Revisiting Brave New World

In my last blog, I talked about Huxley’s persuading that individual thought is like a cancer for the proverbial “social body” of Brave New World. In this post, I’d take that both forwards and backwards, and propose that Huxley persuades not that individual thought acts as this cancer, but individuality in a much broader sense. Additionally, the social body of the World State must do whatever is required to ensure the survival of the body.

The Director most adequately describes the danger to the World State which comes from individuality, stating, “’Unorthodoxy threatens more than the life of a mere individual; it strikes at society itself’” (137). Most slyly, Huxley places in the metaphor of the snake, in saying that unorthodoxy “strikes” society. This metaphor plays a key role in the understanding of how much this society relies upon uniformity. The proverbial snake of individuality can, at times, slither in unnoticed, and wreak havoc on the World State, first causing the body to panic, then, if the snake is allowed to “bite” the metaphorical body, causing widespread damage. Because of the immense danger individuality poses to the society as a whole.

Due to the danger associated with individuality, those in power within this society must act quickly and swiftly to remove anyone whose independence of thought and action may pose a threat to the stability of the society. Because of this, the Director quickly acts when he sees Bernard becoming too independent, and states that “’In Iceland he will have small opportunity to lead others astray by his unfordly example”’ (139). Bernard’s punishment is to be removed, so much like the cancer he could be to this social body, and placed somewhere else, in a sterile container full of others like him, where the cancer can’t spread to “civilized” society. That society removes Bernard as opposed to just killing him says a lot – the stability is so fragile, they have to make everything seem well and good for the lower castes, going to Iceland to them just seems like a change of location, not the punishment it’s intended to be. They must, at all costs, maintain the outward appearance of being completely stable in ideals and the human makeup of the upper division of humanity, lest the lower division become restless and follow those with ideas contrary to the hypnopædic teachings of the Conditioning Centre.

Truly, the rights of the individual fall under the pressure to keep society stable, which the Director most adequately describes when he says “’It is better one should suffer than that many should be corrupted’” (137). More than characterizing the mindset of the Director, this statement characterizes the society as a whole. Where, especially in our society, the “one” has a high value, especially for those close to the proverbial “one,” this society places stability of the many above the comfort and wellbeing of any one person, or even a small group of individuals, those with differing viewpoints are treated as well as any malignant cancer can be expected to be treated - - with hostility and the intent to remove the tumor as quickly and efficiently as possible. For Linda, the doctors let her drug herself to death on soma, for Helmholtz and Bernard, those in charge shipped them away, to a place where others like them lived, but couldn’t touch the social body.

Truly, more than anything else, this society focuses on smashing down individuality, and making the overall body of people as much like one continuous person as possible. From the very beginning, this is so. The lower castes are made up of so many identical people, hundreds upon hundreds genetically identical, and thousands upon thousands genetically related. Then, all people from each caste are engineered mentally, to have the same thought processes, the same intellectual identity. And, finally, they take away the intellectual free time of each individual in the society, balancing just enough work with just enough play, supplementing that play with soma, so no one has the time or forethought to really even think about why society acts the way it does, or who they are individually. Most certainly, Huxley aims to point out how each individual truly is just a cell in the body, and those with the mentality and thought to act as individuals are the better off for it. They are sent to places where other like them exist, where intellectuality and thought and creativity exist, and where they can be themselves, free of the rigorous hypnopædia and conditioning which takes away the beauty from the world, and replaces it with infantile gratification, instant happiness, and general stagnancy of being. (774 words)