In Brave New World, beneath the sex, drugs and universal satisfaction of Huxley's utopia, there exists a more sinister dystopia - a world described as being a "circle without a centre," inhabited by "humanity without man". Discuss, referring closely to the text.
Brave New World by Aldous Huxley was first published in 1932. Huxley's novel could be seen as a warning against the moral deterioration that scientific and technological progress invite.
On the surface, the world that Huxley creates is ideal, a progressive, orderly society with no crime and no unhappiness. Beneath this seeming flawless exterior exists a dystopia, a shocking insight to the lack of humanity such a society incurs.
When Brave New World was written, it was unimaginable that such a horrible soulless world would actually come into existence. Shamefully, we are already treading the dangerous road of progression, advancing technology and the beginning of immoral practices with genetics. .
The concept of a "circle without a centre" is becoming very real to the current generation with the suggestion that material things can make you happy. The characters in Brave New World show that material things can't are unfulfilling. You can pretend to be as happy as you like on the outside, but on the inside you are really hollow and empty. .
The principal of happiness is distorted on the futuristic planet earth. Commitment and love for another person is prohibited. Anything that promotes learning is discouraged. Questions about history are forbidden because the ways things are now are the way things should be; there is no reason to dwell on past mistakes. The Fords of the planet are all powerful. They have in turn replaced religion and God. The Fords are compared to God and other powerful influences of the past such as Freud. "Our Ford - or Our Freud, as, for some inscrutable reason. He chose to call himself whenever he spoke of psychological matters" (Pg 34).