A New World – Embrace it or Criticize it

Hello, everyone! This is Judy’s new post – log 4. Since I finished reading the novel “Pet” a few weeks ago, I am going to share a new book called “Brave new world.”

It is written by Aldous Huxley. The topic of this novel is the same as my last novel which is about “utopia.” Nevertheless, there are still a lot of extremely different descriptions and points of view among these two books.

At first, I wonder what the exact definition of utopian and dystopian literature is. I personally suppose that whether the novel is utopian or dystopian depends on how you think because perspectives vary from person to person. Even if the author writes in the tone of sarcasm, readers may be unable to recognize it. Hence, from my own perspective, I think that this novel “Brave new world” is a dystopian story.

“Brave New World” was a science fiction novel published in 1932, which was between the time of World War One and World War Two. At that time, themes of the literature in the aftermath of World War one centered on serious issues, especially political and social aspects. After reading some information regarding this dark time, I found that the aversion to war, a fight for something such as tyranny, and abuse of technology were actually the popular topics for the writers. Basically, at such sorrowful time, there was no so-called happy ending like the story of hero-and-heroine rescue, and this novel I was about to share as follows was no exception.

At the beginning of the story, the setting of the story timeline was in the future. It was a world beyond our imagination. The authority made every effort to create an ideal society. They regarded “stability” as the most crucial element to accomplish it. First of all, they made use of genetic engineering like artificial wombs to control the number of newborn babies. Besides, based on intelligence and labor, they also automatically divided all citizens into five groups before birth called the caste system. The higher level a baby was designated, the brighter future he or she would have. At such a level, s/he would be cultivated as a future authority who had the supreme authority. In contrast, the lower level a baby was, the less power s/he had. They were bred to be menial laborers. Secondly, to achieve a stable society, the authority still needed to control people’s ideas. This was still not too perverted to believe. What’s worse, they even adopted a disgusting strategy of making people lose the ability to think and judge such as the obstruction on the transportation of oxygen to the brain. In short, the authority thought that not until they controlled the general populace’s interests, hobbies, occupations, and so on did they dominate a society.

After reading a few pages of this novel, it occurred to me that there was a similar unequal caste system in our real world in India. In terms of the Indian caste system, each level of people had corresponding occupations they needed to do. In my opinion, such an injustice and discrimination couldn’t be eliminated completely even though the policy had been abolished by Indian law long time ago. When it comes to the disadvantages of the caste system, most people should be able to come up with a few viewpoints. For example, people at the lower level were excluded from a lot of things. What’s worse, the lower level of people was likely to be pushed to a state of lower than of an animal. Enmity and hatred had increased gradually amongst the members of high and low caste. Nonetheless, wasn’t there any merit of this system? I suppose not. To some extent, the caste system had provided a definite professional career to each individual. Everyone basically got at least a job whether he or she liked it or not. Apart from this, other scholars had claimed that the caste system was the main cause of stability and contentment. Thus, back to the story, I would like to ask myself “in comparison with the caste system in the real world, was the caste system in this story suitable?” I would probably still answer no because a number of demerits indeed needed to be solved and improved. Besides, there still should be another acceptable way to create a stable society.

When it comes to the power of the authority in this novel, I personally considered that the authority just wished for their own happiness by causing pain to others. They enjoyed dominating and controlling others. In contrast, the lower level of people was born to be inferior to others. They did hard and tough work as well as relatively unskilled manual labor. They felt neither happy nor satisfied; instead, the authority was happy but “never” satisfied. Everything was destined. Nothing could be changed even if people at the lower level were hard-working.

To sum up, in terms of the descriptions of this novel, I strongly feel the fear of losing individual identity. In addition, with the advancement of technology, such technologies as artificial wombs mentioned in the novel might appear in our world in the future. As AI has appeared in our world and replaces a lot of humans’ jobs, who knows what technology will also appear in our future.