Brave New World Post 1: Outsiders

The book I chose for my independent reading is Aldous Huxley's Brave New World. Written in 1932, Huxley's novel depicts a dystopian society in which the world has been united under one society, and is maintained by a controlling, one minded system. Humans are produced in laboratories, grown in bottles so that they can be shaped and conditioned to have exact genetic makeups. Size, physical appearance, intelligence, and social class are all predetermined. One of the overseers of this process describes how the castes are created: "The lower the caste, the shorter the oxygen. The first organ affected was the brain. After that the skeleton. At seventy per cent of normal oxygen, you got dwarfs. At less than seventy eyeless monsters" (14). After people are 'hatched,' they are conditioned from birth to have the values of this society instilled in their mind. These values primarily consist of the hatred of solidarity, the encouragement of recreational sex and drugs, and the idea that "everyone belongs to everyone else."

One of the prominent motifs in Huxley's book is the examination of how outsiders function in this society. He uses one of his characters, Lenina Crowne, to be representative of the average, well conditioned citizens of this dystopia. She frequently demonstrates the impact that this new form of society has had on her, by regurgitating phrases that are played for all children as they sleep as a form of conditioning. "'Yes, everybody's happy now,' echoed Lenina. They had heard the words repeated a hundred and fifty times every night for twelve years" (75). Like all the people around her, Lenina is sexually promiscuous, and an avid user of soma, a popular hallucinogen that is used to suppress unpleasant feelings. Huxley frequently contrasts Lenina's blind acceptance of these values with another of his characters, Bernard Marx. Bernard, who is an outcast due to his stunted stature and unusual appearance, grapples with the confines that limit acceptable behavior. Like Lenina, Bernard is of the highest caste level, Alpha, which enables him to have a slightly higher capacity for free thinking. In one instance, Bernard takes Lenina to look out over the sea at night, in the hopes of articulating his struggles with individuality to her. He explains to her, "It makes me feel as though I were more me if you see what I'm saying. More on my own, not so completely part of something else. Not just a cell in the social body. Doesn't it make you feel that, Lenina?" (90). Lenina finds the vast, dark scene horrifying and pleads with Bernard to take soma when he has such "dreadful ideas" (92). It will be interesting to see where Bernard's unconventional ideals lead him, and how Huxley continues to use outsiders in his story.