Brave New World is an anti-utopian novel written by Aldous Huxley in 1932. Technology is one of the main topics of the book. Huxley describes a society where people are born from a test tube. World State is a country where aging does not exist, and different diseases do not bother people (Huxley, 2020). At the age of thirty, the process of growing old stops, and people remain young and strong till their death.
One more technological achievement Huxley describes in his novel is the liquidation of starvation since scientists developed synthetic products rich in vitamins. Agriculture is shown in the novel as a relic of the past that exists only to lower the unemployment rate. Another technological achievement is soma – a drug that does not cause any harm to people’s health but gives a lot of pleasant feelings. The book says: “there is always soma…half a gramme for a half-holiday, a gramme for a week-end, two grammes for a trip to the gorgeous East, three for a dark eternity on the moon” (Huxley, 2020, p. 39). Hence, World State is a society where technology and progress thrive and replace nature.
Apart from technology, the novel addresses other issues. The first one is the confrontation of nature and civilization. Children are taught to despise nature to prevent the lower caste from choosing to rest somewhere in the forest for free instead of paying for ways of rest in the city. Nature is portrayed as harmful to progress: “Which brings us at last,” continued Mr. Foster, “out of the realm of mere slavish imitation of nature into the much more interesting world of human invention.” (Huxley, 2020, p. 7). Another issue the book addresses is the society of consumption since people in World State do not create anything new; they only consume products and goods (Huxley, 2020). Though these issues are not yet typical of modern society, people have already started to prioritize technology over nature, and the amount of goods and services they consume grows every year.
The characters of the book depict several traits of modern society. Thus, Bernard Marks represents what gaining power may turn a person into. He is an alpha that looks like a person from a lower caste. He opposes society’s norms and values but changes his opinion after gaining power and respect (Huxley, 2020). Such behavior portrays him as a person who does not have morals to follow, so he easily betrays his interests for the sake of personal benefit. Another protagonist, John, opposes Bernard since he tries to fight the social norms and kills himself when he understands that nothing will change. Hence, the book addresses issues relevant to modern society and contains a lot of food for thought.
Reference
Huxley, A. (2020). Brave new world: Aldous Huxley’s most popular dystopian classic novel. Prabhat Prakashan.