What Does Technology Symbolize In Brave New World

1725 Words7 Pages

Symbolism is used by authors to represent items or concepts with other things. It allows readers to think deeper about the meaning of the story to find the theme or the goal of the author. In Aldous Huxley’s dystopian novel Brave New World, many different literary devices can be found throughout the book. Symbolism is one that reoccurs many times during the story that takes place in the World State. In the setting of the World State, the government controls the people and technology is important as it is used in futuristic ways. For example, using the Bokanovsky process to create population within a caste system, soma used to control negative emotions, as well as tech giant Henry Ford being idolized in a religious way. The symbols portrayed …show more content…

Technology in Brave New World is representing the theme of science vs. nature. This is seen through many examples such as artificial production in the Central London Hatchery and Conditioning Centre and …show more content…

The technique of creating humans in the World State is called the Bokanovsky Process where 1 egg is shocked into 96 identical humans. Because science and technology rules this society, they believe in technological reproduction rather than the standard physical reproduction. A lot of ideas go into this process such as caste systems, hypnopaedia, oxygen depletion, mutation, cloning, prenatal conditioning and assembly lines. In the World State, the caste system ranges from the upper Alphas and Betas, the middle Gammas and the lower Deltas and Epsilons. The given caste essentially determined what the life was going to be like for an individual and what their role in society would be. Caste systems are defined as “a man’s social capacities were known from the caste into which he was born, and his caste prescribed the occupations that he could enter” (Hoff. 2). The caste system would be one of the many controlling factors of the World State’s population as it is described as the “unescapable social destiny” (Huxley. 16). In the production lab, hypnopaedia is used to teach about the society during the upcoming population’s sleep. The message or lesson being advised is whispered to the children 123 times, three times a week for 30 months. This is one of the first ways that the government begins their extreme control. Hypnopaedia isn’t the only method of controlled conditioning used by the government of the World State either. Oxygen

More about What Does Technology Symbolize In Brave New World