A Brave New World By Aldous Huxley

Bradbury the Prophet Written in 1953, Fahrenheit 451 was way ahead of its time in predicting the mass spread of technology and our potential to over-indulge and become addicted to electronic media in our desire for information and entertainment. Books and written words are no longer important, the only thing that interests people are news headlines and random blurbs without context. In this novel, Bradbury creates a parallel world to critique our own and to express how our society could become that of a dismal fiction book. A huge point that is presented by him is that if technology continues advancing as it is, it could easily take our interactions from one another away, make us more ignorant of the world around us than we already are, and has the potential to take matters into its own hands if we give it to much reign.

In Fahrenheit 451, Ray Bradbury established a society in which they are no limits to the vehicles they drive in order to blind the community of their curiosity. Vehicles, no matter the size or shape have speed that not many cars should not be pushed to. In Montag’s society, as a result of this many citizens including one of Mildred’s friend states that she drives at such a speed not to get jailed by the government that she doesn’t clearly see her environment when driving her car. Mildred being used to this responds as if she has been through this scenario a numerous number of times when she looks out the window and only sees blurs and can’t really interpret her environment. Clarisse explaining to Montag, “If you showed a driver a green blur,

In Brave New World, this character is Bernard Marx, who falls in love with Lenina Huxley before she becomes pregnant with John's child (Brave New World). Meanwhile, Montag rebels against society by reading books that teach him how to read (451). In this essay, we will compare and contrast these characters' portrayals in an explicit manner.

Thomas Henry Huxley was born in London on 4 May 1825, the son of a maths teacher. When he was 10, Huxley's family moved to Coventry and three years later he was apprenticed to his uncle, a surgeon at the local hospital. He later moved to London where he continued his medical studies. At 21, Huxley signed on as assistant surgeon on HMS Rattlesnake, a Royal Navy ship assigned to chart the seas around Australia and New Guinea. During the voyage, he collected and studied marine invertebrates, sending his papers back to London.

Aldous Huxley’s Brave New World is considered by many to be one of the greatest dystopian novels ever written. The book offers incredible insight on the direction of human progress, and serves as a warning sign for future generations. Aldous Huxley’s Brave New World establishes itself as a classic by culminating potent themes, shallow characters, and lofty language into a compelling novel which predicts and satirizes the consequences of human progress. The most first reason for Brave New World being considered a classic is the setting of the book.

Through his portrayal of the complete control of the World State over all aspects of the lives of their citizens, Huxley conveys the perilous consequences of total societal stability and governmental control upon individual freedom and identity, an aspect pertaining to the human condition. The detrimental impacts of complete societal stability are conveyed through the rhyming couplet, “when the individual feels, the community reels”. Through the couplet, a robotic slogan implanted into the minds of its citizens via conditioning, Huxley emphasises the World State’s manipulation of its own people to suit society’s needs, simultaneously expressing the repression of free will and individual emotion as a result. Furthermore, through the motto, “community,

“Every utopia - let's just stick with the literary ones - faces the same problem: What do you do with the people who don't fit in?” This quote by Margaret Atwood goes hand in hand with Brave New World for numerous characters; including Bernard Marx the alpha who has strange and different beliefs and John the savage who grew up in a world that is extremely different from the London's World State. Which shows that the World State thinks that people who are different, or things that are open to interpretation, are needed to be removed. Likewise shown within Brave New World even in a seemingly perfectly put together society there are flaws and downfalls. One of the many themes of society’s downfalls in Brave New World can be perceived as the

In modern Western civilization, Huxley would realize that consumers still make up most of the economy. Consumers can be from any social or economic class, although in the book, the lower caste is conditioned to be larger consumers. “The idea was to make them want to be going out into the country and every available opportunity, and so compel them to consume transport” (22). Huxley uses parallels; the government wants people to go out to the country, contradicting how they want to “abolish the love of nature” (6). This reinforces their ideal of consumerism making the economy stronger.

As Lenina’s interest to seduce John perseveres, John responds her with lines from the romantic books he read. After his mother’s death, John starts a riot against the state in cooperation with Bernard. The

Contemporary social critic Neil Postman makes plenty of great comparisons between George Orwell and Aldous Huxley 's vision of what’s to come in the future. While both authors make compelling arguments backed by great sources, one person’s opinion is definitely more relevant than the others. Postman’s assertion about which authors vision is more relevant is undeniably understandable in terms of why he could find a way to relate these ideas to our society today, however, the amount of relevance between Orwell 's vision and current worldly problems is simply incontestable. Orwell envisioned many scary situations in the novel “1984”. The idea that books could be banned and people may be deprived of relevant information isn’t as far off from

“Do you know why books such as this are important? Because they have quality. And what does the word quality mean? To me, it means texture” (Bradbury). By texture, Ray Bradbury implies that books provide knowledge and wisdom that is needed in a society.

Some have named Ray Bradbury “the uncrowned king of the science-fiction writers” because of his imagination and beautiful way of making Fahrenheit 451 come to life. The book Fahrenheit 451 is one of the first books to deal with a future society filled with people who have lost their thirst for knowledge and for whom literature is a thing of the past. The author mainly portrays this world from the point of view of Montag, a man who has discovered the power that knowledge contains and is coming to grips with the fact that it is outlawed. However, the reader also gets to see what life is like for one of the people content in living a life lacking in independent thought and imagination through his wife, Millie.

It is what I expected from him since fighting for someone is not known of in his society. (pg.182-184). I think that John relates better to Helmholtz than Bernard for the reason that Helmholtz believes himself to be a subversive writer, creating poems that reflect his personal disconnection from the world, he is immediately fascinated by John, since he sees in the Savage something of the self to which he aspires. Furthermore, when they meet Helmholtz reads some of his personal poetry to John, who responsa with selections from Shakespeare.

Huxley's ideas that our society is numbed by things that we love and that everyone is almost happy to be somewhat oppressed is almost too real. It is pretty easy to see and make connections after evaluating our society that we live in. I agree with Neil Postmans assertions claiming that Brave New World is most relevant to our society. One of Postman’s claims that i related to is “people will come to love their oppression, to adore the technologies that undo their capacities to think.” this is expressed in the book by the simple quote “community, identity, stability”(1).

Has technology changed so immensely over the years that it now controls society? What has it done to control society? Over the years, technology has become one of the society's major resources. This relates to the use of technology to control the World State in Aldous Huxley’s, Brave New World. In the present day, we aren’t quite advanced enough to create clones or flying cars, but technology has become more of an everyday tool over the course of time.