Are the citizens of the Brave New World happy?

English A2

Brave New World Essay Assignment

The Brave New World is full of happy people. But are these people truly happy or are they just happy because they don’t know any better? An ordinary citizen of the Brave New World will enjoy his life, taking soma whenever it’s necessary to feel better. The dialogue between World Controller Mustapha Mond and John the Savage sums up this behavior: "And there's always soma to calm your anger, to reconcile you to your enemies, to make you patient and long-suffering. In the past you could only accomplish these things by making a great effort and after years of hard moral training. Now, you swallow two or three half-gramme tablets, and there you are. Anybody can be virtuous now. You can carry at least half your morality about in a bottle. Christianity without tears-that's what soma is." (Pg. 217). However, when a character such as John the Savage with a completely different upbringing and education is introduced to the society, we begin to see the flaws in the system. The citizens of the Brave New World are happy only because they are engineered to be that way. This is proved by Bernard’s behavior, John the Savage’s behavior and World Controller Mustapha Mond’s statements.

One of the main problems of today’s society is the gap between different socioeconomic classes. The ingenious caste system of the Brave New World tackles this problem perfectly. The government decides the adequate number of people in the castes. The basic problem and ingredient of capitalism, greed, is eliminated from the Brave New World by genetically engineering the embryos and the conditioning that each individual goes through during childhood. This means almost perfect equality within the castes. The World State’s theory behind conditioning can be seen in this statement made by the Director of Hatcheries and Conditioning: "And that," put in the Director sententiously, "that is the secret of happiness and virtue—liking what you’ve got to do. All conditioning aims at that: making people like their unescapable social destiny." People don’t have a reason to be greedy or unhappy, unless they happen to be one of the (un)lucky embryos that suffered some damage during the Bokanovsky process, such as Bernard.

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Bernard is constantly unhappy with the Brave New World. He is not an ordinary citizen: Bernard is an Alpha Plus male with a mind that can do some thinking on its own. He rarely resorts to soma when he is unhappy; he would much rather spend some time alone thinking of various unorthodox matters. His problem is the conflict between truth and happiness, between the ideals of the old world and the ones of the World State. Bernard seeks the truth but the World State has been built in such a way that acquiring emotional or empirical truth is impossible. After an Orgy-Porgy party, Bernard’s companion asks him whether he liked the event or not: “Wasn’t it wonderful?” said Fifi Bradlaugh. “Wasn’t it simply wonderful?” She looked at Bernard with an expression of rapture, but of rapture in which there was no trace of agitation or excitement – for to be excited is still to be unsatisfied.” … “Yes, I thought it was wonderful,” he lied and looked away; the sight of her transfigured face was at once an accusation and an ironical reminder of his own separateness.” (Pg. 76) Bernard knows that true happiness is the result of freedom, not slavery, and he sees this freedom in John the Savage who was brought up in the Reservation. When Bernard is sent to Iceland, John, who has been brought to the Brave New World from the Reservation, continues the struggle against slavery that Bernard started.

John is introduced to the Brave New World by Bernard. He was an outsider in the Reservation in which he had previously lived in because of his mother. He is also rejected by the World State because of his different beliefs. John's growing revulsion against everything in the World State finally propels him into a direct confrontation with it. After his mother’s death in a hospital, he attacks a group of Bokanovsky children waiting for their daily soma ration, "'But do you like being slaves?' the Savage was saying as they entered the Hospital. His face was flushed, his eyes bright with ardour and indignation. 'Do you like being babies? Yes, babies. Mewling and puking,' he added, exasperated by their bestial stupidity into throwing insults at those he had come to save. Grief and remorse, compassion and duty—all were forgotten now and, as it were, absorbed into an intense overpowering hatred of these less-than-human monsters. 'Don't you want to be free and men? Don't you even understand what manhood and freedom are?'" (Pg. 194). John’s attitude towards the Bokanovsky children is understandable. The people in his reservation appreciated art and science. They had good times and they also had bad times but most importantly they had freedom, even if it was only inside the Reservation. John is horrified by the Brave New World because its citizens are slaves to the society, even though the citizens themselves don’t realize it and therefore are not affected by it. In a discussion with Mustapha Mond, John is told that in the World State happiness means comfort. John, however, disagrees with Mond’s view oh happiness and presents his own: "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.": (pg. 219). Here the Savage explains the old world reasoning. He asserts that true life requires exposure to all things, good and evil, and this is what makes his happiness feel so much greater than the conditioned substitute.

Mustapha Mond’s definition of happiness is the same as of the World State’s. It differs from the old world definition; When speaking of happiness, Mond refers to the immediate gratification of every citizen’s desire for food, sex, drugs, nice clothes and other consumer items. Any needs the citizens have are catered by the World State and the people are made to not have any needs that would be difficult to fulfill. However, John and Bernard do have these needs just like Mustapha Mond himself. Mond keeps forbidden literature in his safe and knows Shakespeare’s plays and advanced physics. Mond sees no real moral or ethical issue in sacrificing art and religion for happiness. In a conversation with John the Savage, Mond compares the World State to John’s view of the world which he derived from the Reservation and Shakespeare’s works: "Our world is not the same as Othello's world. You can't make flivvers without steel—and you can't make tragedies without social instability. The world's stable now. People are happy; they get what they want, and they never want what they can't get“…”And if anything should go wrong, there's soma. Which you go and chuck out of the window in the name of liberty, Mr. Savage. Liberty!” “Expecting Deltas to know what liberty is! And now expecting them to understand Othello! My good boy!”… “But that's the price we have to pay for stability. You've got to choose between happiness and what people used to call high art." (Pg. 201). Mond admits that the citizens of the Brave New World are happy because they are engineered to be that way.

All of these examples demonstrate that the people in the Brave New World are conditioned to accept their social destiny and made to feel good about it. An individual who differs from the stereotype will immediately feel like an outsider in the society, with the exception of Mustapha Mond. Mond is a different case though, because he is the one making the decisions so he has to be above the others’ level of intelligence. However, the thesis doesn’t apply to today’s society because in reality things are much more complicated than it seems in the book the Brave New World.