Mr. Hopper
AP. Literature and Composition
29 October 2013
Futuristic foresights
It is interesting how sometimes a person’s vision eventually comes true. People nowadays make numerous predictions and hypothesis about our world. Many of these hypothesis have been wrong, however, this was not the case for Aldous Huxley’s predictions. Around the 1930’s censorship became one of the main basis of government control for several countries around the world, causing many sources of unconventional ideas to be banned or hidden from society. In the novel Brave New World, by Aldous Huxley, we encounter these unconventional ideas of how the world seemed to make a dramatic change with the passage of time. Unfortunately, the themes presented throughout the novel did not please the government at the time and Brave New World became one of the many books censored by the government. Huxley portrays his fear of manipulation and stability through Brave New World in a setting of the World State and it’s ruling power, aspects that eventually became part of the Nazi’s force.
In Brave New World power is obtained from withholding knowledge. The government in Brave New World, which in this case is divided by ten different controllers, censors any type of education, especially the one taught through books that were published before A.F 150. It seems almost unbelievable to acknowledge that in approximately twenty years since the publication of the novel, this same system was administered by powerful leaders of various countries, such as Hitler in Germany. In
1933 to ensure that everybody thought the right way, the Nazi Party set up the Reich Chamber of Commerce to control the publicity of literature, art, music, film, newspaper, etc. Later on citizens were only permitted to read, see and hear what the Nazis wanted them to. “If they believed what they were told, the Nazi leaders logically assumed that opposition to their rule would be very small and practiced only by those on the very extreme who would be easy to catch”(Trueman). Likewise, for the World State to have control over the population, it was imperative that citizens stay away from an active mind. No one was supposed to be able to create personal judgments or possess individual freedom and compassion; factors that would make manipulation become impossible. The controllers’ priority was to maintain the stability, therefore manipulation, or better described as brainwashing, was transmitted in Brave New World through repetition. “Sixty- two thousand four hundred repetitions make one truth. Idiots!” (Huxley 149). The controllers required the method of repetition for each human in order to produce social loyalty. Then again, the controllers applied the same pattern as Hitler back in World War II. Hitler would use his manipulative strategy of scheduling his public speeches at night, when the brain is vulnerable to submission due to exhaustion, to insert his ultimate form of regimen. Just like Hitler, the controllers would disperse the World’s State control system and obligations to society by whispering into the ears of the children and young adults. These methods would contribute to easily influence each individual’s behavior and prevent the capacity of being able to reason. No one would live a unique life, nor be free, independent or able to choose by their own and distinctive judgment.
Stability is everything in the world talked in Brave New World; as a matter of fact it is part of the slogan “ Community, Identity, Stability” that defines the complete regimen of the World State. “Everyone belongs to everyone else, after all” (Huxley 149). The whole world in the World State is now based in uniformity; uniqueness has become useless. A human being is now composed of fetal conditioning, hypnopaedic training and convention. The brainwashing has caused lack of independent thought and personal identity. Huxley wasn’t that off with the ideas implied in his novel. As