Censorship In Brave New World

A common thread that connects numerous dystopian novels is the prohibition of the fine arts. In a totalitarian government, the arts must constantly destroyed or manipulated in order to ensure social stability. These leadership entities unsuccessfully attempt to extinguish human instincts through the containment of artistic expression because they realize that it is destructive to the society they strive to maintain. The easiest to engineer is literature because of the ability to rewrite and direct the message towards an intended response. Within Brave New World, almost all characters have limited access to literature. Regardless of the censorship, a few characters have managed to come into contact with writings, and their responses tend to

Helmholtz longs to become a great author of his time and believes that suffering is the only way to accomplish his goal. His dip into the world of literature sparked his desire for an increase of literary works. He wants to show the world that pleasures exists beyond soma and sex, and he believes that writing is the way to share his message with the world. He attempts to “engineer them into feeling” (180) by writing about his emotions and by reading his own work to his students—this backfires because they merely report him for wrongful thinking. Though Helmholtz would like to be condemned into a lifetime of sadness, it is not because he believes that sadness is fundamental to human nature, like John. His desire is sparked by the belief that “you’ve got to be hurt and upset” in order to “think of really good, penetrating, X-rayish phrases” (185). While he may believe that one must suffer to write well, Helmholtz ironically lacks the ability to see true suffering as seen when John introduces Helmholtz to Shakespeare through the play Romeo and Juliet. He reads the tragedy with an “intense and quivering passion” while Helmholtz “broke out in an explosion of uncontrollable guffawing” (184) in response to Juliet’s saddening situation. While finding her situation hilarious, Helmholtz realizes the value in a “superb piece of emotional engineering” (180). As foolish as he is for believing that he can make everyone feel something (other than happiness), Helmholtz is admirable because of his willingness to suffer. Regardless of his aspirations, his inability to see true tragedy will impede him in his goal. His experience with literature has left him longing for greatness without the instructions to achieve it. Despite his evident inability to overcome his conditioning, Helmholtz’s actions are extremely commendable because of his strong moral