Brave New World 5 Essay, Research Paper
What a life, it would be great. I would love it if nothing ever changed, if everyone had a set role that they always carried out, and if life and death were planned. This would be like living the life of most of the characters in the book Brave New World by Aldous Huxley. This entire book is devoted to “Community, Identity, and Stability” (Huxley 1). It is supposedly a life free from worry and change, but still with a variety of different things. It may sound pretty enticing to live this way, but there were many dilemmas to deal with. The source for most of the problems was the society chosen for them to live in. In Brave New World’s society, family life tied with a strong marriage was looked down upon. This society had abolished anything that had to do with the ideas of monogamy or a family as we practice in today’s society.
Monogamy, a big part of family life tied with a strong marriage, definitely was not practiced in this society. The people in this society were taught that everyone belongs to everyone, so everyone was free to please themselves. This shows that the people were brought up learning that sex with multiple partners was a belief practiced by everyone. “Have somebody else from time to time, that’s all. He has other girls doesn’t he” (Huxley 41). This quote is talking about Lenina’s relationship with Henry. At this point, they had been “having” each other for almost four months. This was very unusual for this society. It was unheard of to have sex with only one guy for that long of a period. Sex was just looked at on a different level in this society. “Sex has been dissociated at long last from procreation, and freed to compete on equal terms with other amusements” (Dyson 252). This quote sums up how sex was viewed in this society. Sex was viewed on a level of entertainment for the people, not on a level of creation as it is in our society.
The idea of having a family certainly was looked down upon. There were no fathers or mothers of the children in this society. Every one was a product of a hatchery and conditioning center. “There are no parents, and babies are conditioned from birth to love certain behaviors” (Allen 1). Their occupations were already chosen for them, along with their life span. They had no choice of what they wanted to become. They were brought up on the “principle of sleep- teaching, or hypnopaedia” (Huxley 24) in which they were taught the certain ways and beliefs that they must live their lives according to. “The world was full of fathers-was therefore full of misery; full of mothers-therefore of every kind of perversion from sadism to chastity; full of brothers, sisters, uncles, aunts-full of madness and suicide” (Huxley 38). The words mother and father were taught as words of profanity. They were taught as words that did not bring happiness. In this particular society, having or being part of a family clearly was not very popular at all.
The society in Huxley’s Brave New World did not value having a family and a strong marriage. Family and monogamy were taught as fashions of the past. They were looked at as words of profanity. This took away the individualism of the people in the society. These people were not able to become their own person, or even do what they truly wanted to do. There wasn’t even any difference from person to person, since they were produced in identical mass quantities. This is not the way I would want to live my life. “Huxley wrote this book to warn us. He wanted us to know that society should not be controlled, and there is a price for a peaceful society” (Allen 2). This quote shows me that this book was written to show us the direction that our society is headed if we are not careful, and that we better straighten up before this time very easily becomes a reality.