Despite being written more than 100 years ago, Aldous Huxley’s Brave New World is more relevant than ever. The novel was released in 1932 and has influenced many of the most famous novels written. From 1984 to A Handmaid’s Tale, many well-known novels use Huxley’s novel as their inspiration.
Brave New World depicts a dystopian world called the World State, where every aspect of society is governed by a rigid caste system. This caste system is ingrained into its citizens at birth, when they are genetically modified to best fit their caste. The World State chooses babies to give more nutrients to in order to ensure they are more powerful than those of the lower castes. The hierarchical system so entrenched in their society is ingrained into small children by way of “hypnopaedic conditioning,” where slogans and phrases embodying the hierarchical system and morals of this society are repeated to children while they sleep. Infants are created in labs through cloning, and the concepts of family and individuality don’t exist. Instead, citizens are kept superficially happy through sexual promiscuity, consumerism, and drugs, many of the vices we still struggle with today.
The story follows Bernard Marx and Hemholtz Watson, two citizens unhappy with their current society. Bernard feels out of place as a smaller, weaker member of his caste, and Hemholtz feels that he is too intelligent for his dull and repetitive job. The story tracks each character’s journey into the world outside their dystopian society, where they meet a “savage” named John who has been raised away from the conditioning of their hierarchical society. John is eager to explore this “Brave New World” that his mother from the World State has talked about. However, when he arrives, he is disgusted by its shallow nature. He decides to self-isolate and eventually commit suicide away from the world his mother idolized.
The story is a warning of the danger of sacrificing individuality to fit in. It discusses the importance of humanity and feeling emotions. In Huxley’s dystopian world, all emotions except for pleasure are erased. The constant feelings of pleasure that the citizens feel are used as a form of social control to ensure that they remain complacent. All forms of attachment are removed, and the only task of each individual is to feel as much pleasure as possible through shallow means.
Huxley mentored fellow author George Orwell, and Orwell sent him a copy of his famous novel 1984. When Huxley read this novel, he disagreed with Orwell’s warning for the future.
Author Neil Postman shared the difference between Orwell and Huxley’s predictions: “What Orwell feared were those who would ban books. What Huxley feared was that there would be no reason to ban a book, for there would be no one who wanted to read one. Orwell feared those who would deprive us of information. Huxley feared those who would give us so much that we would be reduced to passivity and egotism.”
Huxley’s vision for the future is a warning for us: we must cling to what makes us human. Art, music, literature, and above all, feeling, are what define us. It questions whether pleasure without meaning is worthwhile, and it explores vices that give society brief, temporary pleasures without actually adding any meaning to life. Today, this lesson is especially relevant as new ways of receiving instant gratification exist, such as social media, the internet, and consumerism.
