Stability at What Price? Do the people of "Brave New World" by Aldous Huxley exchange their freedom for stability? If so, how?

Essay by SirDaveHigh School, 12th gradeB-, May 2008

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Stability at What Price?In his novel Brave New World Aldous Huxley tells the story of a world of people who have given up the right to an imperfect world, for what can be considered a world of complete stability. Eugenics, the manipulation of babies in test tubes, causes the people to be born with a predetermined social level they are okay with. Conditioning is a process that trains people during childhood and in sleep to dislike and desensitize to what is considered to create instability. When these two methods of stabilization do not solve problems, the legal drug soma is used to relieve everyone of their unstable emotions. Through eugenics, conditioning, and soma the people in Brave New World give up their freedom, or liberation from slavery or restraint or from the power of another, in exchange for stability, and resistance to chemical change or to physical disintegration.

Every person in BNW is birthed through Eugenics.

Fetuses are bottled and manipulated in a hatchery to become one of many laboratory-grown clones. They are "predestined" to be put in one of the caste which include Alpha, Beta, Gamma, Delta, and Epsilon. Gamma, Delta, and Epsilon are shocked so that they divide to form identical embryos which weakens them in a process called the Bokanovsky Process which the Alpha and Beta don't go through. "The Bokanovsky is believed to "facilitates social stability because the clones it produces are predestined to perform identical tasks at identical machines." This process is believed to provide a firm example of the guiding motto: "Community, Identity, Stability." (Huxley 1) The freewill of each person in BNW is given up even before birth through eugenic in order to maximize efficiency, profit, and most of all maintain stability. Before anyone has a chance to strive for what they want,