Brave new World, by Huxley. Portrays a society which is superficially a perfect world

Essay by Anonymous UserCollege, UndergraduateA+, January 1996

download word file, 2 pages 3.6 1 reviews

Aldous Huxley's Brave New World 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.

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.

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 Brave New

World 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.

Another of the problems with the society...