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<title> Brave New World</title>
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<p class=MsoNormal align=center style='text-align:center'>Brave New World--
"The Perfect World" </p>
<p class=MsoNormal><br>
<br>
Aldous Huxley's <u>Brave New World</u> presents a portrait of a society which is
superficially a perfect world. At first inspection, it seems perfect in many
ways: it is carefree, problem free and depression free. All aspects of the
population are controlled: number, social class, and intellectual ability are
all carefully regulated. Even history is controlled and rewritten to meet the
needs of the party. Stability must be maintained at all costs. <br>
<br>
In the new world which Huxley creates, if there is even a hint of anger, the
wonder drug Soma is prescribed to remedy the problem. A colleague, noticing
your depression, would chime in with the chant, "one cubic centimetre of
soma cures ten gloomy." This slogan is taught to everyone, from the
youngest to the oldest. Unhappiness, intellectual curiosity, disagreement,
suffering - none of these feelings is allowed in the world which Huxley
creates. At the first sign of unhappiness, Soma is prescribed. Emotions of all
types are strictly controlled to provide stability and predictability within
the population. <br>
<br>
Another of the panaceas for social ills is the belief that everyone would enjoy
his or her work because he or she was "made" or trained for it when
young. Consequently, from birth, everyone in <u>Brave New World</u> is slotted
to belong to a specific social and intellectual strata. In conjunction with
this idea, all births are completely planned and monitored. There are different
classes of people with different intelligence and different "career
plans." The social order was divided into the most highly educated, the
Alpha+, and then in descending intelligence, the following divisions: Alpha,
Beta, Beta -, Gamma, Delta, and Epsilon, which is the last group comprised of
those citizens of the lowest intelligence who are necessary to perform
society's most menial jobs. <br>
<br>
Another of the problems with the society which Huxley depicts is that the
people do not have individuality. They are all conditioned by subliminal
messages and artificial stimuli to respond the same way. Although all people
are meant to respond identically without thinking, a few are made 'imperfectly'
and, as a result, do have personalities. These people violate the principles of
technology and artificial personalities and consequently have to be sent away
so as not to "contaminate" others. To maintain order in <u>Brave New
World</u>, the Resident Controller must have complete authority over more than
just the present; he must also have influence over the past. In order to be
able to achieve this, he must be able to rewrite history. This gives rise to
one of the most famous quotation from Brave New World, "All history is
bunk." The ability to rewrite or "edit" history is not so far
distant from our current technological society. A simple stroke of the computer
keyboard can make a global change in information disseminated on a network or
to thousands of electronic bulletin board subscribers. Being able to
distinguish the true from the false is becoming increasingly difficult. Brave
New World focuses constantly on the question of whether technology requires a
sacrifice of human individuality. In this novel the reader is keenly aware of
the dangers that homogeneity poses to the quality of life. People may enjoy
life with technological advances, but if they are required to forfeit
individual personalities or interpretations about life, Huxley makes us see
that life will become meaningless. <br>
<br>
In comparison to <u>1984</u>, <u>Brave New World </u>makes the technology less
obvious to the members of the society themselves. The characters in <u>Brave
New World</u> participate willingly in their manipulation by the government. They
happily take the wonder drug <i>Soma</i>, "the wonder drug." In
contrast, in <u>1984</u> the people seem to sense they are being controlled by
Big Brother, but here the domination is imposed on them by the government. <br>
<br>
<br>
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