Brave New World constructs a dystopian interpretation of London by identifying gripes about happiness inside the industrialized world and ‘solving’ them with eugenics and extreme government control. Despite the many levels of manipulation used to create this, certain people still find a way to break open the new found moral issues of Brave New World by exploring their own individuality. Huxley displays incredible imaginative power by constructing an entire world simply to pose the question of suffering as inescapably fundamental to human existence.
The premise of the novel stems from a series of interpretations as to the cause of suffering in greater society. The problems that need to be solved are not so much physical ailments as they are mental – difficulty in accepting and enjoying one’s place in a given hierarchy. This is outlined by Mustapha Mond himself, the Resident Controller of Western Europe, as he asks a collection of upper-echelon students, “‘[h]as any of you been compelled to live through a long time-interval between the consciousness of desire and its fulfillment?'” to which a student responds “‘I once had to wait nearly four weeks before a girl I wanted would let me have her.” (45). For Huxley much of the distress of modern life is specifically sexual, a major frustration found in the denial of sexual gratification. In order to fix this, the ‘hypnopaedic’ grooming lessons inscribed in the minds of every child includes a demonstrably odd encouragement of completely non-discriminatory sexual practices. Earlier on in the student tour children are seen playing around in a garden, “Naked in the warm June sunshine… running with shrill yells over the lawns, or playing ball games, or squatting silently in twos and threes among the flowering shrubs,” (30). More explicitly, a child in question is admonished by a nurse for being “…’rather reluctant to join in the ordinary erotic play… I’m taking him in to see the Assistant Superintendent of Psychology,” (32). The cost of creating a society that expands beyond sexual denial necessarily becomes one of forced sexual experiences, where children not willing to take part must see a psychologist to solve what targeted hypnosis and upbringing could not. Consent even among the willing participants comes into question as well, as conditioning through hypnopaedic lessons and relevant conditioning fight against an arguably natural aversion to a constant openness to sex. This is emphasized especially when Bernard comes into question, of which a friend of his lover exclaims “‘He’s so ugly!… And then so small,'” (46). Even in this post-discriminatory society there exists preference among mates – and familiar physiological traits that correlate with attraction. Coercion and manipulation attempt to fight this notion of choice, and such a world that demands freedom of sex must use these tools to subvert human nature.
More so than simple delivery of sex, the major underlying motivation of this world is a means of ensuring stability for the convenience of its rulers. Unhappy people lead to an unhappy government, so there is a major drive to ameliorate the daily woes of the individual – and what more efficient way to address these inherently individualistic issues than to abolish the individual. The Bokanovsky process is described as a scientific technique that takes advantage of accidental fertilized egg divisions, anywhere “… from eight to ninety-six embryos,” of identical siblings, therefore becoming “… one of the major instruments of social stability,” (7). Here too stems the foundation of dystopia, where each citizen’s very humanity is put into question, specifically of wondering at which point on the hierarchy one finds themselves too far below the rest to even be considered human. Hierarchy is itself a major source of discontent – especially in conjunction with social mobility. Mond puts this in perspective succinctly at the end of the novel: “‘The optimum population,'” he claims, “‘is modeled on the iceberg – eight-ninths below the water line, one-ninth above,” (223). This betrays a troubling truth about society that often manifests itself economically. There always seems to be an upper and lower class – as there is now, even in this supposedly utopic society. The question is not about establishing equality, but pacifying the lower class. In this case hierarchy can now be bred into people, and now that the said lower class has been established and homogenized in each distinct category, all that is left is a finishing touch for complacency – soma.
Brave New World criticizes escapist habits of the modern world, and is all too aware of the potent potential drugs can have on the populace. Sometimes there are unpleasant truths about life that cannot be escaped, and this itself becomes a source of discontent. Dealing with these issues is, perhaps, a part of existence – but there exists alternate possibilities to delay this unpleasant inevitability. As Mond describes of the people that make up these “advanced” civilizations,
“‘They’re well off; they’re safe; they’re never ill; they’re not afraid of death; they’re blissfully ignorant of passion and old age; they’re plagued with no mothers or fathers; they’ve got no wives, or children, or lovers to feel strongly about; they’re so conditioned that they practically can’t help behaving as they ought to behave. And if anything should go wrong, there’s soma,'” (220).
This wraps up the major themes fairly well – happiness itself comes at a price. In a world that constantly believes there was more happiness in the past, and more to come in the future, here lies a suggestion that the only way to be happy all of the time is to lose the individuality and true freedom to choose one’s place. It is by examining happiness that the implications of Brave New World crack open all of the questions that plague modern society today. Huxley’s hypnopaedic lessons and Bokanovsky process are corollary, if not direct references, to advertisement and genetic editing – a combination of nurture and nature based controlling schemes to further exacerbate a modern trend towards specialization. In a world of limited resources there is a tendency to hoard – and it is only in this space of plenty does their exists the potential for success. Often the major complaint of the lack of access of education in developing nations is a productive one – a claim that geniuses exist everywhere, and so an equal education to parse through the masses and locate the most capable the world has to offer will pay back the investment overall. However, even among Huxley’s world, the notion of breeding people into a certain place is inherently disturbing. Their existence is set, predetermined, and Mond even claims that they are content – and yet the sense of being born specifically to have no greater potential other than a work horse feels inhumane. While there exists comfort in knowing one’s place and purpose in the world, there too can exist dread and depression; a void of hope when maybe hope is more important to inspiring life than contentedness. To churn out bodies exclusively for productive purposes, to commodify them in the most extreme way, is then dystopia, where it is individuality and freedom that is auctioned off for predictability and safety.
Huxley does not miss his chance to make a point on the necessity of suffering for freedom, and he does this in a couple of interesting ways. The first is a relatively straightforward expression of the way happiness manifests after strain. Once Bernard comes to term with his own removal to an isolated island where radical free thinkers can commingle, and is faced with the separation from his friends, “[t]here was silence. In spite of their sadness – because of it, even; for their sadness was the symptom of their love for one another – the three young men were happy” (242). Here outlines the understanding that a truer, more healthy, happiness exists intertwined with pain. Finally Bernard could be free of the society so determined to reject him, but more importantly he found in shared pain a sense of connection through that very sharing which he did not before. Similarly John isolated himself in a lighthouse and toils away at small projects, and “[after] those weeks of idleness in London, with nothing to do, whenever he wanted anything, but to press a switch or turn a handle, it was a pure delight to be doing something that demanded skill and patience” (247). Here Huxley explores pleasure through work, less cathartic than the suffering of separation or loneliness, but instead the pleasure of labor – more so the execution of something practiced and learned. The notion of suffering bringing pleasure is taken to a final climactic extreme when the Savage begins to inflict physical pain on himself. John would consistently take off his shirt and begin hitting “…himself with a whip of knotted cords. His back was horizontally streaked with crimson, and from weal to weal ran thin trickles of blood” (248). Penance has been expressed throughout religion multiple times over the course of history, founded on a notion of punishment for doing wrong; a cathartic exercise to relieve mental anguish and guilt. This is the extreme execution of the idea that suffering leads to happiness, glorifying the high of absolution. However, in spite of this newfound clarity, John can not escape civilization so easily, and once a couple of witnesses report back to London he finds himself swathed in attention, and faced again with the horrible temptation and suffering of his not-quite-paramour Lenina. He hits her: “‘Strumpet… Fitchew!’ [he yelled]. Like a madman, he… [slashed] at her with his whip of cords,” (257). In spite of his superior understanding of human nature, John never fully reconciles Lenina’s sexual habits. Perhaps this was meant to criticize a liberal interpretation of sex, a claim that one’s own jealousy should be rationalization against openness, especially in context with the disturbing images of child sexual play at the beginning of the novel. However, nowadays it can be read more as the understanding that a knowledge of suffering and its necessity for freedom does not necessarily confer any mental stability or clarity. Even those aware of the system cannot extricate themselves from it.
What is worrying about this novel is the greater implication that suffering is something that humans will simply have to live with – with a Brave New World as the unacceptable alternative. To some extent that may be true – there are unavoidable ups and downs that need to be faced with courage. Perhaps pain, either from the withholding of something desirable or from existential crisis, is truly unavoidable. But there are undertones regarding the cycles of hierarchical violence as well, suggestions that freedom from oppression never really exists. Each character finds themselves at odds one way or another in spite of and because of this brave new world, and the blatant discrimination among the tiers of society are impossible to ignore. Let this novel be warning that some measure of pain must be maintained, and that regardless of public claim there is always motivation to control.
The Scenic Climax 