Brave New World Essay

Aldous Huxley’s Brave New World paints a portrait of civilization at its finest; superb technology, effortless mood-boosters in the form of soma, a complete and total absence of self restraint, and to top it all off, no wars, no diseases, and no old age. But underneath the colorful surface of this utopia awaits the awful realization of just how much this achieved stability costs: no emotion, no families, no individuality or free thought, no art, culture, religion or all around substance within this empty and sterilized society. By eliminating the most basic of human desires, faults, and goals, Huxley successfully displays an undesirable world within a proclaimed paradise and reveals the ridiculously shallow extremes by which a “stable”, “progressive”, and “happy”, society is obtained.
For this stable society, the acts of monogamy, exhibiting passion, and having relationships or families are shunned, rejected on the grounds that “everyone belongs to everyone else”. “Do you mean to tell me you’re still going out with Henry Foster,” Fanny questions Lenina, her face distorted in “pained and disapproving astonishment” (p. 39). The appalling nature of this society in that they use each other without hesitation, go to bed with someone different each night, and avoid exclusive relationships at all costs unveils the horribly shallow basis of maintaining stability through the elimination of passion, desire, and restraint. While Huxley’s world may please the eye upon first glance, the aspects of love, families, and monogamy are completely absent, lost in the tangles of “civilization”, leaving the bare essence of what this world really is: animalistic and purely aesthetic with no substantial value. Mustapha Mond tells the Savage of how “chastity means passion and neurasthenia” and “passion and neurasthenia mean instability” which
Essay 3
results in the “end of civilization” (p. 243). With the absence of passion and meaningful relationships comes the realization...