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Fiction

Notes humanity’s creativity. Complete freedom to have pleasure has made each person like an infant,
incapable of adult thought and creativity.

Did u know? Bernard longs to have more control over his impulses, but the display of
such control unnerves others who have learned to be free with their impulses.

The Power of Knowledge
Huxley’s civilized world is a society of ultimate knowledge. Humans have conquered almost
all areas of scientific inquiry; they control life, death, aging, pleasure, and pain. This mastery
of knowledge has given human beings great control over their world, and this control in turn
has given great power to those, who first envisioned such a society, and those who continue
to maintain its existence.
However, such knowledge and the abuse of power that it inspires often lead to downfall, as
symbolized by Huxley’s frequent allusions to Shakespeare’s Macbeth. In Shakespeare’s play,
Macbeth gains small pieces of knowledge of present and future events that leads him to seek
more power and control over his kingdom. However, this knowledge leads to abuse of power
and is the cause of his ultimate demise. In the same way, characters in Huxley’s novel must
stay in the dark about the true workings of society because knowledge will lead to their
ultimate demise.

Utilitarian Happiness

A utilitarian society aims to produce the greatest amount of good for the greatest number of
people. In Huxley’s society, this particular good is happiness, and government, industry, and
all other social apparatuses exist in order to maximize the happiness of all members of society.
John the Savage rebels against this notion of utilitarian happiness. He argues that humanity
must also know how to be unhappy in order to create and appreciate beauty. The use of soma
is an example of the opposite. People take the drug in order to go on a “holiday” from any
kind of unhappiness. Because they refuse to experience unhappiness, the drug keeps them
from wonder and the appreciation of beauty, as in the scene when Lenina and Bernard fly
over the tossing English Channel. He sees a beautiful display of nature’s power; she sees a
horribly frightening scene that she wants to avoid.

The Transformation of Human Relationships
The society in Brave New World can only survive because it has destroyed any remnants of
human relationships and bonds. The relationships of father and mother no longer exist because
all human beings are born in a scientific lab. The relationship between husband and wife is
no longer necessary because society shuns monogamy, and all men and women learn to share
each other equally.
The cost of such actions is that human beings cannot truly experience the emotions of love.
Both John and Lenina begin to feel these strong emotions over the course of the novel, but
they cannot act on these emotions in a constructive way because neither can comprehend how
to have such a relationship in their society.

Self Assessment

Fill in the blanks:
1. Huxley views commodified society as a detriment to ......... .

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