Notice: Much of the previous posts are currently being edited and refined for your viewing pleasure.
With that out of the way, on with the show.
Intro
Hey, how’s a going people, guess what? IT'S THE FINALE OF DYSTOPIA SEASON!! “But dude, it’s the beginning of October!” some of you may say, yeah well I bet you weren’t having your frail body, mind, and soul get butchered by the meat grinder known as university (and if you are I do apologize, but I digress). Anyway, if the “subtle” references in the previous posts and the bloody title hadn’t already tipped you off, the final post is going to be about the other novel that immortalized the dystopian novel into our collective minds: Brave New World. Aldous Huxley had taken inspiration from other speculative fiction that was circulating at the time, particularly those of H.G. Wells. But whereas those books are all “centuries from now, the world is going to be a paradise, scientific progress is going to bring us eternal prosperity and turn us into gods” and scat like that, Huxley looks at them and says “...or WILL IT???”.
Plot Summary
The year is 2540 A.D., and on the surface, it doesn’t seem so bad. Every country’s borders have been done away with in favour of a global World State, there’s next to no crime, there’s next to no disease, people can now own their own helicopters, everyone travels by rocket jet, the state loves its citizens and the citizens love the world that they’ve created; that is save one. That where we come across Bernard Marx. The type of story or character that is pretty much akin to Belle in Disney’s Beauty and the Beast. You know the one, the classic “abnormal guy who isn’t content with the norms that his/her society has established and wants something more and because of this he/she can’t walk around town without someone being given awkward, if not condescending looks from everyone.” But hey at least they don’t make a song about it (Disclaimer: Beauty and the Beast has some fan-fracking-tastic songs). Now his only hope for true love, I mean happiness, lies in a magical castle full of sentient house-hold items, I mean a reservation of Indians where life is completely unlike what’s seen in Bernard’s world. Will he succeed in his search? I let you find out for yourself.
Analysis of the Nightmare World
It’s hard to comment on Brave New World without highlighting one of the most important aspects that contrasts it from the other texts that have been covered in Dystopia Season. 1984 and other texts were all the blatant, in your face, “look at us crushing your free will” kind of dystopia, BNW is fundamentally different because it presents the illusion that IT ISN’T. To further elaborate, 1984 and It Can’t Happen Here, the antagonists were very flagrant when it came to the despotic control, but unlike them, the control exercised here is quite subtle, that is if you were to spell subtle like that. Now you may ask “well what makes their control subtle?”. What makes a dystopia like 1984’s stick out like a sore thumb was that the world deprived us of the things that give us pleasure, whereas BNW forcefully shoves it down your throat. 1984 can be described as “a boot stamping on a human face - forever”, it’s the same premise with BNW except you’re completely oblivious to you face getting stamped on or are enjoying it because the boot has been smothered in cocaine. It’s so over-saturated with pleasure giving vanities and recreations to the point where you look at all your rights and freedoms, toss them away, set fire to the dumpster you put them in, raise your hands in the air proclaiming to the heavens “WHO GIVES A CRAP ABOUT THEM!!!”. And believe me when I say it possibly makes it even more disturbing. If you want more discomposing details about this ghastly society, please keep reading; and if you don’t…well you know how to close out the tab on the browser. The mastery that the ‘World Controllers’ have is exerted on the populace even before their born. Humans are not ‘born’ in the traditional sense; instead, they are grown in large hatcheries which allows the Controllers to create people in their own perverted image. It also creates the side effect that they can’t help but childishly scoff and laugh at the idea of parenthood and family, and rest assured it’ll make you an utter laughingstock. This is manifested in the form of a 5-tier caste system with the levels being labeled with the first 5 letters of the Greek alphabet, with ‘Alphas’ at the top, and ‘Epsilons’ at the bottom, where each caste determines the quality of the person and the role they play. Now, this may be considered a bad decision as it may create envy and strife among the classes, but unfortunately, they’ve covered that too. Contention within the caste system doesn’t appear at all because everybody is conditioned since their very first years on the planet to accept and enjoy the place they landed in, so you can’t help but look at everybody else’s position and sigh with relief that you're not in their place. Honestly, they’re like your stubborn parents: “YOU ARE GONNA EAT YOUR KALE AND YOU'RE GONNA LIKE IT!”; “YOU’RE GONNA LIVE YOUR LIFE AS A HALF-WITTED FACTORY WORKER AND YOU’RE GONNA BE HAPPY ABOUT IT!”. You see where I’m going with this? Conditioning is primarily taught through hypnopaedia, or sleep-teaching; which is basically nothing more than waiting until the children doze off and when they do recite a bunch of catchy slogans hundreds of times over the intercom to the point where they start following whatever dogma that blares from the speaker. What slogans do you ask? Oh, just stuff like this:
- “When the individual feels, the community reels”
-”Everyone belongs to everyone else”
-”More stitches equals less riches”
-”A gramme [a drug called Soma] is better than a d**n”
Who’s writing all of this scat, Dr. Seuss’ evil twin? Speaking of drugs I think this is the best time to show you the vanities and indulgences that are forced down their throats. Of course, we have the aforementioned government sponsored narcotic Soma, the frenzied consumerism, and so on. But by far the most sickening is the mandated promiscuity. Keeping with the idea of extreme collectivism, long-term relationships and chastity are seen as out-of-line, as with that any intimacy that possesses even an iota of good taste. So citizens are encouraged to jump from one salacious degenerate to the next like the depraved, wanton animals that the World State wants them to be. This principle is so extensive that even young children are taught to revel such corrupt activities. LET THAT SINK IN PEOPLE: A SOCIETY THAT THINKS THAT THE IDEA OF PARENTHOOD AND FAMILY IS DISGRACEFUL, BUT LICENTIOUS ACTIVITIES AMONG MINORS IS PERFECTLY OKAY!!!! NOT REALLY WHAT YOU CALL A UTOPIA EH?!?!
BUT WAIT, THERE’S MORE!! Religion has been completely abolished by the Controllers, but don’t worry they’ve got just the right replacement for you: a personality cult centered around (get a load of this) HENRY FRACKING FORD! I’m not kidding, they got everything: their own ‘religious’ iconography; deranged rituals; the use of terms such as “oh, for Ford's sake”; and as with every personality cult, Ford was a demigod that solved every problem in existence. Seriously, Adolf Hitler; Joseph Stalin; Mao Zedong; David Koresh; Jim Jones; and the GRAND COULEE DAM KIM DYNASTY IN NORTH KOREA ARE FRICKIN’ AMATEURS, COMPARED TO THIS!! But despite all of this, you can expect there’s going to be moments when horse dung hits the ceiling fan, when social stability becomes threatened because of disillusioned persons. One penalty that keeps the citizens in line is not brutal law enforcement, but instead, it’s isolation from the rest of the community. Being a society based upon hyper-collectivism, unorthodox behaviour is a sure fire way make yourself alone at the table so to speak (and to have the people sitting at all the other tables gossip about you with smug contempt). But in case there’s a whole mob who are fed up with how things are run, you can always count on a crack squad of gas mask wearing thugs, to settle things down with such brutal, savage weapons as, uh… aerosol cans filled with Soma, audio devices that politely tell people to calm down and get along with each other again, and anesthesia filled water pistols *breaks down into immature giggling*, I’m not kidding around when I say I can’t read about this and take it seriously, I just can’t. And if all else fails just exile them to the merciless, sadistic wasteland known as…
ICELAND *dun dun dunnnnn*
Is the nightmare a reality?
Out of all the visions of a world gone out-of-whack that have been presented on this blog, this one has got to be the one that we are the closest to. I’m not talking about some distant land on in the third world, I’m talking about our own western society. I’m mean come on, look at the world today and tell me it’s not full of frantic consumerism, drugs at every corner, celebrity idol worship, pervasive immorality, and every bloody thing in between! In fact, Huxley has even revisited the themes and principles in his text in his book Brave New World Revisited (this needless repetition is brought to by the Department of Redundancy Department!). In said book, he said that society was getting dangerously close to what he predicted, and for the record, that book came out in 1958! I’m pretty sure the state of the Western World today would have him rolling in his grave (and would have him in the Spirit World saying to every passerby “SEE!? I TOLD YOU!!!).
How does it fare as a novel
Minuses:
-Pacing could use some improvement; I mean the first several chapters are devoted to how new humans are grown and raised (hooray, I love exposition)
Pluses
-There’s a lot of rich detail about the culture and society
-The characters (and the story) go beyond the usual tropes and cliches to be found in the genre
-Well written and easy to follow
-Morals and principles that exposes other ways how tyrants and power-mongers can seize power
-The allusions to William Shakespeare are very cleverly used
-The debate between World Controller Mustapha Mond and John the Savage is the one of the most *lip smack* sublime things ever created
Verdict
An iambic pentameter out of five
And just like that Dystopia Season is at an end.
Wait a minute, this month is October, AND YOU KNOW WHAT THAT MEANS…
...HORROR MONTH!!!
