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