Once Bernard receives the sexual and social attention he believes is his due, his complaints continue merely as a show of daring and bravado. His outrage stems from the injustices he suffers personally, but he apparently is unwilling or unable to fathom a debate or course of action against the malady because he is an Alpha Plus upon whom the process has been at least partially successful. Bernard rails loudly about the inhumanity of the system. They are not even fully conscious that they are individuals.īoth Bernard and John struggle against the society's constant efforts to undermine their individuality, but one character reveals a deeper understanding of the stakes than the other. Soma-tized people do not know their own degradation. John's plea to the Deltas to throw away their soma, then, constitutes a cry for rebellion that goes unheeded. The society, therefore, encourages everyone to take soma as a means of social control by eliminating the affects of conflict. The people of the brave new world "solve" their conflict problems by swallowing a few tablets or taking an extended soma-holiday, which removes or sufficiently masks the negative feelings and emotions that other, more creative, problem-solving techniques might have and which cuts off the possibility of action that might have socially disruptive or revolutionary results. Pain and stress - grief, humiliation, disappointment - representing uniquely individual reactions to conflict still occur sometimes in the brave new world. In Huxley's dystopia, the drug soma also serves to keep individuals from experiencing the stressful negative effects of conflicts that the society cannot prevent. His most private, cherished sense of love and of self, he feels, has been violated. Significantly, it is the morning after his own experience of "orgy-porgy" that John commits suicide. John's sensitive feelings about love suffer even from the representation of such an orgy at the feelies. At the Solidarity Service, Bernard finds the exercise degrading, just as anyone clinging to any idealism about sex would be revolted. This organized release of sexual urges undercuts passion, the intense feeling of one person for another, as the individuals subordinate even their own sexual pleasure to the supposed joy of their society's unity. The dystopia's alternative - recreational sex - is deliberately designed to blur the distinctions among lovers and between emotions and urges, finding its social and ritual expression in "Orgy-Porgy." Even love - acknowledging and cherishing another's unique identity - represents a threat to stability founded on uniformity. This inability is a kind of tragic flaw in Bernard. "When the individual feels, society reels," Lenina piously reminds Bernard, who strives without success for a genuine human emotion beyond his customary peevishness. Stability lives, but individuality - the desire and/or ability to be different - is dead. As a result, built on a large foundation of identical, easily manipulated people, the society thrives. For these lower-caste men and women, individuality is literally impossible. The uniformity of the Gammas, Deltas, and Epsilons is accomplished by careful poisoning with alcohol and produces - in Huxley's word - "sub-human" people, capable of work but not of independent thought. Bokanovsky's Process, which arrests normal human development while promoting the production of dozens of identical eggs, deliberately deprives human beings of their unique, individual natures and so makes overt processes for controlling them unnecessary. proudly explains the biochemical technology that makes possible the production of virtually identical human beings and, in doing so, introduces Huxley's theme of individuality under assault. In such a world, uniqueness is uselessness and uniformity is bliss, because social stability is everything. All the fetal conditioning, hypnopaedic training, and the power of convention molds each individual into an interchangeable part in the society, valuable only for the purpose of making the whole run smoothly. In a sense in this world, every one is every one else as well. "Every one belongs to every one else," whispers the voice in the dreams of the young in Huxley's future world - the hypnopaedic suggestion discouraging exclusivity in friendship and love.
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