In the novel Brave New World society is very organized and stable, however, this comes at a cost. The author of Brave New World, Aldous Huxley, is sending a message to the future through Brave New World, which is that the advanced stability and organization of society comes at a cost. This cost is culture from the past, individual freedoms, feelings like unhappiness or love, and uniqueness. This message is why Aldous Huxley wrote Brave New World.
First, the world of Brave New World has mainly eradicated the remnants of past culture. This includes books of poetry like ones by Shakespeare, religion, as well as religious items like the Bible. This quote supports the idea that stability comes at a cost, “‘You’d have a reason for chastity!’ said the Savage, blushing a little when he spoke the words.
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‘But chastity means passion, chastity means neurasthenia. And passion and neurasthenia mean instability. And instability means the end of civilization. You can’t have a lasting civilization without pleasant vices.’” (Huxley 180). This quote is from the conversation John has with Mustapha Mond where John says that if their society had god they would have more redeemable qualities but Mond explains that they don’t need god primarily because of those qualities, because they will create upset and disruptions in the society of Brave New World like stopping industrialism, and stability.
Next, another cost of the society’s stability is individual freedoms. In Brave New World everyone’s job and social class are assigned at birth. If you are born a Delta or born a factory worker then there is no way to change jobs or social class. People are conditioned to like their classes/jobs and not want anything more than what they have. The ability to have the exact number of people you need for a job or to have the exact number of people you need for menial labor jobs is because of this and it keeps the society stable and organized, but individual freedoms are almost completely gone unless it’s choosing who you want to have sex with or when to take soma. This quote demonstrates how no one ever wants to move through any jobs or social classes because of their conditioning, “‘My word,’ said Lenina, ‘I’m glad I’m not a Gamma.’” (Huxley 47). This quote shows one of the characters Lenina repeating a phrase she was taught as a child when she was being conditioned about how she’s happy in her social class and she doesn’t want to be any other class. All of this shows how there are very few individual freedoms in the society of Brave New World.
Also, feelings like unhappiness, and love aren’t present in their world. This is because those feelings don’t promote the stability and organization of the Brave New World society because those feelings in themselves are unstable and chaotic at times. In the novel Lenina and John have a conversation where John confesses he loves her, Lenina takes this to mean that he wants to have sex and John gets angry with her and hits her. He wanted to have love instead of only sex but Lenina is conditioned to never need or want love but instead want sex. Also, whenever anyone is unhappy they take soma which they always have on their person, so no one is ever unhappy because of the soma. These both show how the stability of the society partly relies on feelings like these not existing.
Lastly, uniqueness has all but been taken away except for in Alpha, and Beta groups. The Deltas, Gammas, and Epsilons are all created through the Bokanovsky’s process where many identical twins of an embryo are created and are all put to work doing menial labor. This means that they will always have enough people for a factory or other menial service because the people are constantly being made in identical exact amounts that certain jobs need. This is shown when John is attacked by many identical people who are all deltas and gammas who have been through Bokanovsky’s process taking away their uniqueness.
In conclusion, Aldous Huxley sends a clear message through his work Brave New World that the cost of a stable and organized society takes away many of the things that are good about our society. We have individual freedom, we have culture from the past praised instead of destroyed, we have the right to feel all feelings including unhappiness, and we are all unique in some way. Huxley’s message to the future is that this cost is too great for long-standing stability and organization.
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