The world state created by Aldous Huxley (1932) is an upside-down world led by a Director of Hatcheries and Conditioning. In this altered world; life is conditioned to maintain happiness in everyone’s life. Under the Director’s authority, the world state’s population is breed; babies are born in lab through artificial mothers. The babies are created in five castes (Alphas, Betas, Gammas, Deltas and the Epsilon). These babies are conditioned to think and be happy all the time. They hypnotized to be good; at what they do. The main rule on this Utopian world is every one should be happy.
History and arts are forbidden because history can make people learn about the past; and they can learn; how evil or bad things have taken place in the past. People are free to choose their sexual partners without having the feeling of sin or guilt. Diseases are nonexistent, however the idea of aging and death are not fearful, instead they are made pleasant. All this happiness is produced through taking soma, a drug that calms its people to pursue happiness. The idea of preventing citizens from any upsetting experience is ironically sad, but they do what they have to do not to get sad.
The brave new world is a world of absolute happiness and dream far from reality that makes it a Utopian novel. The citizens of Utopia have common appearances and common interests. A common characteristic is control to prevent differences. The Alphas are the most intelligent and respectable class; they are considered perfect in every way. Bernard Marx, one of the Alphas turns out to feel different from the rest of the Alphas. Bernard is different and physically, he’s small and he feels dissatisfied of his life in Utopia. He doesn’t find happiness the way rest of Utopian citizens feel.
For Bernard, there is nothing delightful about casual sex. Other citizens think that he might have been mistreated somehow; when he was embryo. At first Bernard cherish his uniqueness, but later feels outcast and discomfort. Unfortunately Bernard doesn’t have the courage to fight for his right as an individual. Bernard finds happiness in an uncivilized place that is nothing like Utopia. However despite all induced happiness, citizen yearn for freedom, as they do not relish the idea of induced freedom and happiness. Other than Bernard, a citizen who has his own free will is Helmholtz Watson.
He is a friend of Bernard, also an Alpha, who is not satisfied with his –so-called– perfect life. Helmholtz is successful in sports, sex and community activities. His job is to turn out propaganda that is not quite challenging comparing to his capability. He knows that the world must have better literature than propaganda. He is given punishment but instead of becoming sad, he takes the punishment as a chance to live with non-Utopian citizens to stimulate his writing. Again a yearning for having some thing of his own, even its pain
The study of the novel and especially above characters shows that Huxley model is based on control. However he seems to reach the conclusion that each individual has special role to play in the society; which can be improved through proper training and control. Huxley lived in a time of chaos and confusion, it was natural for him to come up with a solution that may seem totalitarian in nature, but at least creates a Utopian model where even though individual liberty is lost; peace prevail at the cost of losing freedom. Reference: Aldous Huxley , Brave New World . Harper Perennial Modern Classics, 1998.