Huxley's Writing Techniques In Brave New World

Science fiction is one of the most popular genres of today's world and it can teach some very valuable lessons about our lives, such as the importance of truth and being aware of our surroundings. Some prime examples of classic science fiction novels are Fahrenheit 451 by Ray Bradbury (Which will be referred to as 451) and Brave New World by Aldous Huxley (Which will be referred to as BNW). These books are both about dystopian societies which do not value human life. 451 and BNW teach the lesson that to be fully human you have to have respect for human lives and the lives of others. The dystopian society from 451 has no value in human life.

One of Aldous Huxley’s most well known works, Brave New World takes place in a utopia, where Community, Identity, and Stability all exist as the motto says. But is this a false wall hiding the real truth? Conditioning, imperativeness, drugs are all elements that make up the brave new world. They’re all elements of a corrupt society. Even so, the motto is contradictory.

Nineteen Eighty-Four and Brave New World were both written by men who had experienced, what was in their time the largest and most violent war in history. These tremendous world events revealed the truly deplorable and destructive nature of the state mixed with an inherently domineering human nature. Huxley and Orwell portray a satirical depiction of the eventual state of society as an extrapolation of the condition of the world in their own time showing similar stories of totalitarian dominance and complete control of society by world states. And while these narratives have similar dystopias the ways in which the world falls into control and that state supremacy is maintained is a stark contrast making for an interesting comparison. Huxley's image depicts a world in which the industrial revolution expanded beyond material goods to the mass production of humans themselves.

In the novel “Brave New World”, Aldous Huxley depicts his vision of a utopia in which the sacrifices humanity has made are not worth maintaining stability, and include individuality, feeling7, and intimacy. Individuals in this society are thoroughly conditioned from birth in order to maximize efficiency which results in the loss of free choice. In the World State, people are created in vials and raised to fill specific roles from embryos. They are conditioned physically using Freudian techniques and sleep hypnopaedia is used to moralize and socialize children in a predestined fashion. When The Director of Hatcheries and Conditioning shows a group of students the hypnopaedia in action, he tells them excitedly, “The mind that judges and desires

Through The Psychologist Eye In Lauren Slater’s book, “Opening Skinner’s Box,” we discover in the first three chapters the mysteries behind a few psychological experiments and the discoveries that three profound psychologists have made. Each chapter is about a different psychologist, the first is B.F. Skinner; a behaviorist who designed a process of learning in which behavior is controlled, he called this operant conditioning. Lauren Slater wanted people to know about his experiment, she read his books, talked to friends and family members to unearth the features behind this man. She found that he was a loving father, who could train animals to do unordinary things, like play the piano for an example, through the processes of operant conditioning,

Each group is only taught what they need to know so their society can fulfill the motto “Community, Identity, Stability”. Along with that the World State eliminates all feelings in society by encouraging sexual activity at a very young age. But even after conditioning not every person is perfect so the World State encourages caste members to take a drug called soma which takes away any feelings the World State’s conditioning failed to eliminate. Along with that the World State has created new games and ways of transportation that are needed for any member to survive. But in between the lines of this book were the predictions of Aldous Huxley.

“[T]hat is the secret of happiness and virtue-liking what you’ve got to do. All conditioning aims at that: making people like their unescapable social destiny,” spoke the Director (Huxley 87). In this society, people's life quality is low but their personal satisfaction is high. They are conditioned by Word Controllers to always feel happy and have every one of their desires met without any choice or freedom. In the novel, Brave New World by Aldous Huxley, the effort to sacrifice people's happiness prevents them from exposure to the truth, real emotions, and deep thoughts.

Moreover, the future workers are accustomed to the difficulties their jobs later will have like extreme temperatures or caustic and toxic chemicals (Huxley 12-14). The mind of every single individual is also shaped by hypnopaedia (sleep-teaching) where it gets inculcated the reluctance of lower castes and the contentment with its own caste until the infant believes that these are his or her own

Written by Aldous Huxley in 1931 soon after World War l, Brave New World is seen as a prophetic book that defined the coming century. Inspired by the H.G. Well’s utopian novels, Brave New World chronicled the lives of three people, Bernard, John, and Lenina. Alfred Thodey of Camberwell told the Customs Minister of the “crimes committed in thy name” because banning the book was an “unwarrantable interference.” Brave New World presents inevitable problems the world must face in order to keep a society that places trust in the people rather than in a harsh government.

In Aldous Huxley’s dystopia of Brave New World, he clarifies how the government and advances in technology can easily control a society. The World State is a prime example of how societal advancements can be misused for the sake of control and pacification of individuals. Control is a main theme in Brave New World since it capitalizes on the idea of falsified happiness. Mollification strengthens Huxley’s satirical views on the needs for social order and stability. In the first line of Brave New World by Aldous Huxley, we are taught the three pillars on which the novels world is allegedly built upon, “Community, Identity, Stability" (Huxley 7).

"(Huxley, page ##) This quote shows that by conditioning all of society, no one can really be their own person and they just accept everything the way it is because there was never another way of thinking. You can find the same issue in North Korea, where people have propaganda forced into their daily lives and aren 't allowed to have any individuality. One way the World State uses propaganda in the book is with hypnopaedia. This can be compared to the

According to Sigmund Freud, a renowned psychoanalyst from the early 20th century, “The critical, moral superego—or conscience—developed in early childhood, monitors and censors the ego, turning external values into internalized, self-imposed rules with which to inhibit the id” (“Sigmund Freud”). In Brave New World, the members of society utilize this process in which babies are being shock conditioned to dislike things such as books and flowers, so that when they grow older they will have no desire to read and learn history or go exploring in nature (Huxley 22). Superego can be seen in this scenario because at a young age the babies experienced severe trauma and developed a bad association with flowers and books. They will then grow up with the idea that they are not supposed to be involved with things, such as flowers and books, which they have been conditioned to dislike. This is done in order to keep the babies growing up to be what the government wants them to be, based on their childhood experiences.

These ideals are ingrained in the children of the World State by drowning their minds with hypnopaedic sayings on a consistent schedule. A majority of the personality of individuals in this society boils down to these hypnopaedic sayings as the citizens unconsciously believe them as truth. The citizens of the World State have little chance to develop any depth of personality due to hypnopaedia, resulting in a society that has

1. B.F. Skinner: Behaviour modification Positive and negative reinforcements or rewards and punishments are used to modify or shape learner’s behaviour. B. F. Skinner’s entire system is based on operant conditioning. The organism is in the process of "operating" on the environment, which in ordinary terms means it is bouncing around its world, doing what it does. During this "operating," the organism encounters a special kind of stimulus, called a reinforcing stimulus, or simply a reinforcer.

The 1971 film, A Clockwork Orange, consists of many psychological concepts. Two concepts in particular seem to have the biggest impact and role throughout this film. These concepts being, classical conditioning and the idea that our environment and our experiences of nurture are what shapes us. A Clockwork Orange is the story of a group of young men who take pleasure in committing crimes and causing others to feel pain, they call themselves the “Droogs”. Alex, the group leader, suffers from Antisocial Personality Disorder, a disorder also known as “psychopath”.