Brave New World as a Utopia or Dystopia
The word 'Utopia' means an imaginary place or society with a perfect social
and political system, or an ideally perfect state of things. This word was used
by Sir Thomas More (1478-1535) as
the title of his book, Utopia
in which he depicted an imaginary commonwealth. He coined this word by joining
two Greek words –‘outopia' (no place) and ‘eutopia' (good place) - and making
them yield the meaning of a good place which does not exist or is imaginary.
In the course of time, the word came
to signify a kind of fiction portraying an ideal political state and way of
life. Plato's Republic, describing
an ideal commonwealth or state, is the first work of this type. Then there came
to be written various books right from More
onwards on the subject of or dealing with an ideal imaginary world with a
perfect political or social system in order to present an ideal before the
modern man to follow.
These utopian works were usually set
against the background of a distant country and gave a fictional account of
life lived there. These works were of both types, fictional and non-fictional.
They comprise New Atlantis by
Francis Bacon, News From Nowhere by William
Morris and Lost Horizon
by James Hilton. Famous writers of
fiction such as Swift, Butler and Wells presented a utopian picture of a
distant land or an imaginary world of future to satirize the world around them.
The world presented by them was usually an ideal place and the picture of it a
pleasant one. But there were also some utopian works that presented a negative
vision or an unpleasant picture of the world. These works were called anti-utopian or Dystopian.
Huxley has
written both the utopian and the ant-utopian works of fiction. His last
novel, Island is a work of
utopian fiction depicting an ideal world where peace, joy and love prevail, and
people lead a happy and serene life. However, his novel Brave New World is an anti-utopian work, because he has presented a
picture of the future world which is extremely gloomy, dismal, depressing and
repulsive. It can be regarded as a utopian
novel because it projects an imaginary world of future, but it is anti-utopian in that this world is
simply disgusting, and not an ideal or alluring one as we find in a work of utopian fiction.
Brave New World,
along with Island, forms Huxley's
contribution to the English Utopian
fiction. Written in the utopian tradition
of More's Utopia, Morris's News from Nowhere and Well's Men Like Gods, it projects a
vision of future based on the realities of the present. However, unlike those utopian works, which present an ideal
or exemplary vision of future of an imaginary world, it presents a dismal and
gloomy picture of future, and is therefore anti-utopian
or dystopian in nature.
Moreover, it is a great satire on the
present-day world through the presentation of a future world. As F.R. Karl and
Marvin Magalaner remark, "In Brave
New World, Huxley wrote his most Swiftian of satires, giving the same
plausibility to absurdity that Swift conveyed in the demonic logic of A Modest
Proposal." (A Readers' Guide to the
Great Twentieth Century English Novels, p. 276).
As an outstanding work of science-fiction, this novel brings Huxley
in the line of writers of science-fiction, such as Jules Verne in French and HG
Wells in English. Keith May aptly calls it a "satirical utopian (or
dystopian) science fiction." (Aldous Huxley, p. 99).
In Brave New World, Huxley presents a utopian future based on science and technology. He shows the
conditions in the future world which is governed by latest developments in the
field of science, and has little to do with human emotions and morality. In
this world, babies are 'decanted' in laboratories, and so conditioned as to be
unable to develop any natural sentiments like love, hate, loyalty, etc. As
Anthony Burgess points out,
"In Huxley's future world-state, children are bred artificially and made, in the very test-tube, content with whatever the State bestows on them. Human beings are graded like examination results: the Alphas do the intelligent work and the Deltas are the sweepers and cleaners. There is not much to do and there are manifold pleasures, chief of which is sex, though a sex totally dissociated from the act of reproduction. There is no crime, there is no immorality science had bred out the destructive clement in man. This is a real Utopia, dedicated to the pursuit of happiness."
(The
Novel Now, pp. 40-41).
In contrast to this world of material
well-being, which is represented by Mustapha
Mond, there is the world represented by John, the Savage, who derides this world and is opposed to its
values and conventions. "The Savage", remarks Anthony Burgess,
"rejects the new sinless and happiness seeking order; he thinks that man
ceases to be man when he is incapable of squalor, shame, guilt and suffering. A
world in which there is no family hierarchy, no dignity in birth and death, and
perhaps worst of all-none of the human conditions which can produce a
Shakespeare is the terminus of scientific progress. What is Utopia to people he is thrown among is its opposite -
Dystopia-to him. He crucifies himself for the sinlessness of the world." (Ibid.
p. 41)
In fact, we also feel what the Savage
feels, i.e., the world presented by Huxley in this novel is neither new nor
brave; it is the product of a disgusting vision of the world, which can be
called utopian only ironically. Actually it is an anti-utopian world ushered in by man's excessive subservience to
science. There is hardly anything pleasant or edifying in it. Normal human
emotions and relationships have been banished from it.
What remains is the beast-like
enjoyment of physical pleasures and slavish adherence to the directions of the
State. This is actually an anti- utopia or an unpleasant and disgusting state
of being which is far from being an ideal or perfect state to be cherished by
man. Thus, Brave New World is an
anti-utopian novel presenting a negative vision of future, and not a
utopian novel embodying a positive vision as is found in Island.
The Huxleyan vision presented in Brave New World may be disgusting, but it is an authentic vision as is proved by the fact that it has turned out to be true much earlier than he had imagined. Huxley had himself observed in his Foreword to the novel that man had moved in the direction of this utopia more rapidly than anyone could have imagined. He writers --
"It looks as though Utopia were far closer to us than anyone, only fifteen years ago, could have imagined. Then, I projected it six hundred years into the future. Today it seems quite possible that the horror may be upon us within a single century."("Foreword", Brave New World, p. 14).
In this respect, Aldous Huxley’s Brave New World can be regarded as a prophetic work, which prophesies an anti-utopian future for man which is sure to come if he continues to run after temptations offered by science and progress, and to ignore the call of his spirit or the voice of basic human nature.
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