It’s quite not possible for people to be or stay happy all the time in their lives because each individual shares a different nature and a different lifestyle. It might seem easy on the surface but, being happy in a society where everything is controlled by the government, is particularly difficult. This dystopian concept used by Aldous Huxley is one of his dystopian fiction Brave New World, a story in which a society tries to create a perfect world that goes wrong. Through the people of London, Huxley has shown a completely stable civilization where every individual is amazed and proud of their technology-based civilization. But the story takes a turning point when the actual attitude of people opens up about their civilization and they no more attempt to play their role in building up this empire of artificial civilization ADDIN ZOTERO_ITEM CSL_CITATION {"citationID":"QXzwjFu6","properties":{"formattedCitation":"(Daly)","plainCitation":"(Daly)","noteIndex":0},"citationItems":[{"id":354,"uris":["http://zotero.org/users/local/bWNXhCgk/items/5PXUERMQ"],"uri":["http://zotero.org/users/local/bWNXhCgk/items/5PXUERMQ"],"itemData":{"id":354,"type":"manuscript","title":"Transhumanism: Toward a Brave New World?","source":"PhilPapers","title-short":"Transhumanism","author":[{"family":"Daly","given":"Bernard M."}]}}],"schema":"https://github.com/citation-style-language/schema/raw/master/csl-citation.json"} (Daly). Huxley, through his deep characterization and themes, tells his readers how difficult it is to be happy and how people sacrifice their relationships to be happy. Modern civilization can have positive effects on the people of a society but it does not involve pure happiness with true strong emotions and have temporary and self-centered happiness. Just because they never had any exposure to the world outside, they think of the society as the perfect version of the world and civilization. They are detached from the reality or truth and are told of the horrors of true emotions, attachment and are conditioned to think and feel that everyone is happy around them. Through the characterization and different scenarios, one gets a deeper yet ugly truth of a manufactured world where one wears a mask of happiness to show a sacrificial aspect of life.
Huxley’s Brave New World is full of characters who do everything they can in the story to not be confronted with the truth about their situation. The universal use and effects of drug soma is probably the most widespread example of such self-delusion in this book. Soma blurs the realities of the present world and replaces them with happy visions, therefore, it can be used as a tool for promoting social happiness and stability. John, one of the important characters, demonstrates the nature of Lenina through the lens of Shakespeare’s world as it also avoids the truth of reality. He views her first as a Juliet but later as an “impudent strumpet”. People in this society of London are better off with happiness than with truth. The characters try to do everything to avoid the truth about their situation as in Mustapha Mond’s case, the state’s government prioritizes happiness at the expense of truth. Mond's argument makes it clear that the word happiness refers to the immediate satisfaction of each citizen's desire to feed himself, to have sex, to use drugs and to wear fine clothes. What Mond means by the truth, or more precisely by what he sees as concealment of world society by the state, is less clear ADDIN ZOTERO_ITEM CSL_CITATION {"citationID":"xIx0OdZe","properties":{"formattedCitation":"({\\i{}A.-Huxley.Pdf})","plainCitation":"(A.-Huxley.Pdf)","noteIndex":0},"citationItems":[{"id":355,"uris":["http://zotero.org/users/local/bWNXhCgk/items/X73NCIPF"],"uri":["http://zotero.org/users/local/bWNXhCgk/items/X73NCIPF"],"itemData":{"id":355,"type":"article","title":"A.-Huxley.pdf","URL":"http://sosinglese.eu/wp-content/uploads/2015/08/A.-Huxley.pdf","accessed":{"date-parts":[["2019",11,19]]}}}],"schema":"https://github.com/citation-style-language/schema/raw/master/csl-citation.json"} (A.-Huxley.Pdf). As in the book, it says that everyone "has been conditioned from his childhood to accept wholeheartedly all the values and beliefs of the carefully ordered society". From Mond’s conversation with John, it is clear that the two types of truth that the world State wants to eliminate are, the world state’s control of citizen to gain any kind of empirical or scientific truth and the second is the destruction of all sort of “human” truths like friendship, love and personal connection by the government. In this way, Huxley also warns readers of the dangers of giving control to the state over new and powerful technologies because once the state gets control over everything, they will impose their own rules and policies and run the state according to tier own interest. Like in the story, the government banned the natural way of giving birth to babies and uses test tube technology for the continuation of their generation. Strict population control over sexual mores and reproductive rights is at the heart of state control over the world's population. An authoritarian system controls the reproductive rights by sterilizing about two-thirds of women, forcing others to use contraceptives, and surgically suppresses the ovaries when it is necessary to produce new human beings. The sexual act is controlled by the authoritarian system as in the story it says that, “Promiscuity is considered healthy and superior to committed, monogamous relationships”. They use science as a means to create a fake, happy and superficial world through things like the "feelies".
They aim to hide the truth and give seamless happiness to its citizens, “Science and technology provide the means for controlling the lives of the citizens”. The characters in the story share the same ideas about happiness initially but have a different overview about the role of personal agency in happiness as in the story Bernard believes that personal agency is important because he feels, “As though I were more me” but he too gets under the control of the government when he was given the chance to live as an individual in Iceland. He then refuses to sacrifice his sacrifice for the sovereignty of the state ADDIN ZOTERO_ITEM CSL_CITATION {"citationID":"1YLbGfbL","properties":{"formattedCitation":"({\\i{}A.-Huxley.Pdf})","plainCitation":"(A.-Huxley.Pdf)","noteIndex":0},"citationItems":[{"id":355,"uris":["http://zotero.org/users/local/bWNXhCgk/items/X73NCIPF"],"uri":["http://zotero.org/users/local/bWNXhCgk/items/X73NCIPF"],"itemData":{"id":355,"type":"article","title":"A.-Huxley.pdf","URL":"http://sosinglese.eu/wp-content/uploads/2015/08/A.-Huxley.pdf","accessed":{"date-parts":[["2019",11,19]]}}}],"schema":"https://github.com/citation-style-language/schema/raw/master/csl-citation.json"} (A.-Huxley.Pdf). The personal freedom gained by John is through suffering and self-denial and kills himself at the end of the story.
Characters
John the Savage
John is the only character born naturally and becomes the dominant hero in Brave New World. He represents a unique human behavior with a family relationship, unlike other characters. He was not part of the London society as he was rejected and disconnected from the society which turned him into a true loner. Though Bernard Marx is the main personality in the novel, John is the one person who rejected the state-imposed rules and values of the government and society. He calls out the Deltas to rebellion and throws out the soma. If anyone that could bring down and challenge the society of the Brave New World than it should be John. John's wish refers to him first as a stranger among the Indians, because he is not permitted to join in their ceremony. It also illustrates the enormous cultural gap between him and the World State society. Huxley reveals that sex according to John is disgusting, humiliation and pain. John becomes the central charm of the novel by rejecting the "savage" Indian culture and the culture of the "civilized" state. John’s limiting nature makes him a flawed potential hero.
Bernard Marx
Bernard Marx is the central figure in the novel until his visit and the entry of John. Bernard's first entrance in the novel is ironic. When the director finishes his explanation that World State has effectively eradicated everything that goes along with frustrated and lovesickness, the writer gives us the first sight of the personal thoughts of the character. Bernard is jealous, lovesick and ferociously angry at his sexual competitors. Although Bernard is not entirely heroic, he is still an exciting personality for the readers. Bernard is isolated, lonely and insecure during and before the trip to Reservation. When John rejects to become a tool in Bernard's effort to stay popular, Bernard's victory immediately breakdowns. Bernard proved himself a hypocrite by continuing to criticize the World State. Helmholtz and John sympathize with him because they approve that the World State wants criticism and that they realize that Bernard is stuck in a body that is not suitable for his adaptation, but they do not respect him. When compared with the character of John, Bernard seems a shallow and uninteresting character but after his friendship with John, he turns into a mature character and leaves to the Falkland Islands more of a real and true person than he was ever before in the Brave New World.
Lenina
"Pneumatic" Lenina seems an extremely sexually aroused controversial woman of the society and with the progress in the novel, she emerges as a complex and conflicted character. She is presented as a happy and ordinary citizen of the World State. Chapter 3 contradicts Lenina with Bernard Marx. Through her chat with her friend Fanny, readers learned that Lenina has an anti-social characteristic as she starts losing interest in promiscuity. But, when Bernard efforts to engage Lenina in other antisocial actions, she feels scared and chooses to stop meeting him: "I don't understand anything," she said with a choice that is resolute to keep her incomprehension properly. Lenina's tendency to long-term sexual links develops a more solemn problem when she finds herself involved in John. Her belief that “everyone belongs to everyone else “is somewhat controversial about her character. As her relationship with John brings her to a physical and emotional situation but she does not understand the experience of love. Because of his upbringing, John keeps believing in monogamy. John wants to "do something" to show that he deserves Lenina's love.
Style
The technologies seem plausible and the characters appear to be pitiful in Brave New World which is written in a meticulously detailed, bland and unemotional style. Although the main contents of the narrative revolve only around a few characters, the opening of the book sheds light on an extensive explanation of the generation of the World State, and the major attention of the reader is drawn towards the hatching and fertilizing processes. Characters are also briefly introduced in the opening chapter by providing their brief descriptions. The author of the book has sporadically included the physical appearance and demeanor of the characters, which only strengthens and fortifies their sheer lack of personal identity. This also paves the way for reinforcement of the interchangeability among characters. The initial impression of the World State is deliberately presented as loathsome by Huxley as his style of the physical description of the characters repulses the reader in a short time. Even if the author physically outlines a character, the reader does not feel positively for the character as is evident from some of the examples; ‘Lenina has purple eyes and gums, Linda is "monstrous", and Bernard is short and unattractive.' There is an abrupt transition between various scenes as the plot moves on and the phrases are repeated many times to highlight the sheer differences between the thought processes of characters. The demarcation between the mental functioning of the characters presents the choices that what the characters might have thought if they could act according to their free will and what they are thinking now that they are programmed to think according to the requirements of the World State.
Many Shakespearean quotes and works are also found in the novel, demonstrating the never-ending human struggles as predicted by Shakespeare years ago. The style of the words and phrases in the novel indicate that they are acting as tools of propaganda and repression and lack any shreds of actual truth.
