Brave New World' Literary Criticism Essay

In today’s world, cloning technology is growing at a fast rate, but is it morally correct to perform? In Aldous Huxley’s novel, Brave New World, the concept of cloning is covered. Cloning can be performed on humans and animals, but in our society, there is usually controversy associated with cloning for several reasons. The use of cloning in society today has its benefits, but they have its flaws as well. In Brave New World, cloning was implemented to make more workers work in factories and later split into several social classes. Cloning can then contribute to an issue in society which is overpopulation, which is happening in our world to this day.

In Brave New World, cloning can be best defined with Bokanovsky’s Process. The director explains Bokanovsky’s Process stating, “One egg, one embryo, one adult… egg will bud, will proliferate, will divide. From eight to ninety-six buds, and every bud will grow into a perfectly formed embryo” (Huxley 6). The Bokanovsky’s Process involves one egg, one embryo, and one adult. Being without these requirements to start the process means that they cannot perform the cloning to fix the problem the director stated. The Director says the process is a “major instrument of social stability” because according to him a whole problem can be solved. The Director states, “If we could bokanovskify indefinitely the whole problem would be solved” (Huxley 7). The people produced from this process later are put in social classes such as Gammas, Epsilons, and Deltas. They are later manipulated with methods such as classical conditioning to make them hate flowers and books. This is so that they will stay in the city and avoid the countryside. With books, it is because reading something can decondition one of their reflexes. This would be something conflicting because it can make them have different beliefs that are different from their social class, which is why people are conditioned to hate books.

In an article, a definition of cloning is stated. Cloning is the “production of one or more individual plants or animals that are genetically identical to an original individual” (Dinç 239). There are two types of human cloning which are reproductive and therapeutic. The article then makes a statement about the objective of reproductive cloning stating, “The objective of human reproductive cloning is to produce a child who would be genetically identical to another individual” (Dinç 239). This not only defines the term cloning but also states the objectives behind the two types of cloning in humans. In our society, people have received replacements of tissues or organs to continue living with their lives. This shows that cloning does have its uses in the medical field, and the article mentions that advances in genetics and biotechnology can create many unforeseen possibilities in our world. The article states, “Cloning children…it is not only a possibility but also a reality now” (Dinç 238). The article explains that cloning can have an impact on our world today, and how there are methods of cloning that can help many people.

When it comes to cloning in animals there are many benefits, such as obtaining something such as proteins to make a particular substance that can help people medically. There are benefits involving the cloning of both animals and humans. Cloning animals would serve many purposes and be a major focus in the biotechnology industry (Robertson). The article then states an example of how animal cloning can be implemented stating, “attention is now focused on altering the genes of cows or sheep so that they will produce large amounts of pharmaceutically important proteins in their milk” (Robertson 1376). This shows readers that there are applications in which cloning in animals can be useful, such as altering genes to make proteins in the milk of cows that can be helpful to those who are ill. It also explains how animals “can be used for drug testing to test new drugs so that a treatment to a particular disease such as cancer to be developed”. The research will be beneficial because it can give more of an understanding of how cells divide grow, divide, and specialize. The article states, “This research will provide basic knowledge of how cells grow, divide, and specialize” (Robertson 1378). This quote also shows that there is another benefit involving the cloning of animals because it can give a basic understanding of cells.

The benefits of cloning in humans are mentioned. Some of the benefits of human cloning include treating infertility and replacing any organs and tissues. When the article mentioned the objectives of reproductive and therapeutic cloning, it then later explained the benefits of both types. The article states, “Reproductive cloning can be used to help sterile individuals who cannot naturally have children, and therapeutic cloning promises significant benefits because organ supply for transplantation is limited” (Dinç 239). This quote shows that there are uses for cloning that can be beneficial for many people, either for transplants or helping couples who cannot have children naturally. It then explains the potential of cloning technology such as how the cells of people can be used to produce stem cells that can become replacement tissues or organs, which is the effect of therapeutic cloning. It says that with such potential and combining gene therapy, diseases involved with aging could be prevented. The article also states, “Aging could be delayed, and rejuvenation and/or an extended human life could become possible” (Dinç 246). This quote shows the potential of cloning technology, and it does make an appearance in Brave New World. When Lenina sees the old man at the Savage Reservation the novel states, “Lenina was still sobbing…Oh I wish I had my soma” (Huxley 116). This quote demonstrates how in a futuristic world some people don’t age, but when they see people who do age, they are very shocked because there is no aging in the World State. Lenina then wishes that she had her soma because the sight of her seeing a man who showed signs of aging ended up shocking her. In Brave New World, it is proven that the potential of cloning technology that the article mentioned does come true.

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Cloning wasn’t just a thing of today, but rather it started in the 19th century with Wilhelm Roux. In an 1888 experiment, he killed one cell of a two-cell amphibian embryo and found a half-embryo developed. This shows that some genes are lost during cell replication. In 1892, Hans Driesch discovered that if the blastomeres of a two-cell sea urchin were separated physically, entire embryos would form on each blastomere. In 1894, Jacque Loeb observed that fertilized sea urchin eggs sometimes rupture when exposed to hypotonic solutions. The extruded portion of the egg was bereft of a nucleus and remained uncleaved. This information shows the history of cloning throughout the 18th century and how it has progressed throughout the years.

In the 20th century, cloning started with Hans Spemann. He experimented identical to Loeb’s but on an amphibian egg, in which he constricted a zygote with a noose made of baby hair, causing the egg to have the shape of a dumbbell. In 1943, Briggs wanted to determine whether the genome of older somatic nuclei remains equivalent to the zygote nucleus throughout development. Later in 1949, he began searching for a research companion to develop a nuclear transplantation procedure for the North American leopard frog, Rana pipiens.

There are issues when it comes to cloning in today’s society. Several years after the publication of Brave New World, Huxley wrote Brave New World Revisited in 1958. Huxley mentioned that the prophecies he made in 1931 were becoming too true sooner than he thought they would. Huxley then states, “On the first Christmas Day the population of our planet was about two hundred and fifty million—less than half the population of modern China”. This statement shows how the population was much smaller than it is today, but then he later stated how the population stood at just under two billion in 1931, which was when the publication of Brave New World took place. Huxley said that it took sixteen centuries for the population of the earth to double.

Eventually with overpopulation, there will be more restrictions and less freedom. Aldous Huxley predicted in 1958 that democracy is threatened due to overpopulation and could give rise to totalitarian-style governments and it turns out he was right. Huxley states, “It will create conditions in which individual freedom and the social decencies of the democratic way of life will become impossible, almost unthinkable”. The drastic solution in Brave New World is for the government to control the population directly: natural reproduction is abolished and the government controls exactly how many people there are in each social class by manufacturing them in factories explicitly reminiscent of Henry Ford’s assembly lines.

Another cloning issue is that if it falls into the wrong hands, it can be used for horrible actions such as creating an army or social class like in Brave New World. An article states, “Those with media name recognition or commercial appeal could license or sell their DNA to others, turning children into commodities rather than persons to be loved and nurtured for themselves” (Robertson 1384). This shows that cloning can be used for the wrong purposes if it falls into the wrong hands, and this can be also seen in Brave New World. The Director states, “If we could bokanovskify indefinitely the whole problem would be solved” (Huxley 7). The people produced from this process later are put in social classes such as Gammas, Epsilons, and Deltas. They are later manipulated with methods such as classical conditioning using electrical shocks or loud sirens to make them hate flowers and books. This is so that they will stay in the city and avoid the countryside. With books, it is because reading something can decondition one of their reflexes. This would be something conflicting because it can make them have different beliefs that are different from their social class, which is why people are conditioned to hate books.

All in all, cloning is very revolutionary but it can have its advantages and disadvantages. Cloning must be used in the right way for it to go smoothly, but even then just using cloning has controversy among people. Brave New World and many articles on the subject of cloning state the effects of cloning. They also provide examples of how cloning isn’t always beneficial even though to many people it seems very revolutionizing. From the 18th century to the present day, cloning has progressed at a fast rate.