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Happiness In Brave New World

765 Words4 Pages

Happiness comes in many forms and every person in this world has the chance to feel it. According to Martin E.P. Seligman and Ed Royzman authors of “Happiness: The Three Traditional Theories”, happiness is acquired when a person utilizes all three traditional theories; Hedonism Theory, Desire Theory, and Objective List Theory. The Hedonism Theory believes happiness is acquired when a person maximizes pleasure and minimizes pain (Seligman and Royzman). The Desire Theory believes that happiness is achieved when a person gets what he or she wants. The Objective List Theory believes happiness is reached when a person achieves certain things of worthwhile pursuits" (Seligman and Royzman). However, in the novel Brave New World by Aldous Huxley, …show more content…

In Brave New World, the people do not understand the feeling of genuine connection and are only focused on the pleasures in life. According to Seligman and Royzman, if a person experiences “truly valuable” things like a relationship, then he or she will experience authentic happiness (Seligman and Royzman). In the World State, soma blinds the individuals with pleasure and does not allow the citizens to face reality in which they live in. An example of this is the relationship between John and Lenina; Lenina is addicted to the drug soma, which inhibits her ability to have a real relationship with John (Huxley). This shows that soma prevents Lenina to experience true love and only lust. Professor Shimon Bernstein’s from the University of California stated that “close relationships are indeed related to happiness, although the extent of the association depends more on the quality than the quantity of relationships” (Bernstein). This shows that John and Lenina will never experience true happiness until they have a genuine relationship with one …show more content…

Seligman and Royzman believe that a person should be able to feel different emotions such as pain. People need to experience pain in order to appreciate the genuine happy things in life. The World State believes the citizens must only feel pleasure in order to have stability in the utopian society (Huxley). A character that is affected by this lack freedom of emotion is Lenina. Lenina is addicted in taking soma in order to not face reality and feel constant pleasure. This shown when she goes to the reservation and takes the drug to forget about what she saw there (Huxley, 131). She is conditioned to not want to experience the freedom of different emotions which makes her lack in authentic happiness. The citizens in the World State do not have the freedom to feel all emotions which blocks their ability to feel true

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