Comparison between Brave New World and White Noise - Essay Example

?Comparison between Brave new world and white noise The paper attempts to present a comparative analysis of the two landmark fictional stories, BraveNew World by Aldous Huxley, and White Noise by Don DeLillo by portraying the different messages that the authors of these imminent literary pieces have tried to convey with respect to the modern society. The two stories are both unique and remarkable in their significance considering the age when these were written as well as the uniqueness and ingenuity of the subject matters and treatments of the same. Don DeLillo in his eighth novel White Noise exemplifies the work of postmodern literature. The authors show how technology has formulated men’s lives and ways of living and how this has influenced their emotions and finally the outcome of their relationships. Whereas Brave New World is a landmark fictional work of the modern literature. DeLillo has been awarded multiple accolades for his ‘breakout’ work White Noise including the National Book Award in 1985. In contrast, Brave New World was published in 1932 where Huxley seems to prophesize and communicate the major struggles which dominated modern life along with the arms race that so powerfully underlines the role of modern technology in today’s world. Brave New World is a fictional novel belonging to the utopian literature genre, where the society essentially portrayed is called dystopia (the opposite of utopia) where things go badly awry. It is a parody of Well’s idealistic work Men Like Gods. As the name suggests, the setting is an imaginary society that is organized or synchronized to create an ideal conditions for human beings by scientifically orchestrating the near robot like individuals who are devoid of pain, hatred, neglect, and every other evils in the world. It is a bitterly satiric novel that was written to portray the horrors that engulf a planned totalitarian society, where the individual loses the all subtle human emotions including the sense of love in the above process. On the other hand, White Noise is set in the 1980’s with a small American town as the main backdrop. This is not a fictional state of a speculation but records the real society in the time where the individuals try to decipher the meaning of truth, that is, death in this case. The backdrop is also the age of the 80’s, which as per DeLillo’s interpretation is an age obsessed by media and where the key drivers of the society are rampant material consumption and putting up a facade to get a position of distinction in the society. In fact mass communication tools could be most indispensable to democracy and most abusive in the hands of a dictator. In his novel, Huxley portrays individual images of the character but they tend to take a back seat to the overall horror of a fictitious totalitarian society where the interest of the state takes precedence over the likes, opinions and thoughts of the individual characters. In such a society all the components of a press is usually controlled by the Elite and serve a purpose which is bigger and irrelevant to a common individual. In novel, the author caustically portraits the stability in the society where the individuals are programmed to be devoid of subtle human emotions that essentially gives rise to a sense of pain. The usage of ‘genetic engineering’ and ‘conditioning’ are shown as a technique to illustrate everybody is satisfied with their living. Here science is used for furthering technology, the State talks about scientific progress, what it essentially means is furthering of technology, not in increase in horizon of scientific understanding through exploration and experimentation. In contrast in White Noise, the technology proves to be universal in its occurrence where it is both threatening and uplifting at the same time. All through the novel, technology becomes inextricably a part of the quality of regular life as are the human characters themselves. DeLillo’s narrative seamlessly weaves between the sounds of mechanical and human sounds that essentially constitute the life of a person. In the postmodern society the process of communication is marked with worthlessness especially with the advent of the junk emails, factoid. Human psychology also works in accordance with this. The book White Noise centers on the anxieties relating to the primordial human fear of death. All the major events, narratives, symbols and motifs of the tale, like the subject of Hitler as a topic of study, cacophony of sounds in the highway and the supermarket, the horror of a derailment of rail carriage leading to the airborne toxic event, even the title of white noise to the story, all circles back to the fear of death. With technology as a defining theme of the society, this novel narrates how the modern world, with its electronic and social media, the endless consumer appetite and cacophony of mechanical sounds helps a person to forget the fear of death; however this resides just beneath the surface of daily life. On the other hand, Brave New World depicts a dystopia where an all-powerful totalitarian state exercises absolute control over the behaviors as well as actions of the people such that the power and stability of the state remains preserved. Unlike DeLillo, Huxley in Brave New World portrays technology as the main enforcer of the totalitarian state, and its interventions are initiated even before the birth of a human and the intervention last until the death, with its power to determine and define the want of the people. From technology the issue of rising costs arises and hence economic censorship results where the mass communication reigns in hands of elites only. The state here retains control by ensuring that its citizens are happy and fulfilled superficially, hence they really do not care about the notion of personal freedom, either in thoughts or in actual physical movement. The consequences of control in the dystopian state are the loss of human dignity, values, emotions and morals. In short, it is de-humanizing the population to a state of semi-robotic existence. The advent of technology has made men machine like and work in automated manner spreading and communicating messages in a robotic fashion. Throughout the narrative of White Noise, the reality and the artifice often are blurred together, and can easily be interchangeable in context of its use. Out of this maze so ably created by the author, man ultimately emerge triumphant irrespective of his innate weaknesses and the challenges of the age he belongs to. Don DeLillo novel ends with positivity where we see Jack back home after conquering the fear of death. On the other hand, Brave New World – although in the garb of a science fiction – serves as a terse reminder of adverse usage of science and technology to the human civilization as a whole Huxley was much worried about the dangers which were becoming more prominent during that time due to the misuse of sciences like biology, psychology and physiology in order to achieve identity, community and stability. In his story, he makes the world cautious about the dangers of giving state control over new and powerful technologies. Don DeLillo adopted narrative style in which the characters are presented through Jack Gladney who is the central character. His language primarily functions at two stages - on one hand, it is a practical tone which operates in a realistic fashion and the other tone is more profound with an implied meaning –“everything is concealed in symbolism, hidden by…layers of cultural material. But it is psychic data….all code words and ceremonial phrases” (DeLillo, 1920, p.37). The style is uncomplicated and more in synch with verbal communication of a common person – typically depicted in the line, “Babette and I do our talking in the kitchen” (DeLillo, 1920, p.22); Here the narrative brilliance of the author is represented though the usage of first person. Whereas Huxley, in his Brave New World, represents the story from the perspective of a third person who can intrude the mind of the characters of the storyline and can draw inferences. This style is particularly helpful in illustrating the cross section of the strange society in the future. An example of the same is noted in the following lines of a passage: “A troop of newly arrived students, very young, pink and callow, followed nervously, rather abjectly, at the Director's heels. Each of them carried a notebook, in which, whenever the great man spoke, he desperately scribbled.” (Huxley, 1932, p.1) This shows how the propaganda of brainwashing takes place in a world where human beings are unaware of the evils they commit and go against the law of nature, taking everything in their hands. The symbols represent the abstract concepts and the underlying ideas behind the story. In the case of white noise the symbols such as Hitler, sunset and air borne toxic events are used to portray essence of the story and imbibe the sense of horror in the minds of the readers. This is shown in the lines: “The radio said a tank car derailed. But I don’t think it derailed from what I could see. I think it got rammed and something punched a hole in it. There’s a lot of smoke and I don’t like the looks of it.” (DeLillo, 1920, p.258) The readers develop a sense of concern for Jack in the above line where it is found that the smoke is haunting him. Whereas in Brave New World one can see the usage of technology in order to control the society, is very symbolic in uplifting the plot to the readers. Huxley used the drug Soma very carefully in the plot so as to show the effect of drugs on human lives, “there is always soma, delicious soma” (Huxley, 1932, p.3). From the line we can see the drug has the power to calm and without side effects and how very indispensible it becomes to soothe the minds whereas to get relief from the anxiety of death, the Dylar, an experimental drug got highlighted in the fiction, White Noise. Soma on one hand represents and symbolizes the use of religion as a mean to control society but Dylar is used as just a means to comfort anxieties. The characters of Don DeLillo are different in their dispositions, thoughts, and approach to the central theme of the novel, which is death. For example, Jack faces death with a sense of terror while Jack’s son Heinrich faces it dispassionately with his characteristic raw bare-bone analytical disposition. Again Murray is reconciled and is at peace with seeing death around all him. Orest Mercator, a senior friend of Heinrich is not afraid of dying, that Jack finds fascinating with his overbearing fear of death. Winnie Richards, the brilliant neuroscientist notes that death adds texture to life. Jack and his wife Barbette can give anything and everything to avoid it. On the other hand, the society of the Brave New World is filled with characters that shall do everything in their capacity so that they can avoid coming face to face with the actual truth regarding their own situations. The almost universal and pervasive use of drug soma is the biggest indicator of their willfully inflicted self-delusions. The characters of Huxley willfully cloud the realities, and thus replacing the perception of harsh realities with happy hallucinations. The main characters in the book White Noise are Jack Gladney his wife Babette. Both of them are obsessed with the fear of death. Jack, the central character and the narrator of this story is a professor of Hitler studies in an Arts college in America. Jack builds his career around Hitler, always haunted by the feelings that he is an intellectual fraud, who never masters the German language, and that his true competency might get revealed. He tries to live in a make belief world where he tries to communicate his status via use of an initial before his name. Rather than the reality the message to be communicated to the world matters. This is similar to the modern day’s communication system where the internet can popularize any piece of news in a fraction of a second. He suffers from fears of death when his son, Heinrich points out that poisonous and toxic substance are mixed in the air as a fallout of a rail accident and subsequently technicians informed him that the toxic, Nyodene D (DeLillo, 1920, p.263) remains in human blood for thirty years and the true effect of this can only be understood after fifteen years. But in the Brave New World one can see the character of Bernard Marx, the central character of the story fails to adjust due to inferior physical stature. His beliefs about community events, sports and sexual relationships are unorthodox, and hence his disposition is a marked contrast from the majority of the population who indulges in the drug Soma and Orgy Porgy (Huxley, 1932, p.12) as means to remain willingly oblivious of the true state of affairs. The glimpses of the character that are highlighted in the plot are lovesick, angry and jealous. But his character is not shown as hero instead it draws the reader’s attention as more human traits are seen, as he craves for those things which he cannot have. The tone in the story of White Noise is informal. A narrative style has been adopted by the author Don DeLillo. The main character is Jack who narrates the story in an easy paced descriptive way, whereas the tone in the story Brave New World is much dramatic and the narrator is not among the characters in the story. Therefore it is a third person’s approach where he narrates and details what is taking place in the minds of the central characters. Huxley craftily managed to combine the parody, the dark dramas and grinning puns all into one in his tone of narratives. The usage of the words like “Thank Ford!” (Huxley, 1932, p.13) or “orgy- porgy” (Huxley, 1932, p.12) are the examples of the kind of humor mixed parody he portrayed in his books. Huxley wants to draw a witty kind of parody during the course of reading the story whereas Don DeLillo, instead of wit has chosen an approach with much of satire-oriented description in his book. Like the following line, “A thousand people pass me every day but no one ever sees me” (DeLillo, 1920, p. 662) where the author skillfully communicates a glimpse of satiric orientation. In the book White Noise, the author has purposely used the phrase “white noise” as several meanings are depicted automatically through these mere couple of words. The first meaning relates to communication theory associated with sound and hearing perceptions of the human mind. White noise can be looked upon as a perpetual reverberating sound that prevents asymmetrical, jagged noises powerful enough to disrupt sleep, comfort, well-being, or essential level of concentration, all of which are basic ingredients for attaining best productive capabilities, to penetrate the mind and cause mental disturbances. Here the central characters of the story face obsessions with the feeling of being dead. Their innumerable thoughts revolving their fear of death get clubbed along with all the other noises of emotions to form a “white noise”, which ensures one’s mind, does not become consciously engulfed by the fear of death. Hence, the significance of the phrase “white noise” is reasserted. But communication gets a whole new dimension when Huxley in his Brave New World conveys that communication cannot be restricted to being either only good or only bad. It is just like another force which can be used either in a way beneficial to mankind, or, in a way detrimental to majority of human beings. Again, an alternative meaning that we can extract from communication theory is that “white noise” can be referred as an arbitrary, haphazard amalgamation of frequencies which renders signals incoherent and incomprehensible. This concept has been used ironically and implemented in the form of different opinions of death coming from too many people, becoming undifferentiated from one another, and resulting in a null or blank perplexing idea. Communication theory has been incorporated in Brave New World in a way where we see that a worthy man has to be searched and sought after, who will have control over communication as a whole. By no means can some part of the society be given the right to have control over the communication system. In conclusion, one can say that, both the stories are milestones literary pieces of gems considering the age when these were written as well as the inimitability and ingenuity of the subject matters and treatments of the same. The book White Noise centers on the anxieties relating to the forever prevalent human fear of death. On the other hand, Brave New World depicts a dystopia where an omnipotent totalitarian state exercises utter control over the behaviors, actions, as well as the mentalities of the people such that the supremacy of the state remains conserved. The dire consequences are loss of humanity, ethical values, emotions and morals. Everything is mechanized and planned and the book shows how the messages are conveyed from one generation to another through the education system. Don DeLillo’s novel ends with positivity where we see Jack coming back home after conquering the fear of death. On the other hand, the Brave New World serves as a terse reminder of the future detrimental effects that loom large over mankind’s fate, due to the adverse and mindless practices of science and technology, in order to propel the advancement of the human race and to stamp their authority. References Delillo, D. (1920) White Noise, Penguin Publishing Huxley, A.(1932) Brave New World, retrieved on December 6, 2011from: http://www.huxley.net/bnw/ Read More