What Does Happiness Mean In Brave New World Essay

1026 Words5 Pages

Happiness. It’’s the thing everyone in life wants to find, the thing everyone strives for, the one resource in the world that can be available to everyone at any given time.
But what is it truly? What can be defined as true happiness? There is no one true meaning of happiness, it is unique to every single person on this earth. It can range from being wealthy, to even being poor, but having people you love there for you.
In Brave New World by Aldous Huxley, they use a form of “artificial” happiness.
Otherwise known as Soma, it’s what we would refer to as a drug. It’s a small tablet, that when ingested, would call a feeling of euphoria. But taking a pill to simulate happiness, can’t compare to genuine happiness. Happiness is being able to what …show more content…

For instance, if painting is something that makes you happy, and you live in a society that has banned art, how could you be happy? Happiness can come at a cost, there can’t be happiness in your life without some hardship. Everything has a cost, whether it’s large, or small, everything has a cost. In the movie Gattaca, the main protagonist Vincent wants to be “Valid”. A valid has not physical imperfections, and has been genetically modified. Vincent however, was not born this way, so he uses a false identity Jerome. to be seen as valid. It makes him happy, but of course, comes with a cost. He has to forget his old identity, live in secret, and has to have surgeries performed to change his physical appearance. He is happy, but he gave up what made him a unique person, and became like everyone else. If every person in society is the same, there's no way of making that special unique feature of what makes a certain person happy. Only fake, and artificial way to access it.
If every person takes a pill to make them “happy”, they can never know what true happiness feels like. The experience of true, real happiness, can't be imitated.