Power Control In Brave New World

Aldous Huxley’s novel, Brave New World, is a perfect illustration of the outcomes of granting complete authority to state officials and of how the advancement of science can affect society. The narrative describes a futuristic realm, where the government completely controls civilization, from choosing the occupations for members to choosing how they spend their leisure time. As a result, three misfit characters, John the Savage, Bernard Marx, and Helmholtz Watson, embark on a journey to self-fulfillment that tests society’s belief systems and results in either exile, conformity, or death. Ultimately, Brave New World, illustrates how the government can control the lives of people and prevent them from achieving a sense of identity, through the

For example, the World State officials select the occupation of each individual: “They were predestined to emigrate to the tropics, to be miners and acetate silk spinners, later on their minds will be made to endorse the judgment of their bodies condition[ing] them to thrive on heat” (Huxley 11). By conditioning each member to work a specific job, the government is able to make them “like what they’ve got to do” and “accept their unescapable social destiny” (11). Not only does controlling the work ethic allow the government to determine the amount of jobs available to citizens, but it also allows the government to maintain its mission statement of community, identity, and stability. Another example of this maintenance takes place when a group of adolescents witness the character Linda’s death: “They swarmed between the beds, clambered over, crawled under, peeped into the television boxes, [and] made faces at the patients” (155). Even though the teens are essentially unaware of what is happening to Linda, they are both excited and curious by the death process, and after witnessing her death, the children are given treats as a reinforcement technique for not expressing emotions. Here, the conditioning method serves as a brainwashing process that the State uses in order to make people believe that there is no emotion evolved with death and that they are still contributing to civilization even after their passing away. The World State also uses hypnopaedia as another form of conditioning technology. By using this method of control, the government is able to teach lessons of society to the children: “Oh no, I don’t want to play with Delta children. And Epsilons are still the worse. They’re too stupid to be able to read or write” (19). During this process, the government sends messages through a