Aldous Huxley's Brave New World is more relevant today than George Orwell's 1984. Although both totalitarian societies are based on plausible premises, the Utopia depicted in Brave New World still has a chance of appearing today, whilst the Big Brother-dominated society created by Orwell, being based to some extent on the totalitarian societies that existed at the time of the book's inception, is simply obsolete.
Both novels have many similarities and differences in their systems of government. The ways the government view people as humans, life and families are similar. Both distort the minds of people to make them believe they are a higher or lower class. They make them feel they are not equal and cannot progress higher than their class. Both governments do not want its people to hold intelligence. The differences in the government are how people are born, how they maintain control and how they keep from rebellion.
Brave New World Start
1st UK edition
First edition coverBrave New World is more scientific and uses more religion. 1984 is more political and uses force, power, fear and anger to keep people in line.
Whilst reading Brave New World, the first theme I picked up on is dehumanisation. It is a novel about the struggle of Bernard Marx, who rejects the tenants of his society when he discovers he is not truly happy.
Huxley wrote Brave New World in the third person so that the reader could be allotted a more comprehensive view of the activities he presents. His characters are shallow and cartoon-like in order to better reflect the society in which they are entrapped. In this society, traditional notions of love and what ideally should result have long been disregarded and despised.
Many of the Brave New World's social norms are intended to "save" its citizens from anything unpleasant by depriving them...