Brave New World: A Dystopian Analysis of Technology, Conditioning, and Social Control
Analysis: Chapter 1
Huxley’s Brave New World can be seen as a critique of the overenthusiastic embrace of new scientific discoveries. The first chapter reads like a list of stunning scientific achievements: human cloning, rapid maturation, and prenatal conditioning. However, the satirical tone of the chapter makes it clear that this technology-based society is not a utopia, but the exact opposite. Like George Orwell’s 1984, Brave New World depicts a dystopia: a world of anonymous and dehumanized people dominated by a government made overwhelmingly powerful by the use of technology.
The almost religious regard in which the World State holds technology is apparent from the start. The starting date for the calendar is Henry Ford’s introduction of the Model T, an automobile cheaply and efficiently produced by the assembly line system. All dates are preceded by “A.F.,” “After Ford,” just as today’s calendar system begins with the birth of Jesus, A.D. (Anno Domini, meaning “in the year of the lord”). Other satirical hints of a warped religion are scattered throughout the text. The Predestinators, for example, are a farcical secular manifestation of the Calvinist religious belief that God predestines individuals for heaven or hell before birth. The World State’s religious adherence to technology is far from innocent. In fact it becomes one of the pillars of stability for the totalitarian World State. As the Director says, “social stability” is the highest social goal, and through predestination and rigorous conditioning, individuals accept their given roles in society without question. The caste structure is created and maintained using specific tools, and it is technology that allows the most powerful members of the World State’s ruling Alpha caste to solidify and justify the unequal distribution of power and status.
Conditioning individuals genetically, physically, and psychologically for their “inescapable social destinies” stabilizes the caste system by creating servants who love and fully accept their servility. Moreover, conditioning makes them virtually incapable of performing any other function than that to which they are assigned. The satirical tone of the text makes it clear that, though social stability may sound like an admirable goal, it can be used for the wrong reasons toward the wrong ends.
One theme emphasized repeatedly in this first chapter is the similarity between the production of humans in the Hatchery and the production of consumer goods on an assembly line. Everything about human reproduction is technologically managed to maximize efficiency and profit. Following the rule of supply and demand, the Predestinators project how many members of each caste will be needed, and the Hatchery produces human beings according to those figures. One of the keys of mass production is that every part is identical and interchangeable; a steering wheel from one Model T fits neatly onto the steering column of any other Ford. Similarly, in the Hatchery, human beings are standardized by the production of thousands of brothers and sisters in multiple groups of identical twins using the Bokanovsky and Podsnap Processes.
The lower castes are more subject to these forces of anonymity and mechanization. Members of the higher castes are decanted one by one, without any artificial intervention. Thus the higher castes retain at least some level of the individuality and creativity that is denied completely to the lower castes.
Analysis: Chapter 2
The first half of the students’ tour, described in the previous section, illustrates the World State’s abuse of biological science in conditioning its citizens. This section focuses on the use of psychological technologies to control the future behavior of World State citizens. Conditioning, combined with prenatal treatment, creates individuals without individuality: each one is programmed to behave exactly like the next. This system allows for social stability, economic productivity within narrow constraints, and a society dominated by unthinking obedience and infantile behavior.
The conditioning technique used to instill a dislike for flowers and books in infants is modeled after the research of Ivan Pavlov, a Russian scientist. Pavlov demonstrated that dogs could be trained to salivate at the ringing of a bell if the sound was consistently visually associated with food. This led to the observation that other kinds of responses could also be conditioned. His work became known to Western science in the decade before Brave New World was written. By applying Pavlovian theory to human infants, the state literally programs human beings to uphold the status quo.
The conditioning also drives the population to support the capitalist economic system. Because the World State wants children to be loyal consumers as adults, the importance of the individual is diminished in order to further the interests of the larger community. Even during their off-work hours, World State citizens serve the interests of production and, therefore, the interests of the whole economy and society, by consuming transportation and expensive sporting equipment. Any opportunity for individual, idiosyncratic behavior that might not feed the economy is eliminated.
Analysis: Chapter 3
As the Director and Mustapha Mond explain to the boys how the World State works in an abstract way, the interspliced scenes of Lenina and Bernard show the society in action. The sexual play of the children at recess, the boys’ discomfort at the wordmother, Lenina’s relaxed nakedness, and the conversation between Henry and the Predestinator all serve to illustrate how the traditional taboos regarding sexuality have been discarded. Bernard is the sole character to protest—almost silently—the way the system works. His discomfort with the commodification of sex marks him as a misfit. It is worth noting that the novel explicitly establishes that Bernard’s dissatisfaction with the State stems from his own isolation within it, introducing Bernard with the words “Those who feel themselves despised do well to look despising.” Bernard may be a rebel, but that rebellion does not come from any ideological objection to the World State. It comes from a sense that he might never fully belong to that society. This facet of Bernard’s character will be brought into play as the novel progresses.
In addition to prenatal and postnatal conditioning, the World State controls the behavior of its members through the forces of social conformity and social criticism. Lenina’s friend Fanny warns her that the Director does not like it when Hatchery workers fail to conform to the expected promiscuity standards. Even as an adult, a World State citizen must fear being seen doing something “shameful” or “abnormal.” The adult citizen has no private life. As Lenina notes, the only thing that one does when one is alone in the World State is sleep, and one can’t do that forever. In and out of the office, the adult citizen is under surveillance to ensure that his or her body and mind are following the World State’s moral value system. Both peers and superiors, like Fanny and the Director, are constantly watching to ensure that each citizen is behaving appropriately.
In his long speech about the history of the World State, Mustapha Mond blames the previously sacred institutions of family, love, motherhood, and marriage for causing social instability in the old society. As Mond explains it, these old institutions shared the work of mediating the conflict between the individual’s interests and the interests of society with the State, but the personal institutions and State institutions were themselves out of alignment, creating instability. Individuals cannot always be relied upon to choose the path of most stability since family, love, and marriage produce divided allegiances. Freely acting individuals must constantly weigh the moral value and the moral consequences of their actions. Mond argues that the divided allegiances of individuals produce social instability. For this reason, the World State has eliminated all traces of non-State institutions. The citizen is socialized to only have an allegiance to the State; personal connections of all sorts are discouraged, and even the desire to develop such connections is conditioned away. The constant availability of physical satisfaction evident in the feelies, the abundance of soma, the easy attainment of sex through state sanctioned promiscuity, and the lack of any historical knowledge that might point to an alternate way of life, ensure that the way of life developed and instituted by the World State will not be threatened.
Mustapha Mond and the Director spend a good deal of time discussing the importance of consumption. They are really talking about creating a population that will always want more—a captive market created by conditioning that will want whatever goods the World State produces. This culture of constant consumption allows the government to act as a supplier, propelling the economy and creating a happy community dependent on its supplier. But the economic discussion led by Mond and the Director does not refer only to the economy of money and goods. InBrave New World, everything, including sex, operates according to the logic of supply and demand. Citizens are taught to view one another, and themselves, as commodities to be consumed like any other manufactured good. Bernard rebels against this sentiment when he notes that Henry and the Predestinator view Lenina as a “piece of meat”—and that Lenina thinks of herself the same way. Consumption as a way of life is never justified by the World State; it is taken as a way of life.
In Mustapha Mond’s discussion of history, Brave New World gives some thought to a theme that George Orwell explores in detail in 1984. Implicit in Mond’s statement that “history is bunk” and his discussion of the history of the World State, is the fact that Mond and the other nine World Controllers have a monopoly on historical knowledge. This ensures their positions of power. In 1984, Orwell describes the mechanisms of this manipulation, as the government of Oceania actively revises history in order to serve its political goals from moment to moment. But in the World State, active revision is unnecessary because the population is conditioned to believe that, as Mond says, “history is bunk.” Because they are trained to see history as worthless, they are trapped in the present, unable to imagine alternative ways of life. It is unclear why Mond takes the time to explain the history of the World State to the boys, though it certainly is a convenient way of explaining a possible pathway from the reader’s world to that of the World State.
Analysis: Chapters 4–6
Bernard’s role as the protagonist—a role that John will later take over—continues in this section. Increasingly, he appears less like a political rebel and more like a social misfit who believes that changing society is the only way for him to fit in. His conversations with Helmholtz reveal that he is boastful of his liaison with Lenina, afraid of being caught criticizing the World State, and subservient to Helmholtz when it comes to matters of real rebellion. Bernard is a paradoxical character, at one moment lusting after Lenina and at the next hoping that he will have the strength to resist her advances.
Helmholtz, whom we meet for the first time in this section, has the exact opposite of Bernard’s problem. Whereas Bernard is too small and strange for his caste, Helmholtz is, if anything, too perfect. His success with women, in his career, and in every other aspect of his life has led him to believe that there must be something more to life than high-tech sports, easy sex, and repetitive slogans. He talks to Bernard because Bernard shares his dislike for the system, but he is aware that Bernard’s dislike has a different basis than his own.
The setting of these chapters changes rapidly: from the workplace to Helmholtz’s apartment; from Henry’s helicopter to Westminster Abbey Cabaret to a crematorium; from Bernard’s apartment to the Community Singery; and so on. Some of the scene-shifting is simply used to flesh out a day in the life of a World State member. Lenina and Henry’s visit to the Westminster Abbey Cabaret is a blunt joke about the uses to which the World State puts ancient religious sites. As Henry and Lenina contemplate the crematorium, they come close to acknowledging that the caste system may be less than perfect. But then Lenina, troubled and disliking, retreats to one of her stock hypnopaedic phrases, regains her happiness, and the crisis is over. Once again, she is happy to be in her caste and disdainful of those in other castes. This episode, made possible by the setting of a helicopter trip past a crematorium, shows how conditioning can keep the population from questioning the assumptions of the state in which they live. The biggest change in setting is from the World State to the Reservation, though a detailed description of the Reservation is held until the next section.
Although the World State most obviously controls its members by conditioning them and gratifying their desires, there are hints that stability is maintained through methods that are still more sinister. Bernard’s sudden fear that someone is listening to his heretical conversation with Helmholtz suggests a totalitarian aspect of the World State. Outside work hours, World State citizens attend strictly regulated, scheduled social activities and never spend any time alone. The lack of time for reflection keeps them occupied and docile. Bernard’s fear shows that he is aware of the unwritten but potentially serious consequences of his heretical beliefs.
Analysis: Chapters 7–8
These chapters contain a crucial plot development: the meeting of Bernard and John. John is an outcast who has always dreamed of living in the World State; Bernard is a World State misfit who is looking for some way to fit in. Their meeting sets in motion a chain of events that produces shattering consequences for both of them.
Huxley uses a literary device called a flashback to bring Bernard, and the reader, up to date on John’s background. This device allows Huxley to present a collage of images from John’s childhood that would otherwise fit awkwardly into the overall structure of the narrative. If the narrative had been presented in strict chronological order, John and Linda’s story would have been told first. Coming in the middle of the novel, it has a greater impact because the reader already knows about the vast differences between World State and Reservation culture. Linda’s failure to fit in on the Reservation, and John’s confused upbringing, only make sense within the context that has already been provided.
Linda’s experiences on the Reservation, as described by herself and by John, demonstrate the extent to which the World State citizens are dependent upon “civilization”—that is, on a life that is completely structured by the state. On the Reservation, she is practically helpless: she does not know how to mend clothing, cook, or clean, and the very idea of taking care of a child horrifies her. She turns to mescal as a poor substitute for soma, which until then had been her only method for dealing with unpleasant situations.
John is a cultural hybrid, absorbing both his mother’s culture and that of the Indians on the Reservation. But he is also culturally adrift. The Reservation’s community does not accept him, and Linda’s Other Place is a distant world he only hears about in stories. So he turns to Shakespeare in his isolation and absorbs a third cultural value system.
Shakespeare’s The Tempest provides an important parallel to Brave New World, and the two texts relate to one another on many levels. In the play, Prospero and his daughter Miranda are exiled to an island because Prospero’s brother betrayed him in order to gain political power. The only inhabitant on the Island is a native, Caliban, to whose deceased mother the island had belonged. Prospero usurps control of the island and decides to raise Caliban as a slave because he pities him and intends to civilize him. Shakespeare deftly portrays Caliban as an angry, violent figure, who could easily be interpreted as less than human, ruled by bestial appetites rather than higher instincts. When a ship arrives on the island, two of the stewards introduce Caliban to liquor, and liquor becomes Caliban’s “God.” Yet Shakespeare also manages to imbue Caliban with all the complexities of the colonized individual. Caliban may be angry and violent, but he has been oppressed by Prospero. Caliban becomes enthralled by liquor and sees it as a god, but he has never seen alcohol before, and the effects of becoming drunk must be staggering to him. Prospero purports to help Caliban by “civilizing” him, but Caliban resents Prospero for the theft of his home. Prospero views Caliban’s resentment as unfounded and as evidence of his bestial nature, and this prompts him to treat Caliban even more harshly. Caliban responds with violent action that only increases Prospero’s belief that Caliban is an animal. In The Tempest, Caliban is both “savage” and a “Noble Savage,” he is utterly displaced in every community, just as John is on the Reservation, and will come to be in the World State.
Both The Tempest and Brave New World can be interpreted as allegories of colonization. Prospero decides to raise Caliban and “civilize” him in the same way that European colonials attempted to “civilize” the African, Asian, and Native American cultures with which they came into contact. For British and other European colonizers, civilizing the savages was a process of replacing native cultures and languages with the culture and language of the colonizer. The colonizers effectively separated colonized peoples from their own history and culture, making it more difficult for the latter to rebel against the new implanted culture that had become their own. The entire World State is built on just such a premise, effacing the past and all its cultural legacies. The World State, in a sense, has colonized everyone.