The Consumer Society

• Brave New World not only as a warning of what is to come in the future, but also a criticism of Huxley‘s society (he wrote the novel shortly after the era of the Roaring 20s which was dominated by consumption)
• while the World State seems to be cruel and bizarre, it is actually just a further developed version of nowaday‘s society with its economic values, growth and prosperity
• for Huxley, commodification equals the deprivation of creativity
• in Brave New World, humans have been conditioned to consume goods and services on a constant, high level which ensures that the economy will remain stable as those goods and services need workers to be maintained
• the constant consumption produces humans that are incapable of - and also, they have no reason to - thinking on their own

The Question of Freedom

• the government of the World State maintains control over its members by making them so happy and superficially fulfilled that they don‘t care about their personal freedom
• all the characters in Huxley‘s novel are either mentally or emotionally enslaved - they are constantly exposed to the state-sanctioned ideas and values
• the World State leaves no room for social and intellectual difference
• free will, creativity, imagination or diversity have all been considered by the World State to be triggers for war, diseases, and destruction; hence, they banned them
• only the World Controllers have some freedom: they have access to the banned books and to the world‘s history for instance
• rebels to that system are either psychologically altered through soma or mind control, or they are exiled so that they cannot spread their ideas
• citizens of the World State are not even free to feel emotions since emotional institutions and concepts such as relationships or family have been erased from the collective memory and since negativity is erased by medical and psychological conditioning
• even John the Savage - who initially is capable of feeling love and affection - forgets to love within the environment of the World State
• however, John is the only person within this world that sees the things for what they really are: the people are enslaved, addicted to drugs, and dehumanized
• because he cannot bear the thought of becoming one of those dehumanized beings as well, he exercizes his freedom by committing suicide

The Use of Technology to Control Society

• in the World State, the government has full control over powerful medical, biological and psychological technologies and thus, over humanity
• power in Brave New World is maintained through technological interventions that start before birth and last until death
• for instance, the state controls reproduction by removing ovaries, the Bokanovsky Process and genetical as well as psychological conditioning
• part of controlling society through technological advances is also entertaining its members with complicated machines such as the centrifugal bumble-puppy
• a constant mix of leisure, consumption and production ensures the World State‘s stability
• the drug soma also manipulates the World State‘s members into a happy society that is void of any negativity

The Incompatibility of Happiness and Truth

• Brave New World criticizes the idea that happiness simply consists of fulfilling the desire for food, sex, drugs, pretty clothes and some other consumer items
• all those things hide the ugly truth from the citizens: that their sole existence is controlled by the government
• truth in this context is basically extinct: science and empiricism cannot be accessed by the members of the World State
• emotional truths such as love or any kind of personal connection do not exist as well
• if strange emotions come up, the citizens of the World State stifle them by taking drugs
• soma in fact clouds the realities and instills happy hallucinations
• the World State does not want its members to develop the will to search for truth, which is also the reason why they banned every artefact that the members could use in order to find truth

Individuality

• individuality in Brave New World is considered incompatible with happiness and social stability
• the process of developing an individual identity is thus smothered from the very beginning by the Bokanovsky Process (citizens are cloned), hypnopaedia (propaganda is instilled into babies), and Solidarity Services (through which citizens believe that they are part of a whole)
• individuals such as Bernard, Helmholtz or John are exiled and removed from the context of the World State so that they cannot spread their individualism
• Bernard suffers from actually being an individual (he does not fit into his caste bodywise) and rebels against being sent away - thus, he craves being common
• Helmholtz and John however decide to suffer for the sake of their individuality