“O brave new world, that has such people in 't!”

            Brave New World, a dystopian novel by Aldous Huxley, presents the audience with a futuristic world with a totalitarian society. The story starts with the Director of Hatcheries and conditioning and his assistant Henry foster giving a group of students a tour of the factor, which produces thousands of identical human embryos to produce functional members for future generations. The group later proceeds to the nursery, where a crowd of Delta infants is programmed to dislike books, so they would not develop thoughts that they are not preconditioned to have; they are programmed to dislike flowers, so they would not see the nature in their free time, which is free, they will be eager consumers. The group meets Mustapha Bonds, one of the ten world controllers, as he explains to the students to make everyone happy, intense emotions, art, history, and human relationships are wiped out from the society. Meanwhile, an attractive girl, Lenina, confesses to her colleague that she is attracted to Bernard Marx, who is usually considered weird. Lenina and Bernard decide to travel to one of the Savage Reservations still left in the world. Bernard Marx requests permission from his superior, the Director. As the Director permits Bernard to travel to the reservation, he tells Bernard a story: several years ago, the Director traveled to the reservation with a girl; they encountered a thunderstorm, and the girl was lost; no one ever found her. Before Bernard departs, he hears from his friend Helmholtz that the Director is irritated by Bernard’s usual unsocial behaviors and decided to send him to Iceland when he returns from his trip. After Bernard and Lenina arrived at the reservation, Lenina is disgusted by the savages’ diseases, hideous appearance, and irrational traditions. Bernard and Lenina encountered a savage who has unusual light-colored skin named John. John tells them his mother is rescued by the local villagers twenty years ago and he is excluded from the village’s activities due to his mother’s promiscuous behaviors from the civilized society. Bernard realizes John must be the son of the Director and the lost girl the Director told him about. Bernard brings John and his mother Linda back to the civilized society as a tool to humiliate the Director thus the Director would resign from his position. Now back to the “Brave New World” he has always been eager to see, John feels uncomfortable rather than relieved. He is overwhelmed by the unoppressed behaviors driven by his desire and the fact human relationships are completely discarded. After witnessing his mother’s death in the hospital, he rages and urged a group of Deltas to throw out their soma. His action causes the police to arrest him and bring him to the office of Mustapha Mond. After debating about the laws of the society, John decides he refuses to accept a society like this. He takes a lighthouse among the mountains as his hermitage and attempts to purify himself. He was soon discovered by the citizens of the society; thousands of people came to the lighthouse to watch John whip himself. Lenina appears among the citizens, John screams “Kill it! Kill it!” The scene triggers the mechanism preconditioned inside the citizens, causing them to all take a part in sexual intercourse as well as John. When John wakes up the next morning, he is horrified by his sin and then hangs himself.

            When I first started reading the novel, I expected the author to have a clear standing point that the traditional society where everyone holds a moral value is better than the future society he envisioned. However, Aldous Huxley creates a world where there’s no satisfying form of society. In a civilized society, all passion human possesses are eliminated to have a “stable” society. Everyone seems happy yet it makes one wonder are you truly happy? Or is it that only their primitive instincts are satisfied. In the Savage Reservations, the savages hold their moral standards as a weapon. They impose their standards on other people, just like in the current society, and expect others to behave as how they want. They abuse Linda, and they isolate John, just because they cannot accept her “unmoral” behaviors.

            “Who took the shot?”

            “I can’t see, he stands on the moral high ground, under the sun.”

            Aldous also asks us a question, are we supposed to give up what makes us suffer. The answer seems rather easy. Mustapha Mond tells John, that humans now do not even need to experience dangers, they could simply inject the adrenaline humans need instead of experiencing the intense events that were supposed to bring passion into human life “without all the inconveniences”. Are humans really supposed to trade in disease, suffering, and old age for eternal happiness?

            “We prefer to do things comfortably.”

            “But I don't want comfort. I want God, I want poetry, I want real danger, I want freedom, I want goodness, I want sin.”

            Perhaps we should accept things could make us suffer, because we once have devoted to and loved them.

            “I claim all of them.”