"Brave New World" by Aldous Huxley

In the Brave New World, everybody is supposedly happy all the time. They don’t have things to upset them, hard work to frustrate them, or faults of any kind to overcome or overthrow. As Mustapha Mond says to John while explaining the Brave New World, “Civilization has absolutely no need of nobility or heroism. These things are symptoms of political inefficiency” (p 237). No one has to risk anything or give anything up in order to give their fellow citizens what they want. It would be inefficient, according to Mustapha, if the government did not make sure that the people approve of everything that goes on around them. Rather than let the people decide what happens in order to gain their approval, the government simply shapes the people to agree with their plans. The people may feel good about what the government is doing in this case, but they haven’t had their voice heard.

Brave New World Start

1st UK edition

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They haven’t ever experienced a lack of their opinions in action, so they assume that it will always be this way, because they live in a society that prides itself on being socially stable. The only way to break down their assumptions of instant gratification would be to turn their society into a socially unstable one. They can’t truly appreciate one aspect of living without ever experiencing the other, because until they experience the bad, they aren’t able to classify the good as being good; all they know is “typical” and “normal”. This applies to feelings, as well. As Mustapha says, when trying to explain to John why there is no Shakespeare in the Brave New World, “You can’t make flivvers out of steel- and you can’t make tragedies without social instability” (p 220). Without social instability, nothing ever changes. Everything is always the same, which...