Compare Aldous Huxley's and John Wyndham's visions of society in 'Brave New World' and 'The Day of the Triffids'.

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Compare Aldous Huxley’s and John Wyndham’s visions of society in ‘Brave New World’ and ‘The Day of the Triffids’

‘Brave New World’ by Aldous Huxley and ‘The Day of the Triffids’ by John Wyndham are both futuristic science fiction novels. Aldous Huxley and John Wyndham have very different visions of the future, which have been affected immediately by their experience of life at the time they wrote. This essay will compare the visions that are foreseen.

In ‘Brave New World’ and ‘The Day of the Triffids’ there are certain themes that can be compared these are the use of technology to control society and the dangers of being alienated in these societies. ‘Brave New World’ presents a shocking view of the future, which on the surface appears almost comical and unbelievable. Yet when Aldous Huxley wrote the novel humour was never intended.  ‘Brave New World’ was written during the 1930’s at the time when Hitler was coming to power in Europe. The idea of a totalitarian state with a one man government coming to power was not totally strange to him or the world. Huxley is therefore influenced by this to visualise a very dark future.

         On the surface, ‘The Day of the Triffids’ appears to be an exciting thriller yet John Wyndham’s vision is of the dark future followed by hope this is based on a belief in mankind. The book was written in a devastated World-Post Hitler and post Second World War, where the complete absence of any infrastructure throughout Europe had caused turmoil, displaced people and massive shortages. John Wyndham’s view of the future is as dark as Huxley’s. He sees the Triffids as the plant equivalent of the atom bomb created by humans, but unlike Huxley his view of the future encompasses hope. ‘The Day of the Triffids’ creates a sense of isolation and terror in a post-apocalyptic England where the surviving blinded populations are slowly being picked off one by one by the marauding Triffids.

Huxley’s world embraces the future as though the population have become mindless robots. The stability of the world is held together through a combination of biological engineering and exhaustive conditioning. The millions of standardised citizens, sharing only ten thousand surnames, have not been born, but ‘hatched’ to fill their predestined roles in society.  The use of Technology to control society is illustrated in the control of reproduction through technological and medical intervention, including the surgical removal of ovaries. This is known as the ‘Bokanovsky’s Process’.

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‘Bokanovsky’s Process is one of the major instruments of social stability!’

This quotation shows the fact that the reason that the society that people are living today is so stable is because they are controlled by a major instrument, which is technology. The entire idea of Huxley’s civilisation is that it is totalitarian. This quote therefore shows that the entire civilisation lacks identity, and the Bokanovsky’s Process makes the population easier to handle, because they are so idealistic and customised, that they can only think what they have been taught in their conditioning.

‘And that, put ...

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