series of events, Bernard uses the curiosity of the society to his
advantage, fulfilling his subconscious wish of becoming someone
important; a recognized name in the jumble of society. This ends when
the curiosity of others ends, and as a supreme result of his arrogant
behaviour, he is exiled. The instigator of this curiosity as
well as the author of Bernard's fame (and folly), is an outsider know
as the Savage. The Savage is brought in from outside of the utopian
society by Bernard as an experiment. He faces "civilized
society" with a bright outlook, but eventually comes to hate it
bitterly. Lenina, the supporting role of the novel, is the most
pronounced example of the ideal citizen. She adheres to the principles
of the society without so much as a second thought. In the
utopian society that Huxley presents, everyone is happy. There are no
differences. Everyone is brought up to be happy, and most do not even
know what sadness or anger is. All is cured artificially through
surrogates or drugs. Even happiness alone is not unique to the
individual. Soma, the hallucinatory drug, the 'perfect drug' that is
used by all, even induces the same kind of happiness. The only variant
is to what extent this happiness overwhelms the user (one or two
half-gramme tablets?). "Everybody belongs to everyone
else" (127) is the basic psychology of the society. This suggests
that an individual owes everything to society, but society in turn
owes everything to him or her. This applies to all. No one capitalises
on the efforts of others and no one performs excessive manual labour
for minimum wage. Everyone is the same. In Huxley's perfect
world, sex is a mundane undertaking. It happens to each individual
almost every night. And no one knows what marriage is. They simply
have each other and move on. All for one and one for all. Everyone is
the same in bed. The inhabitants of this society are not given
any sort of mental flexibility. If you spend time alone, or think, you
are considered strange, and are considered an outcast. Nobody wishes
for this, and so correspondingly nobody commits this unspeakable
crime. Everyone goes out at night with a different partner, or takes a
few grammes of soma and goes to bed for a soma-holiday. Nothing new,
nothing different. Each person of this society has a
predestined future. They all develop in their fetal stages inside a
jar, where they are provided with their needs, are vaccinated against
all known diseases. Also, special treatments are performed to aid in
the mental growth (or standstill) of the individual after 'birth',
according to their future occupation. "The first of a
batch of two hundred and fifty embryonic rocket-plane engineers was
just passing the eleven hundredth metre mark on Rack 3. A special
mechanism kept their containers in constant rotation. `To improve
their sense of balance,' Mr Foster explained. `Doing repairs on the
outside of a rocket in mid air is a ticklish job. We slacken off the
circulation when they're right way up, so that they're half starved,
and double the flow of surrogate when they're upside down. They learn
to associate topsy- turvydom with well being; in fact, they're only
truly happy when they're standing on their heads." (32)
All two hundred and fifty beings will be the same - they will look
alike, talk alike, act alike, have the same job, and generally be the
same people inside different media. One never knows which is which.
After birth, all children are mentally conditioned to think and
act with the same motives. Through hypnopaedia, all of the basic rules
of the society are learned by the children, and they learn to repeat
and obide by these rules. There are no chances for anyone to
develop any differences. Or if they do, they are exiled so that they
cannot influence those around them. Nothing changes, including the
government and the lifestyle of the inhabitants. Last and most
importantly, the Bokanovsky method of reproducing causes great numbers
of genetically identical human beings (up to 96 at a time from a
single egg alone). As well, the same ovary can be used to produce over
seventeen thousand individuals with the same basic genetic background.
Everyone is the same. Same birth, same upbringing, same lifestyle. Any
differences are remedied immediately. Huxley presents the
ultimate in utopian societies. But nobody is open for mental growth.
All are limited to set barriers. Although this would appear a perfect
society at first, it becomes obvious later on in the novel that the
race will no longer evolve. Nobody will have new ideas. Nobody will
improve on society. Nothing will change. This is not what the human
race desires. It desires to acquire knowledge, unceasingly and
neverendingly. Without this advantage, we will go mad.