Compare the ways in which Aldous Huxley in Brave New World and Anthony Burgess in A Clockwork Orange present control in society.

Compare the ways in which Aldous Huxley in ‘Brave New World’ and Anthony Burgess in ‘A Clockwork Orange’ present control in society.

Aldous Huxley’s ‘Brave New World’, published in 1932, is a dystopian novel set in England in the year 2540 or, as it is referred to in the novel, 632 years ‘After Ford’. This relates to 632 years after Henry Ford successfully produced the ‘Model T’, which was the first car to be made by mass production methods such as conveyor-belt assembly, mirrored by the conveyor-belt methods of creating human life in Huxley’s dystopia. Huxley wrote ‘Brave New World’ in the years leading up to the second world war; it was his response to the widespread fear of Americanisation present in Europe. Huxley visited America between September 1925 and June 1926 and this visit made him pessimistic about the cultural future of Europe. He believed that ‘the future of America is the future of the world’ and the future he saw was one of material consumption. It is clear that the ‘World State’ in ‘Brave New World’ was Huxley’s satire on the global diffusion of the American way of life.

Anthony Burgess’ ‘A Clockwork Orange’, published in 1962, is a dystopian novel set in an early 21st century England which has suffered a terrible breakdown of law and order. Burgess’ novel captures the anti-mechanistic spirit of the 60’s culture and was targeted at the American psychologist B.F. Skinner who believed that his work on behaviour modification in animals could be applied to humans. Burgess felt that the work threatened the freedom of individual choice; he was also disturbed by a new behaviourist method of reforming criminals which is reflected greatly in the novel. Burgess’s underlying moral dilemma portrayed in the novel is, is it better for a man to be bad than be conditioned to be good? He conveys this in the novel through the prison Chaplain who says:

‘when a man cannot choose he ceases to be a man.’

In Huxley’s dystopia, control is established straight away even before the dystopia’s citizens are born or, in the case of the novel, ‘hatched’ through biological engineering. The bottles, which move along a Fordian assembly line, have replaced the womb and each of the embryos are conditioned, through factors such as temperature, into a pre destined social role. The conditioning continues through infancy in the form of sleep teaching. Conditioning as a form of control is also used in ‘A Clockwork Orange’; Alex is conditioned with a combination of drugs which he believes are vitamins but are in fact used to make him feel nausea and through being shown violent films at the time he feels sick. Burgess targeted his novel at the founder of this type of operant conditioning B.F. Skinner. This control is different to Huxley’s as the control on Alex in Burgess’ novel is a physical control, his body is being conditioned to respond in a negative way to violence but his thoughts about violence have not changed as is stated in the novel by Dr Branon:

‘Violence is a very horrible thing. That’s what you’re learning now. Your body is learning it’

However, in ‘Brave New World’ it is actually the thought patterns of the citizens that are conditioned through ‘hypnopaedia’,

‘Till at last the child’s mind is these suggestions, and the

sum of the suggestion is the child’s mind.’

Drugs are also used in Huxley’s dystopia as a form of control. The use of ‘soma’ in Huxley’s novel is to keep unhappiness at bay and when Bernard refuses to take the soma that is offered to him by Lenina stating he would rather be:

‘Myself and ...

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‘Violence is a very horrible thing. That’s what you’re learning now. Your body is learning it’

However, in ‘Brave New World’ it is actually the thought patterns of the citizens that are conditioned through ‘hypnopaedia’,

‘Till at last the child’s mind is these suggestions, and the

sum of the suggestion is the child’s mind.’

‘Myself and nasty. Not somebody else, however jolly.’

She later asks him:

‘why you don’t take soma when you have these dreadful ideas of yours. You’d forget all about them. And instead of feeling miserable, you’d be jolly.’

There is also the use of ‘Malthusian drill’, a type of birth control which all women are required to take to keep their fertility under control and they are also required to take ‘Pregnancy surrogate’ when they reach a certain age to stop them from feeling broody.

Drugs are also used to control the growth and development aspects of embryos in Huxley’s dystopia. This is shown strongly with ‘Bokanovsky’s process’ a process mass producing humans in clone form,

‘standard Gammas, unvarying Deltas, uniform Elipsons.’

Huxley’s use of adjectives here mirrors the standardised ‘Bokanovsky process’.Huxley refers to the embryos in the process as ‘batches’, reinforcing the mass production theme that runs throughout Brave New World and reinforcing the dehumanising aspect of the process.

The use of ‘soma’ in Brave New World is mirrored as a recreational drug in ‘Moloko plus’ in A Clockwork Orange. ‘Soma’ may be a play on the Swedish word somna meaning to drowse or fall asleep as soma has a relaxing effect on the user and places them in a dream like state. ‘Moloko plus’ is ‘milk plus something else’ and in the case of Alex and his friends is ‘milk with knives in it’ this is more of a amphetamine type of drug as it ‘would sharpen you up’. The difference between the two drugs in the novels is that ‘soma’ is issued by the ‘World State’ to control the feelings of its citizens whereas ‘Moloko plus’ is used by choice as it is not yet illegal to use the chemicals that are put into this milk,

‘but there was no law yet against prodding some of the new veshches which they used to put in the old moloko,’

As seen from this quotation Burgess A Clockwork Orange uses a very distinct language which is know as ‘nadsat’ and although the language is essentially Anglo-American many of the words are of Slavic origin. The ‘nadsat’ language is used by Burgess to make the reader feel included in Alex’s world as the reader begins to understand the ‘nadsat’ language but is also able to create distance when used in violent sections on the novel as the reader is able to exclude themselves from Alex’s group as the reader themselves do not use the ‘nadsat’ language.

A Clockwork Orange’s is patterned like a musical form and its three part structure is common of an operatic aria. This is not accidental as Burgess’ love of classical music saw him aspiring to make his writing have the form of classical music. At the beginning of each part the question ‘What’s it going to be then?’ is posed, first by Alex then by the prison Chaplain then by Alex again. By doing this Burgess is showing the reader that parts one and three mirror one another like the ABA structure of an operatic aria. Alex encounters all the characters he victimised in part one but is now the victim of these characters. Music is an important part of the novel and is also used to represent Alex’s freedom from control. When his ability to choose is taken from him through conditioning he also looses his love for music

‘And then there I was, me who had loved music so much, crawling off the bed and going oh oh oh to myself,’

His love of music may also be seen as his human side therefore his loss of choice reflects the loss of his humanity.

Throughout A Clockwork Orange we have a first person narrative from Alex, which makes it a subjective account as Alex only describes what he feels sees and hears. However Alex’s repetition of the phrase ‘Your humble narrator’ makes the audience warm to him and, if not trust him, feel sorry for him. This narrative is mainly in the past tense although in the last few paragraphs he switches to the present tense allowing the reader to feel as though they are now watching him through this turning point in his life.

Brave New World however is written in third person from an all knowing narrator’s point of view in the past tense. This means that the reader has an objective view point of the story and an insight into each of the characters’ thoughts. The main action of the plot occurs over the course of one year but the flashbacks span nearly a life time from when Linda was abandoned on the savage reservation to some time after her death.

The main character is John although he is not introduced into the novel until chapter seven this allows the reader to gain a full unquestioned insight into the dystopia. Until this point the main focus is on Bernard but once John is introduced the focus is on him until the end of the novel. Huxley uses John to show the reader the flaws in the ‘World States’ society as the reader can relate readily to him.

Huxley presents control in a much darker way than Burgess as the characters in Huxley’s dystopia do not realise that they are unable to make choices for themselves and do not understand that they are being totally controlled by the ‘World State’. The citizens’ constant consumption of material goods to keep the economy running smoothly is highly controlled and so is what the citizens can and cannot read. By removing literary works from the dystopia, the ‘World State’ is able to keep emotions under control, and by removing emotions from a community it will make the population predictable and stable. Although emotions like love are removed from society through conditioning the case of John and Linda shows that sometimes emotions are stronger than conditioning, Linda feels the shame of having a child and being a mother that her conditioning makes her feel and takes it out on a young John

‘He shut his eyes, expecting the blow.

But she didn’t hit him. After a little time he opened his eyes again and saw that she was looking at him. Suddenly she put her arms around him and kissed him again and again.’

However the act of hugging and kissing John and showing mercy for him tells the reader that Linda’s conditioning cannot over power a mothers feelings for their offspring. The apparent constant happiness which keeps the society running smoothly is also a very dark element since soma has taken away the right to be unhappy or have unhappy thoughts. In Burgess’ novel, although the violence is abundant, the control element in the novel is definitely not as disturbing as Alex knows what has happened to him. The citizens in Brave New World, although aware that they are conditioned, as most of them work in the ‘Hatchery and Conditioning Centre’ and take some part in the conditioning process, are conditioned not to question their lack of choice and their conditioning. Alex, however, is still able to make choices and although his choices about violent acts or sexual desires after he has been conditioned are controlled by the violent sickness he feels, he is still able to freely think of these things, unlike the citizens of Brave New World as their conditioning does not allow them to think freely. Alex is controlled by more than the government in A Clockwork Orange, he is also controlled by F. Alexander and his group. When they hear of the pain he feels when hearing classical music they try to make him kill himself and although this is partly due to F. Alexander realising who Alex is, it is also to make a point to the government for their cause.