Brave New World: Themes

Dystopia

A dystopia is a world or society, typically a post-apocalyptic or a totalitarian one, ravaged by great inequality or misery. The “civilized” London in the novel is in fact a dystopia, where human beings are not born naturally, but are manufactured in laboratories and segregated into hierarchical social classes. Once they are sorted into classes, the embryos are trained to become cogs in the wheel of an industrial, technology-led, and highly controlled civilization. By focusing on the theme of dystopia, the novel overturns common conceptions of civility and barbarity.

The novel also represents Huxley’s concerns with Europe’s rapid industrialization and also focuses on the problem of overpopulation.

Human Impulse

The novel explores the concept of human impulse by focusing on the theme of civility. It depicts a “civilized” world where all individuals are controlled, monitored, and forced to live predestined lives. They are discouraged by conditioning to disregard emotions altogether. People in touch with the emotional aspect of their lives are labelled “misfits.” In effect, the civilized world aims to control and eventually eradicate the human impulse to feel and probe emotions.

At the beginning of the novel, Bernard Marx is ostracized because people suspect he is emotional. Lenina Crowne eventually falls in love with John, a “savage,” despite being conditioned to disregard love.

Bernard’s emotional impulses become stronger when he is shunned by his colleagues; he finds solace in being different and thinking differently than his peers. However, Lenina finds it difficult to acknowledge her own individuality.

Through the course of the novel, Watson realizes that life in the civilized world does not aid creative experiences. As a writer, he finds himself restrained by his conditioning. Toward the end, he is happy to be banished to the Falkland Islands, so he can write with more freedom. In the end, his impulse for creative expression outweighs the effects of extensive social conditioning.

Though John is described as a savage, he is the character who most resembles real-world humans. Nonetheless, toward the end of the novel, he rapes and kills Lenina, and through this Huxley seems to suggest that not all human impulses are good. In addition, the incident also shows that the pursuit of civility should be encouraged if it can discourage bad impulses while preserving and nurturing the good ones.

Community, Identity, Stability

This is a basic tenet of the civilized world depicted in the book. It suggests that one cannot live meaningfully without pursuing a sense of community, social identity, and stability. Nonetheless, the community depicted in the book is deeply hierarchical, and humans are “trained” to not question the status quo, or their own lowly social standing.

In addition, humans are actively discouraged from thinking of themselves as individuals; they exist for the community and are mere cogs in the machinery of civilization. Stability, as Mustapha Mond explains, is achieved by regulating art and science. Humans are taught to value stability over happiness, beauty, and freedom. Bernard Marx and Helmholtz Watson are misfits because they are individualistic.