Communist/Marxist Influence and Connections in Brave New World
“The literary term utopia denotes an illusionary place that projects the notion of a perfect society to the reader”(“Utopia”). The definition, being more of a guideline to utopian novelists, none the less a utopian novel is no new idea. Utopian literary works contain blatant influence from The Bible, with the story of Adam and Eve.Too writers past the 1850’s there was a much bolder image that was constructed for novelists too receive influence from. One that aligned with utopianism; Marxism, and later there after Communism. The novel Brave New World, and the novelist Aldous Huxley, falling into the compartment of Marxist/Communist influenced. The events that took place within the
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Huxley was not able to be drafted into the army during the time of the Great War due to having an altercation with keratitis, resulting in total blindness for 18 months(“Biography”). Huxley had written Brave New World in Italy, in the 1930’s(“Biography”). A time where the socialist turned fascist, who like Marx had just been a writer in the newspaper, began to assert power, and this man being Benito Mussolini. Who would go to bring Italy under a horrible autocracy. With these stressful living conditions, and his frustrations toward the government climaxed too his satirical critique of said government with his writing in Brave New World. After writing the novel Huxley, the then pacifist, became part of the Pledge Peace Union. He turned his sights away from novels and chose to use essays as his medium to speak his mind and subsequently reflect(“Biography”). Some of these reflections were contained within his book Brave New World Revisited; as well as the foreword added years later to the newer editions of the copy of Brave New World. Within the new foreword Huxley states, “Today I feel no wish to demonstrate that sanity is impossible...” and also, “I have been told by an eminent academic critic that I am a sad symptom of the failure of an intellectual …show more content…
A similar thing to that which Bernard had to endure, all though in different ways. John only knew that he was an outsider in the land of outsider’s. He lived in the land of outsiders, on the ‘Savage Reservation’ where those who did not accept the “utopia’s” control had all ended up. But this reservation was one of the last major participation of this practice of reserving all the natives. The high government of Brave New World had all but conquered it. This detail of Huxley’s, being a sort of paradox, in that by the proper definition of it Utopian literature is, “An elaborate description of the geographic structures of the imaginary landscape by the native guides that familiarize the narrator to the ways through the region. He is an outsider to the utopian society, and harbors extensive skepticism regarding modern political, social, economic, or ethical problems” (“Utopia”). That fits John’s situation and the details around it to a tee, but this detail is both agreeable and in conflict to something that Marx had said. He did not want his form of socialism to be a utopia, because he realized that that is an unrealistic goal. Also he laid out groundwork that Lenin would then go and strive for and make the entire world communist, “A fight that each time, either in a revolutionary reconstitution of society at large, or in the common ruin of the
The soundbite criticisms of capitalism are legion, yet it’s harder to offer alternatives, aside from the vague notion of 'something else'. Despite the carnage of trying to socially engineer equality in the 20th century, nevertheless the myth persists that capitalist wealth creation is superfluous and money is readily available to a small number of elitists called a government under common ownership, who distribute, or simply print more paper. Ironically, the ones shouting the loudest against capitalism are often those dependent on the profits of capitalism to provide the welfare payments needed to keep them alive.
Brave New World by Aldous Huxley depicts a future world that has mechanized and removed all sense of life to being human. In this world, people work for the common good of the community and are conditioned to dislike what, today, we would consider common and healthy relationships with people and environments. The story follows a man, John, not born into the culture and his struggle with the unfamiliarity with the “Brave New World”. Published in 1932, Brave New World often leaves roots back to the world Aldous was in when he was writing the novel. I believe the genius of Huxley’s writing was his ability to effectively select the traits of 1930’s society that would later become a staple for Americanism in the coming century and, in time, allowing for a relatable story to the modern day while giving us warning to the future.
In the novel, Brave New World by Aldous Huxley, Huxley includes allusion, ethos, and pathos to mock the wrongdoings of the people which causes physical and mental destruction in the society as a whole. The things that happened in the 1930’s plays a big contribution to the things that go on in the novel. The real world can never be looked at as a perfect place because that isn't possible. In this novel, Huxley informs us on how real life situations look in his eyes in a nonfictional world filled with immoral humans with infantile minds and a sexual based religion.
During the 1930s, the times of World War II and the Great Depression, Aldous Huxley wrote Brave New World. There were several issues going on in Huxley’s time that are still present in today's world . Huxley features some of these problems in his book, Brave New World. These problems include drug or medicine usage, women and gender inequality, and traditional marriage/homosexuality. Since this book was written during the times of the Great Depression and World War II, these factors also contributed to some of these issues. Since World War II and the Great Depression are over, these do not affect the problems today. Although some of these problems are still a problem in today's world and society, they are not as much of a problem as they were during Huxley's time.
In Brave New World Aldous Huxley, creates a dystopian society which is scientifically advance in order to make life orderly, easy, and free of trouble. This society is controlled by a World State who is not question. In this world life is manufactured and everyone is created with a purpose, never having the choice of free will. Huxley use of irony and tone bewilders readers by creating a world with puritanical social norms, which lacks love, privacy and were a false sense of happiness is instituted, making life meaningless and controlled.
In Aldous Huxley’s Brave New World, human beings have been engineered and conditioned to have detailed traits and castes in society; however, the birthing methods of the world state seem virtually full proof, some characters in the novel deviate from this standard. Bernard Marx and Helmholtz Watson both alpha plus males; share a dislike for the world state. Bernard abhors it because of his physical defect, Helmholtz because of his psychological surplus.
Aldous Huxley’s Brave New World, like most satires, addresses several issues within society. Huxley accomplishes this by using satirical tools such as parody, irony, allusion. He does this in order to address issues such as human impulses, drugs, and religion. These issues contribute to the meaning of the work as a whole by pointing out the disadvantages of having too much control within society.
When one reflects on the period during which Huxley’s novel was written and the modern world of his time, the comparison to the socialist world cannot be ignored. The whole idea of a utopia is very similar to socialism. The World State society is under the complete control of the government. Pre-destination department chooses what people will learn, what they will do and how they will look. Each caste wears a different color clothes and does different type of labor. None of these decisions are made by people themselves. In our society, even with the socialism, where government decides what products to produce, in what quantities, and how people will live, people still have a choice and opportunity to be different. Stability and individuality in utopia are reached by taking away the individuality from people. In the World State government controls desires and consumption by creating and destroying the demand for certain objects through the psychological training of infants.
Having been a somewhat of an outsider in his life, physically and mentally, Aldous Huxley used what others thought as his oddities to create complex works. His large stature and creative individuality is expressed in the characters of his novel, Brave New World. In crafting such characters as Lenina, John, Linda, Bernard, and Helmholtz, not to mention the entire world he created in the text itself, Huxley incorporated some of his humanities into those of his characters. Contrastly, he removed the same humanities from the society as a whole to seem perfect. This, the essence and value of being human, is the great meaning of Brave New World. The presence and lack of human nature in the novel exemplifies the words of literary theorist Edward Said: “Exile is strangely compelling to think about but terrible to experience. It is the unhealable rift forced between a human being and a native place, between the self and its true home: its essential sadness can never be surmounted.” Huxley’s characters reflect the “rift” in their jarred reaction to new environments and lifestyles, as well as the remnant of individuality various characters maintain in a brave new world.
As analyzed by social critic Neil Postman, Huxley's vision of the future, portrayed in the novel Brave New World, holds far more relevance to present day society than that of Orwell's classic 1984. Huxley's vision was simple: it was a vision of a trivial society, drowned in a sea of pleasure and ignorant of knowledge and pain, slightly resembling the world of today. In society today, knowledge is no longer appreciated as it has been in past cultures, in turn causing a deficiency in intelligence and will to learn. Also, as envisioned by Huxley, mind altering substances are becoming of greater availability
on the nerve near the ear) was greater on the side of the head that the cell phone was held.[13]
As man has progressed through the ages, there has been, essentially, one purpose. That purpose is to arrive at a utopian society, where everyone is happy, disease is nonexistent, and strife, anger, or sadness is unheard of. Only happiness exists. But when confronted with Aldous Huxley's Brave New World, we come to realize that this is not, in fact, what the human soul really craves. In fact, Utopian societies are much worse than those of today. In a utopian society, the individual, who among others composes the society, is lost in the melting pot of semblance and world of uninterest. The theme of Huxley's Brave New World is community, identity, and stability. Each of these three themes represents what a Brave New World society needs
Gregory Maguire’s novel Wicked: The Life and Times of the Wicked Witch of the West is a fictional representation of many problems faced by the world in the past and present. It follows the life of Elphaba, who later becomes the “Wicked Witch of the West”, a result from her life experiences as a rebel against the Wizard of Oz, her unfortunate appearance of green skin, and several other trials she’s faced. Maguire was born in Albany, New York and lost his mother in childbirth. His father was a writer, but was very ill at the time of Maguire’s birth, so he and his three older siblings had to stay with family and Maguire even spent time in an orphanage before moving back with his father and his new wife. His family
The formative years of the 1900’s, suffered from communism, fascism, and capitalism. The author of the Brave New World, Mr. Aldous Huxley lived in a social order in which he had been exposed to all three of these systems. In the society of the Brave New World, which is set 600 years into the future, individuality is not condoned and the special motto “Community, Identity, Stability” frames the structure of the Totalitarian Government.
Through the theoretical approach of Marxism, The Beauty and The Beast (2017) is a Disney film that depicts the divide between class structures in a traditionally oriented society. The Marxist theory is used as a tool to analyze the film in order to have the ability to examine the core concepts of the theory and investigate the theme of the film in its entirety. The film depicts two class structures that consist of lower, peasant-like villagers and a middle-class structure. The film depicts various social hierarchy’s that attempts to challenge humanities perception of power through the theory of Marxism. This paper will describe how the theoretical approach of Marxism applies to the Disney film, The Beauty and the Beast (2017) through