Brave New World
Although the citizens of Brave New World by Aldous Huxley are convinced they are in this perfect world of the future, always happy, free to do whatever they want, ‘have’ whoever they want, little do they know, they are being trapped inside the world of the director of Brave New World. He makes the decisions about everything that happens. In Brave New World lacks freedom due to many different things, including the lack of individuality, the lack of emotions, and the lack of control or choice of action. These are three things that are necessary for a society to be free, making freedom impossible in Huxley’s Brave New World. In order to be free, you need to be able to have some sort of individualism in a society. In Huxley’s Brave New World there is no individualism at all. Firstly in the conditioning center, infants are being trained to be the way the director wants them, and are all being trained in the same ways. “Books and loud noises, flowers and electric shocks – already in the infant mind these couples were compromisingly linked,” (18). These infants are being trained to dislike books and flowers whether they want to or not, they have no choice. Also the citizens of Brave New World have no sense of art or religion. They are all trained the same way and because of this there is no diversity. The only religion related thing they have is a solidarity service where “Strawberry Ice-Cream Soma was passed from hand to hand with the formula ‘I drink to my annihilation’ twelve times quaffed,” (72). Even with this ‘religious’ ceremony, they are all on soma and not completely there and most likely will not remember. Lastly, because people in Brave New World are trained to do what the director says, they are all placed into a caste system. “Epsilons are still worse. They’re too stupid to be able to read or write. Besides they wear black, which is such a beastly colour,” (24). These Epsilons were trained to do what an Epsilon is required to do, and had no choice to be