Novel Analysis: Brave New World

Novel Analysis: Brave New World

Life is not always easy, and humans are not always supposed to be happy. Sometimes everyone wishes that everything could just be uniform and simple, but Aldous Huxley shows that this can be devastating to a society. His novel, Brave New World opens in the Central London Hatching and Conditioning Centre. In the book there are two clashing worlds, the World State and the Reservation. Along with the plot and setting, the characters show a totalitarian society. The book has two main characters, Bernard and John, which help demonstrate how free thinking is not tolerated in the World State. The setting, plot, and characterization in Brave New World by Aldous Huxley exhibit the effects of a totalitarian society.

To begin, the setting takes place in two polar opposite worlds around 2540. The first one is the World State. The World State is a dictatorship: a static, efficient, totalitarian welfare-state. The government controls all of the people through a drug, soma. Once, a person has soma, it is nearly impossible for them not to have it. The citizens of the World State participate in sex, as if it is just a recreational activity. Since there is a freedom of sex, there are many abortion clinics and two-thirds of the women are sterile. Babies are born in test tubes, instead of the traditional way. Thinking is not only non-existent, but it makes you a savage. The other world is the reservation. The Indians live on a reservation, which is where John lives. One of the betas, which is one of the five castes in the World State, got pregnant and had John. In the outside world, free thought is expected, and morals exist.