feels a certain sympathy for Bernard and he for John indicates that, for all his imperfections, there is something profoundly human about him. Bernard's friend Helmholtz Watson possesses more admirable qualities, yet Huxley chooses to keep the focus on Bernard. It seems entirely appropriate that he does so.

 

In this prescient novel, Huxley raises some questions that, in the age of globalization, are worth asking. One of the chief questions seems to be whether a life of shallow satisfaction in a climate of engineered order and stability is superior to a life that involves struggle and perhaps even turmoil and disorder that create opportunities for the growth and excellence of the individual. Our very understanding of what it means to be human rests on how we may answer that question.

   

I hope that’s helpful. What do you think?  

Bravely yours,  

Dr. Carlson