O wonder! How many goodly creatures are there here! How beauteous mankind is! O brave new world, That has such people in’t!
These lines are from Shakespeare’s “The Tempest,” a play that abounds with nefarious characters: an usurping prince, two amusing but vile conspirators, a brutish creature, and a few others.Miranda jests when she exalts the “brave new world.” Daughter to the all-powerful magician and ruler of the island, Prospero, the girl had never been exposed to humans, except for her father and his half-human servant, Caliban.
To her innocent mind, civilization means virtue and goodness. After seeing the world’s true colors, she realizes that humanity is as vicious as it is wondrous. Deeds are not guided by goodwill alone but by cunning malevolence, too.
The Brave New World’s Civilized Barbarism
Shortly after the publication of George Orwell’s “1984,” Huxley wrote to the British author: “The nightmare of ‘Nineteen Eighty-Four’ is destined to modulate into the nightmare of a world having more resemblances to that which I imagined in ‘Brave New World.’”Huxley’s imagination produced a disturbing society ruled by an authoritarian oligarchy of “Controllers” who enforce order and stability.
There are five castes in the “World State”: Alphas, Betas, Gammas, Deltas and Epsilons. Each performs specific tasks, from administrative elites at the top to exploited masses at the bottom. The World State’s high-tech factories fuel a hyper-consumer economy, where citizens are incentivized to purchase new items and discard old ones continuously.
In this superficial culture, people consider family, motherhood, and fatherhood vulgar “concepts” from an archaic, regressive era. Natural procreation is obsolete. Human embryos are fertilized en masse in “Hatcheries.”
From birth, parentless children are conditioned to accept the World State’s moral codes. One manipulation technique—hypnopaedia—involves constant repetition during sleep of maxims like “When the individual feels, the community reels.”
Moreover, all citizens are administered soma, a drug whose effects are in its Ancient Greek name: “body.” It soothes and produces feelings of happiness. Among other purposes, it’s used for “Solidarity Services,” where participants’ loyalty to the World State is reified: “The loving cup of strawberry ice-cream soma was passed from hand to hand and, with the formula, ‘I drink to my annihilation,’ twelve times quaffed.”
This pervasive pill crowns a realm of entertainment that includes “feelies” (movies with tactile sensations), promiscuous bacchanalias, and a host of ubiquitous distractions.
In this one-dimensional society, ephemeral eroticism trumps genuine emotional connection. Take Lenina, a vaccination worker who relates to others only through sex. When she decides to become monogamous, her acquaintance, Fanny, warns her that she should have more partners, because that is the way to better “happiness.”
We also meet Linda, mother to the main character, John the Savage, and one of very few to live outside the brave new world. She is tainted by the World State’s treatment of the body as the end-all-be-all. In the secluded Reservation, where she has lived since giving birth to John, chastity and fidelity sustain healthy bonds between mothers and fathers. But she rejects that mindset, and defines her identity through sexual license and lives the life of an outcast.
To satisfy people’s innate religious orientation, the World State sponsors a secular cult that worships technological progress; its supreme “deity” is Henry Ford, who is adulated through idolatrous symbols.
As the body rules in the riveting present of the brave new world, love and art perish. Conformity and physiological gratification squash liberty, divinity, and the imagination. People are constantly “happy,” but they’re not truly human.
On the Sacredness of Love
One character’s words and deeds defy the World State’s hegemony: John the Savage.John was born on the Reservation, a secluded area populated by an indigenous group. His knowledge of the World State is only conceptual at first, like Miranda’s knowledge of what lies beyond her tempestuous island.
John’s relationship with Shakespeare is more than intellectual. The playwright’s works directly shape his moral compass.
If thou dost break her virgin-knot before All sanctimonious ceremonies may With full and holy rite be ministered, No sweet aspersion shall the heavens let fall To make this contract grow; but barren hate.
John alludes to this scene in a conversation with Lenina. Disgusted by her carnality, he professes the sacred value of monogamous love and the chastity that sanctifies its bond. He personifies “pure and vestal modesty.”
As he faces contradictions all around him, John begins to suffer. He has internalized profound moral truths through art, but no one else in his world can see them.
As he says, “You’ve got to choose between happiness and what people used to call high art.”
Art expands consciousness. It does so partly by revealing the beauty of moral purity. Against the polluting backdrop of everyday vices, this revelation produces grief and incongruities. Accepting this existential unease is difficult but necessary. To embrace suffering and transcend it is the only way to become fully human.
It’s not an accident that the World State keeps “books about God” from people. The Controllers know that the divine frees the spirit and that high art is a channel to divinity.
John represents the free spirit, which speaks and lives in poetry, so emancipating itself from all-too-human iniquities.
Yet John’s moral integrity is healthiest when he’s alone. He is eventually corrupted by Lenina’s advances and the pervasive ecstasy of soma.
The “The Tempest” displays a similar problem. Miranda’s innocence flourishes until she understands man’s ambivalent nature. Prospero’s power thrives on the secluded island. It’s unclear if the same will happen to him if he returns to “civilization.” It seems that virtue is easier to cultivate in isolation. Can it flourish in the midst of society’s corrupting currents?
