Brave New World
Largely, the World State is able to control society through technology in this fiction, set in the year 2540, or for 632 years after the creation of the first Model T. car by American industrialist Henry Ford. This is the Central London Hatching and Conditioning Centre, a savage reservation in New Mexico, a Utopia, where no family life has existed for more than six centuries. Human life is manufactured from the Bokanosky and Podsnan Processes, which produce almost identical human embryos and condition them in bottles, according to five castes: Alpha, Beta, Gamma, Delta and Epsilon. Alpha embryos are to become the leaders and thinkers of the World State, like Bernard Marx. The two lesser castes are slightly less physically and intellectually programmed than the Alphans. The Deltans are conditioned to be averse to intellectual and artistic objects and made into docile and eager consumers. As children, they are subjected to hypnopedica or sleep-teaching methods, which pound the morals of the World State into their subconscious. When older, they receive subconscious and repetitious whisperings on elementary class consciousness during their naps. And Epsilon embryos are deprived of oxygen and subjected to chemical elements to shape them to become menial laborers.
The World State, through its world controllers, has managed to eliminate strong emotions, desires, human relationships and even death from society in order to keep a Utopia for a long time. These world controllers point to these human elements as the source or cause of trouble in human life and that their elimination, through technological processes, filters out unhappiness - along with truth -- from the world. However, the scheme of things is altering a bit (Huxley 1998).
After more than six centuries of living in a Utopia, Bernard has developed dissatisfaction over the ways of the World State. He discusses this dissatisfaction with Lenina, a friend Helmholtz Watson and the "primitive" savage, John, of the Reservation. Bernard is displeased about his size and weakness. Watson, for his part, is uncomfortable about his job writing hypnopaedic phrases, for which he is too intelligent. And John is a violation of the rules of the World State, in that he was born in that Reservation, instead of produced by the State in a bottle like the rest. It also turns out that John is the offspring of Tomakin, the Director of Hatcheries, and Linda, a woman Tomakin met 20 years earlier. This is an evidence of power failure in the hands of the Director of Hatcheries himself and which questions the efficiency of the World State's principles and processes.
Complicated entertainment machines produce harmless amusement and high levels of consumption and production. The stability of the World states is built on these. Natural or biological reproduction is interfered with by surgically removing the ovaries or taking contraceptives. And the drug soma is another medical, biological and psychological high-technology product used to achieve perfectionist goals. It aims at progress and science, through constant technological upgrade, but not an increase n scientific exploration and experimentation in the search for truth (Huxley). Truth is the direct opposite of the essence of the World State, which uses science to create a flawless, pleasure-prone and superficial society.
Because death is not an outcome of the principles and processes of conditioning in the World State, life does not end in death. Nor does disease or defect exist. But age, disease and death do exist in the Savage Reservation, where those who are/were not part of the World State are ostracized. John and his mother Linda are among them.
World controller, Mustapha Mond, argues that social stability requires that art, science as search for truth, and religion be sacrificed (Huxley). He also equates individual happiness with the efficient and economic satisfaction of individual needs and views success as economic growth and prosperity. Most importantly, the World State finds happiness and truth incompatible. This makes the use of the drug soma an integral part of state machinery. It is very effective in creating self-delusion and...
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