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Social Class In Aldous Huxley's Brave New World

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Modern Americans base almost their entire lives on money; middle school prepares students for high school, which prepares teens for college, which prepares young adults for their careers, or sources of income. Salary determines a person’s class, which people commonly use as a label to identify a stereotype within a person. Aldous Huxley’s Brave New World addresses social class as a flaw and centrifugal force in the society of twentieth-century America. In Huxley 's time, social class served as an inevitable foundation for conflict, which the Great Depression further fueled. The Great Depression sparked such tensions because of the incongruent manners in which each class reacted to the situation (Fox). Although the stock market crash affected each individual American, much of the upper class still enjoyed considerable wages with which they flaunted their wealth; the lower classes, however, suffered through years of …show more content…

The novel states, " 'Alpha children wear grey. They work much harder than we do, because they 're so frightfully clever. I 'm really awfully glad I 'm a Beta, because I don 't work so hard '" (Huxley 27). Characters in the lower class are not jealous, although characters of the upper class feel a slight sense of superiority. The novel also states, " 'Oh no, I don 't want to play with Delta children. And Epsilons are still worse. They 're too stupid to be able to read or write. Besides, they wear black, which is such as beastly colour. I 'm so glad I 'm a Beta '" (Huxley 27). Despite the apparent lack of class conflict, the characters do not truly experience free thought; they do not realize it, but authority tells them exactly what to do, think, and say. Huxley cautions that social standing has become so ingrained in American society that its removal, if not impossible, would be intricate and could have

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For instance, when John goes to the hospital to see his mother, Linda, he sees the children staring at her with, “…the stupid curiosity of animals… (Huxley 295).” This shows the that individuals in the new world act more like animals than civilized humans. Another example is, "Alpha children wear grey… They all wear green, and Delta children wear khaki.… (Huxley 39).

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A generation that played by the rules and see progress, fall out the middle class. This shrinking middle class harms people of color more than whites. For example, “the unemployment rate among black Americans is roughly twice that the population, whites, and black people earn, on average, between twelve through twenty-two per cent less than Caucasian people with similar education and experience are on top of the racial hierarchy, while variously shaded African Americans are below caucasian (Siaiecki). Thus Caucasians in socioeconomic position (class) and prestige (status)” (Gans).

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I 'm really awfully glad I 'm a Beta, because I don 't work so hard…’” (Huxley, 22). Thus, all humans think they have an

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