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A common tactic that authors use in their novels, plays, and short stories is the use of contrast. More specifically, authors often use contrasting settings in their works that represent different ideas or different types of people to contribute to the overall meaning of their work. Aldous Huxley’s Brave New World is no different. The main story of Brave New World takes place on Earth but far into the future. The events of Brave New World take place about 600 years “after Ford,” in reference to when Henry Ford’s Model T car was first created in the early 1900s. In the society that Huxley creates in this novel, the entire world is being ruled under a unified government known as the World State. The World State rules over all, with the exception of a few territories. The two territories that Huxley contrasts throughout the novel are the two main areas the story is located: areas with major World State influence and the “Savage Reservation” in New Mexico.
In Brave New World, by Huxley contrasting these two areas by showing how people are being brainwashed by the World State versus the Savage Reservation holding more traditional values of modern times, contributes to the overall meaning of the work by showing the reader that the imperfections of modern society should be cherished, even if they seem to be insignificant. In areas under the influence of the World State, the World State has abolished nearly everything that society today is accustomed to. For example, in society today, all of human life is conceived naturally. Babies are born from a mother and live the life that they are given. In the World State, however, this is most certainly not the case. Some time in the future, scientists were able to find a way to create human life in a lab. Humans are essentially manufactured in labs in large quantities, similar to how Henry Ford’s Model T cars were manufactured in large numbers in factories. The babies are then placed into five castes, which are named after the Greek alphabet: Alpha, Beta, Gamma, Delta, and Epsilon.
Alpha is the highest caste whereas Epsilon is the lowest. Gammas, Deltas, and Epsilons are placed in a process known as Bokanovsky’s Process where embryos undergo “a series of arrests of development” (Huxley 6) so that they are physically inferior to Alphas and Betas. By humans being developed in this manner rather than being born naturally like in the world today, it emphasizes one of the central themes that Huxley conveys in Brave New World, which is the lack of individuality amongst the World State. The World State despises individuality and the questioning of the system because they believe that individuality and “[u]northodoxy threatens more than the life of a mere individual; it strikes at Society itself” (Huxley 148). The World State fears individuality, so they have sucked it out of society to create a world where they have complete control and the sentimental things in life like family time and leisure activities do not exist and people are conditioned to believe this is the proper way. The Savage Reservation, however, has a much different philosophy.
On this Savage Reservation, the ideas of the World State are not nearly as present as they are in places such as London, where a great deal of Brave New World takes place. In fact, the reservation greatly contrasts from areas of the World State and is structured a lot like modern society. Two major characters in Brave New World who are accustomed to the traditions of the World State, Bernard and Lenina, tour the Savage Reservation and they immediately notice how different this reservation is to the world that they know. For instance, when Lenina sees an elderly looking man at the reservation, her “eyes were wide with horror and amazement” (Huxley 110). The reason why Lenina reacts in such a manner is because the World State has found a way to eliminate the impact that old age has on one’s body, so Lenina is simply not accustomed to seeing people suffer the effects of old age. Lenina explains that in her society, the “Director [is] old; lots of people are old” (Huxley 110), but they do not appear wrinkled and with white hair like this man. This further shows that the World State has stripped away traditional ideas such as aging through the use of chemicals and conditioning, but the Savage Reservation keeps these traditional values because they are not under the influence of the World State. It appears that they seem to better appreciate what life used to be like before the World State took over the world and set their totalitarian regime into action.
In addition to the Savage Reservation letting people age naturally, they also support the idea of natural birth, which is the way babies are created today. One example of this is John, the son of the Director and Linda, a former Beta woman. Before the events of Brave New World, Linda and the Director visited the Savage Reservation and Linda was impregnated. She was left behind at the reservation and decided to keep the baby because she was denied an abortion. Clearly, because the Savage Reservation denied Linda an abortion, they obviously value life much more than the World State does. The World State has the belief that life is expendable because anyone who dies can simply be replaced by creating and conditioning a new baby in the fertility labs. The people on the reservation, however, see life as valuable because citizens in the reservation are born naturally, so they cannot be simply replaced like in the World State. Even if some traditional values in modern society may seem insignificant, Aldous Huxley urges the reader to further appreciate the values that they may take for granted by contrasting the two main areas of Brave New World, which are the areas under the control of the World State and the Savage Reservation in New Mexico. In the World State, due to their fear of being overthrown, they have created a society where the people are created in a lab rather than born and placed into a social caste system. Even worse, the World State uses various methods to condition its citizens to believe what the World State is doing is correct. On the other hand, the Savage Reservation still holds on to the values of modern society. They value life and there is no conditioning. Despite its name, the Savage Reservation seems to be even more civilized than the World State because they do not appear to suppress the emotions and thoughts of its citizens. They value history and literature, whereas the World State tries to erase most of it from time so that their citizens do not have access to it. This contrast is one of the driving forces of the plot of Brave New World, and without it, Aldous Huxley would not have been able to give the powerful story that he did.
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