"A squat grey building of only thirty-four stories."
What an opening line. The novel begins with nothing. Nothing happening, no people interacting, nothing. Just an image of a building, nondescript in every way, but unique among other buildings in that is only 34 stories tall. This is the landscape of the Brave New World.
The first half of the novel is filled with wonderful visual imagery. The laboratory where humans are manufactured is described by every synonym of "white." In less than a page Huxley uses the following words: white, dead, sterile, frozen, corpse, ghost -- all to describe, ironically, the "Fertilizing Room" where life is carefully arranged to begin. But in this world, "life" is sterile and cold. Light enters the room, looking for a cold intellectual or academic to warm (ie "enlighten") but finds only the sterility of a laboratory. I actually read the opening few pages several times to really get a good sense of the world he was introducing, and his imagery is enviable.
This "World State," where humans are assembled in test tubes, and genetically and psychologically programmed to certain "castes," is the result of science gone mad in the post-industrial world. Using automated manufacturing as a basis for a social design, (Bokanovsky's Process is referred to as "mass production applied to biology,") embryos are literally run through an assembly line, conditioned by the chemistry of their womb-like "growth jar" and the selective application of unpleasant radiation, to resist or be drawn to the physical environment their caste requires of them. Embryos destined to work in tropical areas are "programmed" on a molecular level to avoid the cold and enjoy the sultry temperatures where they will eventually reside. Embryos destined to work in space are constantly rotated, to acclimate them to being happy while upside down. (I may be the only person on the planet to find it uproarious that these embryos aren't "born" but rather, "decanted." Something about that term is just hilarious to me.)
The caste system is very simple. Alphas are the quasi-intellectuals, subdivided into pluses and plus-pluses. These are the people who write the propaganda shows and manage the embryo factories. Epsilons are the lowest caste, also subdivided into minus variations. Deltas and Epsilons are the society's peons. They handle the unpleasant work, act as elevator operators, attendants, cleaning crews. This caste system is arranged and maintained by the careful manipulation of the embryo. Embryos destined for "grunt work" and what Europeans would consider undesirable jobs are classified as "Deltas" and "Epsilons" and their jars are deliberately treated with poisons to stunt both their physical and intellectual growth. Huxley describes them as "simian" and his imagery is that of small-framed apes wearing black and khaki, doing the dirty work of society. This idea of deliberately retarding the intellectual growth of some embryos and then assuming that they won't miss what they don't know is one of, if not the most frightening aspects of this book, and I'll come back to it.
Interjecting a little bit of racism into his "perfect" society, Huxley has one of the characters point out that negro ovaries respond more productively than European ones. (Isn't that a tired cliche that black people are more fecund and reproduce more quickly?) I'm not sure why he felt the need to tell us this. Is he just speaking as a product of his time? Is he trying to show that his new world has the same prejudices as our own? Bernard, the main character in the first half of the book, spends a great deal of time feeling troubled by the caste system in his world, but not because of the inherent unfairness of it all. Due to some error in the system, his embryo developed slightly stunted (which many of the characters speculate was as a result of an accidental overdose of alcohol while still in "the jar") and Bernard developed a shorter stature than the rest of the Alpha Plus males. Bernard is short, and because he's short, he resembles a person from a lower caste. His apprehension about the caste system occurs because it doesn't work for him -- he is mistaken for a lower-caste individual from time to time and that is what bothers him.
In case it isn't obvious that Huxley is writing a social critique, he even deifies his automated world with many mentions of the God-like "Ford" character, who silently presides over his manufactured society as creator and progenitor. The name is treated with reverence and even becomes the title, "your Fordship." (I suppose Huxley chose Ford over Ransom Olds -- the real creator of the automotive assembly line -- for literary reasons. "Your Oldship" just doesn't have the same ring to it.)
As a side note, this society seems focused on minutia. "Particulars make for virtue and happiness. Generalities are necessary evils," we are told. The "backbone" of society is made up of people involved in minutia, and ornamental, external work. While I found this idea intriguing, it wasn't fully explored in the book.
The goal of this manufactured society is "happiness" and social order. "Community, Identity, Stability" is the World State's motto and it sounds innocuous enough. Although "Community Stability" seems the real goal of the World State social engineers. To be fair, while their main concern is preservation of the social order, the society is deliberately contrived to bring happiness to all its members. The real question becomes: what is the nature of true happiness?
The Director tells us, "That is the the secret of happiness and virtue -- liking what you've got to do." Each citizen has an inescapable biological destiny, and each is designed to like what they do, from conception through the "hypnopaedic" training of infancy and childhood. The caste system and the idea of being happy in one's own station is strongly reminiscent of Hinduism and the concept of Dharma, or one's individual duty. But there is a subtle difference. In the World State, people are programmed to not only not desire, but to also not really know a lot in life different from their own. Betas have no choice but to believe that they are blessed since they don't have to work as hard as the Alphas, and they are more clever than the Gammas and Deltas. Being happy with their station isn't a choice, and unlike the Hindu, they can't take pleasure from knowing they've made a choice to be happy. Is that important? I think so.
The World State is a foolproof system. Or so we're led to believe. But Huxley introduces a curious Epsilon whose soul purpose in life is to take people up and down an elevator. This Epsilon does his job without complaining, and probably without any higher thought. But a curious thing happens when he takes the characters to the roof. "Roof" he announces, almost with a sense of reverence and awe. This is the outdoors, the open air, and although I don't have the text in front of me, Huxley takes great pains to describe the satisfaction with which the Epsilon experiences "Roof," and the subsequent deflation when he has to take the elevator back down. This scene goes unnoticed with most critics, but I think it's crucial to understanding that happiness can't be prescribed by outside forces. It is a very individual thing. That Epsilon may continue to do his genetically programmed "dharma" but that doesn't mean he isn't aware, on some level, of an alternative.
Of course, for moments when individuality and possible discontent rear their ugly heads, citizens are encouraged to swallow a dose of "Soma," that wonder drug that prevents you from feeling anything at all. The desired state of being in this world is one of calm ecstasy, a peace of balanced life and energies, and not excited or agitated. In other words, not emotional at all. Citizens who feel emotions coming on them are encouraged to take a chemical therapy that removes them. There is no art, no history -- nothing that would make people compare this world to any other, and thereby create "grass is greener" nostalgic feelings in people, thus making them unhappy. It actually sounds like a very boring world, and we are supposed to wonder how people can truly be happy in a passionless world. "Actual happiness," the Director and Chief explains, "always looks pretty squalid in comparison with the overcompensations for misery." It's a great quote, but does it truly apply?
This culture traded "high art" for happiness, and what masquerades as "art" is actually propaganda. It's not as insidious as political propaganda, or advertising, but it's propaganda for the World State, the culture itself. Helmholtz, arguable one of the more interesting characters in the book, works as a writer, cranking out propaganda and dumbshow scripts for the interactive films known as "feelies." There is no real plot to these films; they are a showcase for technology which allows you to feel every hair of the bearskin rug on which the main couple copulate. Rather like special effects films in Hollywood today. Helmholtz shows an inner dissatisfaction with his biologically prescribed profession when he says "Can you say something about nothing?" As an artist he wants to make a statement. As a Word State Citizen, he is not supposed to have an individual viewpoint from which to make such a statement. Helmholtz rejects artificial happiness as meaningless. He wants to say something, even if it means suffering to do so.
As I was reading the book I was bothered by the fact that nobody is ever seen making anything, until we are introduced to life on the Reservation. There are no knitters, no potters, no weavers. There is certainly nothing desirable about the home-made or hand-made. I am reminded of the contemptuous quip I hear so often when I am caught knitting socks in public: "You know, you can buy socks in the store." In this world (much like our own, actually) citizens are encouraged to throw away items rather than repair them. Keep the World State functioning -- buy new stuff and buy it often. There is no room for the hand-knit sock in this world. That, for me, is especially disturbing.
Sexual mores are reversed in this book. Casual sex is everywhere. The society encourages detached casual sex, and a desire to be monogamous is looked upon as aberrant. The idea of a nurturing family is abhorrent and the words "mother" and "father" are considered the worst obscenities. Women capable of reproduction are armed with bandoliers of contraceptive devices, and when that fails there is always the abortion clinic, which has no social stigma attached to it. I found this a bit odd. Why weren't women biological engineered to have no eggs, or why weren't the eggs removed at puberty? Why weren't men rendered sterile? It seemed a gap in the science, and it bugged me more than it probably should. I don't think it's a significant fault, and I don't think it adds anything to the meaning of the book, other than to horrify us that abortion has no moral debate associated with it. Life is not held sacred any more than a component on an automobile assembly line.
I've read that this novel is less an actual "novel" and more a book of ideas. Especially considering the last half of the book, I certainly agree with this assessment. Those we are led to believe are the "main characters" are really very flat caricatures. Bernard, who spends half the book whining about how he doesn't want to be a "cell in the social body" and identifies himself as an Individual, breaks down at the thought of actually being an individual, divorced from that social body. His alienation is half affectation and posturing, anyway -- unlike Hemholtz, who sees his alienation as having some value to his artistic soul. Lenina seems to have brief moments where she approaches clarity, but she quickly whisks them away with a dose of Soma. John the Savage revels in his alienation, but ultimately he is unable to reconcile the world he has created with the world that actually exists.
John as a character is annoying. He is rivaled in his annoyingness only by the title character of Jude the Obscure. John is the monster from Frankenstein, the child of a bad parent (both with his Mother and with Bernard) nourished on a diet of literature that he can't apply to his own experiences and which causes him to create impossible standards for himself and the people around him. Unlike Miranda, whose wide-eyed and innocent conception of human society leads her to exclaim "Oh brave new world that has such people in it!" John has a Utopic image of the World State that is grossly distorted by both his mother's stories and Shakespeare's Elizabethan morality.
He sets lofty standards for himself, like Lancelot's character in "Camelot" and almost smugly derides his own inability to achieve them. He has been just as "conditioned" (via his reading material and his alienation on the reservation) as the people of the World State, but he can't see that. His conditioning leads him to believe asceticism and suffering are the human condition, and I suppose he would say that understanding this fact leads to true happiness. But at the end of the book, he can't deal with the intensity of his feelings and emotions -- and yet isn't that what Mustafa Mond was trying to make him understand?
John is supposed to be the voice of reason, calling out the problems in the World State and demanding the right to be free to be unhappy. This really should be a basic human right, so I agree with him there. But the Director Mustafa Mond makes a very good case that most people would prefer the system of the World State, just as most Americans are content to work mindless jobs for the reward of beer and football, and a few hours of American Idol and idiotic sit-coms each night. There are only a few discontented or malcontented intellectuals in Huxley's world, and they don't seem to be rounded up and shot. Instead they are exiled to an ISLAND -- a literal island, like one of the Faulklands, or a social island like Iceland. These places are like universities, where citizens can wax philosophical without harming the stability of society. Is this Huxley's answer to the "problem" of the intellectual? But if that's the case, isn't he just saying that his Utopia doesn't work, and the only solution is simply society as we already know it?
And what about life on those "Islands"? Mustafa Mond tells John that a society composed entirely of Alphas (the intellectuals) resulted in a civil war, where 19 of the 22 thousand inhabitants died. Is exile to an island simply a protracted death sentence? Why is there this connection between the intelligentsia and violence? Is a society destined to collapse under the weight of its collective intellect?
This novel dealt with themes and issues that go way beyond what I've mentioned here. But a lot of what critics consider the really thought-provoking things (especially in the last half of the book) aren't really all that new to me, and those thoughts have been provoked by other works.
What haunted me for days after reading this was the image of the Epsilon embryos having their growth jars poisoned to prevent them from developing the capacity for higher thought and aspirations. I think this bothered me so much because I am so opposed to the idea of intelligence (or the limits of it) being determined by genetics. In Huxley's world, an individual can never go beyond the boundaries of his or her caste designation, thanks to biological and psychological programming -- and that's what (in my limited understanding) the current thinking on genetics and intelligence tells us. We will only ever be so smart, and those limitations were set down long before we were ever born. How supremely terrifying.
As an American, I was led to believe the exact opposite -- we can reinvent ourselves, we can self-educate, we can learn new things and stretch our imaginative "muscles." We can elevate our minds and as a result, our social status. But often we do so by looking critically at our art. Books are banned in Huxley's world, as is art in general. If you can't say "something" about nothing, you certainly can't think about it critically. Critical thinking leads to words, and words are what John says make his emotions "more real," which is exactly what this society wants to avoid.
Some critics called "Brave New World" a terrifying vision of the future. I don't credit it with going that far. Bioethics is controlled by religion (in America, at least) and I don't see religion allowing for the mass production of babies, deliberate "retardation" of children, or a change in values pertaining to casual sex.
The mechanics of the society are fiction, but the impetus to create such a society is certainly real. Replace "Soma" with Valium or Prozac. Replace bumble-puppy with any small group sport, or organized children's soccer and baseball leagues. Replace hynopaedia with television exposure, telling us what to buy and how often to buy it. We are trained to be consumers (via television) and from a very early age learn that happiness means "stuff" and that we should be happiest when we have the most "stuff." We should go into debt to have more and more stuff, and then buy more stuff to make us happy and forget we are debt over our stuff. And yet still we are discontented. Is this the human condition? Given the choice between intellectual oblivion and sadness or suffering, how many of us would choose the latter -- and would we be able to justify it to ourselves later?
NOTES:
"The Island" was a follow-up book to "Brave New World" and apparently explores some of the ideas presented by John and Mustafa in a non-fiction format. I have it on my list to read.
Comparable Dystopias that I can think of off the top of my head might include the worlds of "1984," Ira Levin's "This Perfect Day," Bradbury's "Fahrenheit 451," the films "Equilibrium," and "Children of Men," and maybe even "V for Vendetta," although in most of these works, the State is a much darker figure, keeping its people in line not with Soma and the promise of happiness, but subtle or not-so-subtle threats of violence, banishment, or death.
FOR CARRY-OUT:
Great quotes from the book include:
Actual happiness always looks pretty squalid in comparison with the overcompensations for misery.
one I'd love to use on people I know:
One of the principal functions of a friend is to suffer (in a milder and symbolic form) the punishments that we should like, but are unable, to inflict upon our enemies.and this one, from John thinking of Lenina:
He was obscurely terrified lest she should cease to be something that he could feel himself unworthy of.
