Brave New World: Argumentative Paragraph The people of Brave New

Essay by EssaySwap ContributorHigh School, 12th grade February 2008

download word file, 2 pages 0.0

Downloaded 2497 times

Brave New World: Argumentative Paragraph The people of Brave New World are not aware of the truth, because most of the time they are on the drug soma. At a young age they are conditioned to think what the society wants them to think, resulting in a false "utopia". This is the one topic which I feel encompasses many of the major themes in this novel. There are many situations where the author, Aldous Huxley, will show the readers how disorientated the society is. "A gramme is always better than a gram … A gramme in time saves nine … One cubic centimeter cures ten gloomy sentiments … Everybody's happy nowadays … Every one works for every one else …When the individual feels, the community reels … Never put off till to-morrow the fun you can have to-day … Progress is lovely. Firstly, Lenina is saying this phrases to Bernard, in chapter 6, which were said to her when she was under a hypnotic state in her early life.

Currently in the society that we live in now, we are made to believe that happiness is always good. That to live in complete contentment should be the absolute goal. There fore it can be argued that the drug soma serves a desirable purpose; it makes people happy. However, I feel that this form of "happiness" is actually an illusion. It's a sedation of the human mind, and thus crippling the thought processes. Even in today's society there is an urge for immediate gratification. However, the mind is still active and is able to think of ways to achieve gratification short of a drug induced stupor. Currently we frown upon individuals who use drugs like heroine, and crack cocaine, even if they do make a person "happy" for a short period of time.

Human beings define a part of who they are based on suffering. Shakespeare put it best when he said that one cannot appreciate the day without the night, the laughter without the cry, or the smile without the frown. "And if ever, by some unlucky chance, anything unpleasant should somehow happen, why, there's always soma to give you a holiday from the facts. And there's always soma to calm your anger, to reconcile you to your enemies, to make you patient and long-suffering." This quote by John to Mustapha Mond so eloquently demonstrates how soma suppress basic human emotions, and without those emotions we lose a part of our humanity, what inherently makes us complex creatures.

Although some will say that the "happiness" brought on by soma is beneficial cause it blocks out "bad" feelings, this is simple not the case. Those bad feelings are essential to human thought, and productivity. It is when we are unhappy that we devise clever and unique ways to achieve happiness, and this is when the human mind begins to explore the outer reaches of thought.

Clearly, the utopia that was created in the novel Brave New World is no more than a hellish distopia, because of the hypnotic conditioning, and the drug soma. Therefore these facts shows that their society has no reality or truth to it at all since it lacks the spectrum of human emotion.