Dear Citizens of Our Society,
As a high school student, I have been assigned to read a book, Brave New World. This book was different from most novels that I’ve read and many could consider it disturbing. The more I read this book the more I noticed how closely the characteristics of our societies are related.
In Brave New World the World Controllers have created the ideal society. Through clever use of genetic engineering, brainwashing and recreational sex and drugs where all its members are happy. In both settings the way we reproduce isn’t natural. Brave New World society uses the factories to reproduce. In modern society we use implantation methods to help reproduce. Implantation is the act of implanting and this, in human beings, refers to the act of the fertilized egg attaching itself to the wall of the womb, thereby resulting in pregnancy. Both societies also use stimulants to escape an actual reality. Drugs are used in both the novel and real society to escape “real life”. One more example would be the separation of love and sex. In both societies you don’t have to love someone to have sex with them. Our modern society is becoming the spitting image of the Brave New World society.
For example, in the novel there are many quotes that I found that are closely related to the issues.
• “Actual happiness always looks pretty squalid in comparison with the overcompensations for misery.”
This is quoted by John when they’re trying to convince him that this new society is a good thing. They always say that happiness is key. You can’t have happiness without misery.
• “I want to know what passion is. I want to feel something strongly.”
In the new society they had feelings but it was mostly built off of lust. Just soma and sex. They didn’t really know what love was. They didn’t have families. They couldn’t have kids. They didn’t know what was love was. Their idea of love was lust.
• “If one's different, one's bound to be lonely.”
In this story, if you’re different, then you’re discrimated against. For example, Bernard was higher than most people in his caste and people wanted to exile him and get rid of him because he was above average. In this world they wanted everyone to be separated into castes, but to also be the same as everyone in their caste.
• “One believes things because one has been conditioned to believe them.”
These people in this world are LITERALLY programmed to be good at one thing and believe that it’s okay to be the same as everyone else. These quotes show how people are becoming robots. We have no emotions or feelings.
I’ve noticed that this closely relates to how our school’s students are separate. There are many different kinds of students in our school, that are kind of separated into castes. For example, there are the multi-talented athletes, the artist, the AP kids, the skeptics and the ones who don’t care. In both our society and Brave New World Society, we both have our group of people (caste members) that we talk too. We don’t really talk to other people from other “castes” unless we have too. I personally think this is one of our biggest issues because we don’t communicate enough to do what’s best for us.
I’m writing this letter not to inform you that we’re not who we used to be. I’m writing this letter to get our people to understand these issues from a different perspective. The few purposes I have found and decided to used are:
1. To incite change. We as a society should fix what we’ve caused ourselves to have the chance to turn into A Brave New World.
2. To start or stop conversation about how we need to address these problems. I think that if we discussed this issue either as a whole or individuals we could get other people to understand why we need change.
3. To clear up a misconception of how we’re changing, for the worse. People think that we’re ganging up on them when we bring up these issues. Really we’re just trying to get you to understand that this new society is not in our best interest.
The purpose of my letter is to inform our people that if we don’t change, we’re going to soon become a reflected image of the society in this book. We need to learn to understand what is going to be best for us as a whole in the long run.
As I started to read this novel, I really didn’t want to finish but I soon came to the realization of how this story was representing our society too. Our society is becoming the spitting image of the Brave New World society. We’re brainwashing our people to think that we’re supposed to be the same as certain people and that we have a certain job and duty. We should not have to be different from other people. We should all be equal; equal power, equal rights, equal job opportunities or equal chance at love.
Sincerely,
Danielle Hickman
