Brave New World by Aldous Huxley - Book Report/Review Example

A social arrangement where the has nearly total control over the people’s lives is not utopia but a form of dictatorial or repressive government. Deprivation of individual rights, such as freedom of speech or the rights of ownership and property, in the society where a person lives do not offer such a convenient living. It will not make a man happy to live in a world chained to the dictates of someone’s will. A society that is a puppet of someone else’s power or influences is miserable. Deprivation, oppression and terror do not create a real utopia but the opposite. Dictatorship, as what Huxley shows it, the theme that exists all throughout the novel. Under the power of the dictator, no one have the right for his own individuality, but should work according to the dictator’s authoritative directions. Opposite to utopia is dystopia, which is a description of a society that failed because of dictatorial dominance over the people and people’s lives. In this sense, repression and total control in every citizen comes from the government. The citizens do not have the right to free interactions and individual decisions, but they will live according to the directions of the state. Huxley determined a perfect symbol of dystopian government in the image of Utopian World State, wherein every constituent of the society were forced directly and indirectly to submit under the control of the over powering state influences. As the power of state dominates in the Utopian world, social functions of the people in the society are predetermined, including the control of their emotions by using “soma”, a form of drug or mood setter that will help Utopian citizens to escape or totally relieve from the feeling of sadness. The government manages human natural responses to situation by means of introducing soma that will give them fake feelings of happiness. Therefore, what is the sense of being useful to the society, when you do not particularly understand how well you really contributed as an individual? No one in that state will even understand self-esteem; none of them will also know real human experiences, except for John, who is starting to expose the world they inhabit as a dystopian world state. The state as he understands in the Brave New World, become an agent of eliminating important experiences that man should think, feel and suffer. Because of deprivation of such experiences, no one really understands the real definition of being unhappy because their happiness is always maintained by “soma,” a drug. The desirable things that people in the Brave New World experience are not evidently their true and natural human qualities, but fake responses that are motivated and achieved through the consumptions of chemicals given by state. Because of that, citizens enjoy everything, even things that do not seem so favorable to them. How can we describe those people? They seem to be the community of drug dependents and conditioned organisms. Huxley gave us the figure of a futuristic fictional representation of the government’s control and manipulation of the constituents of the society, including the fate of every individual decided even before birth through scientific manipulations of heredity and environment. Through the state apparatuses, the state has the ability to control every aspect of individual growth into particular and predetermined caste (Alpha, Beta and Epsilon). In the novel, the government abolished the concept of motherhood. Bottling and decanting of babies substitutes the natural human process and caste of people are determined according to the treatment they received during the bottling and decanting procedures. The government mass produce babies based on their future roles. Alpha and Beta are those babies that will grow as intellectuals, and Epsilon classes are those that will do the difficult and untidy tasks. No human qualities appear to depend on his free will, nor may the society elaborately decide for what is good for them. The state spoon-fed and programs their fates; deprive their individual decisions and natural innate rights. As the government designs a perfect state, they promote the visions of utopia, creating roles and processes directed toward the goal of bringing the state to the best way of living. However, the idea of utopia corrupts them, and became the root of oligarchic influence. In return, control and manipulation rest in the hands of the few, and subjects, as predestined will only served as puppets or controlled humans. Thus as the state over powers, and as their desire for utopia or a stable and perfect society dominates, they tend to remove good qualities of being human, and mass produce man like any other machines and products that are manufactured in the market world under market standards and quality control. It is real picture of dystopia, as Huxley demonstrates a society that has no human mind and emotions of its own, but move according to government’s mechanism. A state that controls every aspect of man’s life would not produce a desirable society but a dystopia, or a state that fails to recognize inherent human nature because it forces the society to total conformity. What separates human and machines when both humans and machines become subjects of the same passivity? If utopia is the utopia of the Brave New World, then the idea of humanity will be lost. Humans are humans and not experimental subjects. Innate to man are his emotions, his reasons and human functions. Reason and feeling separate him from machines run by an operating system or program that only work, move, or respond depending on the data and information embedded in their memory. Removing his human ability to respond freely will make him no different from fictional zombies or animated characters staged to movies and films. In the context of authoritarianism, humans respond not because they choose to have that response, but because there are strings that attach to them and these strings dictate what they do.The government cannot legislate a desirable society, but the government can help promote a desirable society. Repression happens whenever a person and groups of people are under the direct control of powerful figures or groups; thus individual decision-making becomes a fiction rather than man’s natural instinct. The ability and natural free will of man are disregarded once the government becomes a repressive and oppressive mechanism that will set limits to a person’s ability to explore much of him self. Exploration means discovering the world where he is by means of his own individual capability to choose and decide for his own. When the government injects terror, a person will live in insecurity, and insecurity retards good learning. As the terror increases, it will cause traumatic experiences to man. Traumatic experience from an undesirable government will induce fear, or if not fear will result to resistance. Self-knowledge is an important thing that man should have, since knowing oneself is the way a person could be an active contributor to the society and the government has nothing to do with the self. Once the government intrudes on these individual rights, then the power of the government will become monstrous, a nightmare that conveys terror rather than security. Total enjoyment of being human is a reaction resulting from man’s right to make choices. Huxley supports this idea. Humans live according to their free will, make decisions about what is correct and incorrect, and should live with choices. The state will not dictate human identity, but human identity is inherent by birth. Love, emotions, feelings, responses and thinking are parts of man’s individual unique qualities. Is it up to the state to tell what a man should feel and think? Man is responsible for his existence, and what he will do rests on his shoulders. A desirable society is a kind of society that recognizes how man becomes different from machines and puppets that are passive to someone else’s will. Man is greater than anything that exists in this world. He is greater than an inanimate stone or table that will not complain for whatever treatment it will receive.These are the lessons that we can get from Huxley-that a society totally controlled by the state would not ensure real stability. Imposing control on the masses would mean eliminating man’s individualism, and at the end no freedom at all. A totalitarian social system would just become a tool that will destroy man’s pursuit of happiness. There is no such thing that the fate and happiness of man could be designed or dictated by the state, but man is entitled to his own freedom given to him since birth. Pursuit of happiness is an individual exploration, an experience that is not because of the state but of the person. The state can govern people, but not necessarily govern or make the conditions for life. As man explores for his own happiness, it makes him experience more or understand human subjectivity, his own destiny as how he chooses his life to be according to his own freedom. In addition, once a person realizes his existence and the value of his existence, he carefully understands his own purpose, and it is his right to do so. The welfare of the community is important, but this should not mean that a person should not possess his own identity that will make him unique. Individuality is essential, one’s own decision-making is essential as part of being human. This unique quality of man should not be suppressed by the state; rather, it should be encouraged so that a person could be an effective social agent. What is dystopia in the Utopian World State? The state has been successful in making everyone an effective contributor to the society, not of their own free will, but because they are designed to be so. In the novel, everyone becomes useful to the society, useful for the community, but none in their state understands his own identity and individuality. What makes a man give value to his self is understanding that he, according to his free will contributes to the society, and not when the society because of the control of the state has forced him to do so. Man is happy when he does things happily according to his will, not because someone else dictated or intimidated him to perform such actions. What is essential to every human is to know his existence and have individual identities. People in the Brave New World are all the same. All of them from the very beginning are subjects of dictatorship without individual freedom. The rest of Utopian citizens do not have minds of their own but because of the conditioning they received from the very beginning, they are made to believe in the fantasy of happiness they live in. Because of such unconsciousness, they remain as individuals who suffer repression and oppression from the government. Everybody subjects himself or herself, without knowing the amount of deprivation suffered from those people who are managing their lives mercilessly. No one knows it because they cannot think independently. Once this kind of government prevails, it will just create members of the society who do not enjoy much of human freedom. Dictatorial government allows for abuse by those who are in power. This totalitarian control will just ensure the benefit of those few who are in that position and the real idea of a good society will be in failure. Utopia, in its true sense ensures the best possible way of living of the community, and to support this is a kind of political system that ensures the welfare of the community. A dictatorial state could not be utopia at all, but a source of repression and terror. Justice is important in the society. It should exist as a core basis of how the government will work for the society and how the society in turn will work with the government. Shaping the society does not imply the total manipulation and control of every aspects of human life. The novel may symbolically represent a bonded society (as described in Chapter 17), where philosophical concepts describe how one of the characters in the novel understands the real condition-that the total control of the government in Utopian world does not favor human nature, for it violates much of human freedom and natural human responses. In this chapter, John illuminates the fact that the Utopian World State does not really think of man’s welfare, but of their illusive ideas of making a blissful world. Actually, the state makes people victims of dystopia. Man is happy not because he feels it, but because the government drugged them to induce such thoughts. Man’s innate freedom no longer produces history, art, or religion and many aspects of human rights are suppressed. In the real world, this thing might really happen, as the government starts to take over human’s freedom. In this case, the society can be subjected to the abuse of those who are in power and at the end, will not feel the real essence of being happy at all. Authoritarianism by the government will abolish many of man’s freedoms, including his access to information and his freedom of speech. Therefore, in an authoritarian state, there is almost no freedom of expression at all. The state will regulate the things that the people can say, and anybody who will violate from the regulations will suffer unnecessary punishments. Opinions from the members of the society will be lost, because of the fear of the government that the members of the society might expose something that is not in their favor. These disadvantages appear in many totalitarian states. They do not really secure the welfare of people but instill dictatorship over thier subjects. If they cannot prevent protests through punishments, more aggression from the government might also occur. To create a desirable society is to ensure that everyone in the society participates in the decision making of the nation. The dystopia in the novel will be avoided in the real world, when real justice exists in the land. Real justice means that people can participate intelligently in the decisions of the state. Decisions are made by the members of the society who involve themselves in the decision-making. In an ideal society, the government understands the people and the people hand in hand with the government can address their grievances. Through this, the government can provide for the needs of the people and the people can make the government know of their demands. Indeed, a two-way relationship makes a desirable society, and not a state that nearly controls every aspect of human life. References: Huxley, Aldous, 1894–1963 (1998). Brave New World, First Perennial Classics ed., New York: HarperCollins Publishers. Narativa Inglesa Ii: Aldous Huxley; Brave New World. June 18, 2007. Brave  New  World? A Defence Of Paradise-Engineering. BLTC Research, 1998 (last updated 2007). June 18, 2007. Brave New World. Today’ Most Popular Study Guide from Barnes and Noble. 2006 SparkNotes LLC, 2006. June 18, 2007. Read More