Themes are the fundamental and often universal ideas
explored in a literary work.
The Use of Technology to Control Society
Brave New World warns of the dangers
of giving the state control over new and powerful technologies.
One illustration of this theme is the rigid control of reproduction
through technological and medical intervention, including the surgical
removal of ovaries, the Bokanovsky Process, and hypnopaedic conditioning.
Another is the creation of complicated entertainment machines that
generate both harmless leisure and the high levels of consumption
and production that are the basis of the World State’s stability. Soma is
a third example of the kind of medical, biological, and psychological
technologies that Brave New World criticizes most
sharply.
It is important to recognize the distinction between science
and technology. Whereas the State talks about progress and science, what
it really means is the bettering of technology, not increased scientific
exploration and experimentation. The state uses science as a means
to build technology that can create a seamless, happy, superficial
world through things such as the “feelies.” The state censors and
limits science, however, since it sees the fundamental basis behind
science, the search for truth, as threatening to the State’s control.
The State’s focus on happiness and stability means that it uses the
results of scientific research, inasmuch as they contribute to technologies
of control, but does not support science itself.
The Consumer Society
It is important to understand that Brave
New World is not simply a warning about what could happen
to society if things go wrong, it is also a satire of the society
in which Huxley existed, and which still exists today. While the
attitudes and behaviors of World State citizens at first appear
bizarre, cruel, or scandalous, many clues point to the conclusion
that the World State is simply an extreme—but logically developed—version
of our society’s economic values, in which individual happiness
is defined as the ability to satisfy needs, and success as a society
is equated with economic growth and prosperity.
The Incompatibility of Happiness and Truth
Brave New World is full of characters
who do everything they can to avoid facing the truth about their
own situations. The almost universal use of the drug soma is
probably the most pervasive example of such willful self-delusion. Soma clouds
the realities of the present and replaces them with happy hallucinations,
and is thus a tool for promoting social stability. But even Shakespeare
can be used to avoid facing the truth, as John demonstrates by his
insistence on viewing Lenina through the lens of Shakespeare’s
world, first as a Juliet and later as an “impudent strumpet.” According
to Mustapha Mond, the World State prioritizes happiness at the expense
of truth by design: he believes that people are better off with
happiness than with truth.
What are these two abstract entities that Mond juxtaposes?
It seems clear enough from Mond’s argument that happiness refers
to the immediate gratification of every citizen’s desire for food,
sex, drugs, nice clothes, and other consumer items. It is less clear
what Mond means by truth, or specifically what truths
he sees the World State society as covering up. From Mond’s discussion
with John, it is possible to identify two main types of truth that
the World State seeks to eliminate. First, as Mond’s own past indicates,
the World State controls and muffles all efforts by citizens to
gain any sort of scientific, or empirical truth. Second, the government
attempts to destroy all kinds of “human” truths, such as love, friendship,
and personal connection. These two types of truth are quite different from
each other: objective truth involves coming to a definitive conclusion
of fact, while a “human” truth can only be explored, not defined.
Yet both kinds of truth are united in the passion that an individual
might feel for them. As a young man, Mustapha Mond became enraptured
with the delight of making discoveries, just as John loves the language
and intensity of Shakespeare. The search for truth then, also seems
to involve a great deal of individual effort, of striving and fighting
against odds. The very will to search for truth is an individual
desire that the communal society of Brave New World, based
as it is on anonymity and lack of thought, cannot allow to exist.
Truth and individuality thus become entwined in the novel’s thematic
structure.
The Dangers of an All-Powerful State
Like George Orwell’s 1984, this novel
depicts a dystopia in which an all-powerful state controls the behaviors
and actions of its people in order to preserve its own stability
and power. But a major difference between the two is that, whereas
in 1984 control is maintained by constant government
surveillance, secret police, and torture, power in Brave
New World is maintained through technological interventions
that start before birth and last until death, and that actually
change what people want. The government of 1984 maintains power
through force and intimidation. The government of Brave
New World retains control by making its citizens so happy
and superficially fulfilled that they don’t care about their personal
freedom. In Brave New World the consequences of
state control are a loss of dignity, morals, values, and emotions—in
short, a loss of humanity.
