The Brave New World is a place of forced, perpetual conditioning aimed at making people feel a certain way, or changing, and alternating the way people already think, and feel, therefore clearly keeping them bound to a relatively narrow minded life. Citizens of the Brave New World are not only kept from knowing, but they’re also made to not want to know or care. They are predestined and given a caste as soon as they are decanted giving them absolutely no choices at all, and the complete lack of ability to be free to make any decisions. Citizens of the Brave New World don’t know any better, purely because of the plentiful amount of conditioning received. They are always happy with what they are caste as; not realizing that they could be something better, thus keeping them tied to the same line of work all their lives.
“Alpha Children wear grey. They work much harder than we do, because they’re so frightfully clever. I’m really awfully glad I’m a Beta, because I don’t work so hard…” (Huxley, Aldous Pg.21)
They are ignorant to such an unbelievable extent that they couldn’t lead an independent life or ever be able make decisions of their own, keeping people, as individuals, remotely far from being free.
The Savage Reservation may not be a place where a baby is born and then predestined for life, but surely, a person that goes through life in the reservation, adapts ideas, and thoughts that change their outlook on life, not entirely by means of themselves. They are still conditioned in someway, particularly by other people, the society around them, and influence, “You mean you wanted to be hit with that whip”(Huxley, Aldous Pg. 96). Considering the aspects of freedom, John and the people of the savage reservation are advantageous in that they have choices that they can make. People of the society play a large roll to make John feel a certain way about Malpais, Pookong, Jesus, the “sacrifice” and how he believes that it helps “to make the rain come, and the corn grow” (Huxley, Aldous Pg. 96) etc. Although, he does have the advantage of knowing what goes on around him, therefore, he can actually go against it, or choose not to consider it as true.
John, whilst in the Brave New World experienced feelings he had never felt before, feelings he was sickened by, and didn’t quite understand. He felt that things were done way too easily involving no effort at all. People of the Brave New World had never, nor would ever experience pain, and he didn’t think that was right, “What you need is tears for a change, nothing costs enough here” (Huxley, Aldous Pg. 196). People were happy all the time and “then if anything would go wrong, there would always be soma” (Huxley, Aldous Pg. 180), this was an extremely quick and easy way to solve problems that people could never face. He wondered why religion didn’t exist, and didn’t understand why people didn’t know of god. “But, isn’t it natural to feel there’s a god?” (Huxley, Aldous Pg. 192). He was away from the reservation, and people of that society, although, he had been so well conditioned to believe what they believed that his conscious still wouldn’t let him free.
In conclusion, I can see two completely contrasting worlds, different in every way, still having some unobserved similarities. Indirect conditioning, and intentional conditioning probably have the same impact on people, although, having the privilege that citizens of the reservation have, that being, knowing there’s an alternative to every situation, is the distinction in which makes me believe that John is still freer than citizens of the Brave New World.
Bibliography
Huxley, Aldous. “Brave New World”, Longman Group Ltd., England.
