Brave New World :: essays research papers

Brave New World by Aldous Huxley is a novel that takes place in Utopia. Yet in this ideal place everyone is conditioned to be happy, it is a place where various things such as the arts are restricted so all people will be synchronized in thinking. Love and commitment does not exist but rather everyone belongs to everyone else. This place is also a place where soma holidays help people escape from their realities and never have its society feel any kind of distress or illness. This place was not Utopia to John â€Å"the Savage,† it was rather a place of hell and torment which none of the things he enjoyed and loved existed. In the novel, freedom of the individual will is one of the fundamental beliefs at the root of human ideals. While the environment or the public world (society) plays some part in forming the psyche of an individual, it is in the end, the choice of the individual (John) to be who they become The whole concept of Brave New World contradicts to everything John ever believed in. John came from a world where art and expression of variation from the society existed. People must face their problems and overcome them, and love requires commitment and is greatly appreciated. John was rather a Renaissance man trapped in a world where none of his necessities in life existed. He was disgusted at their orgy-porgies, their belief of take, take, take not give, give, give. Total happiness did not exist to John in a world which lacked expression of the arts. It was rather total torment. Throughout the novel John continues to fight and believe for what he believes in while the surrounding environment continues to pressure him and submerge him into Utopian ways of life. The conflicts which were faced upon his arrival were of devastation. His life grew lonelier and lonelier each day with his dissatisfaction with the crude nature and refined society of the Utopians. He was trapped in a tedious world where there was nothing to do. John symbolizes the artist or the believer striving for ecstasy. Yet in a world of synchronized life, lack of arts, unrequited love, and â€Å"runaways† it is impossible to find ecstasy. He finds nothing worth living for in the ordinary world and strongly regrets his leave of the reservation in coming to this â€Å"boring† world. Clearly he is the image of a man trying to liberate himself from his own egotism.