On the one hand, he seeks to represent the base nature of humanity, a state of unhappiness and fear that nevertheless produces beauty.
John takes his own life at the end of the novel because he has become a sacrifice for the continuation of society. Why does John Savage kill himself at the end of the novel? His pain and turmoil opened his mind to the beauty in art and the suffering that must accompany great achievement.
Because of his blindness, Huxley entered a career in journalism and literature that taught him to appreciate his own affliction. Progress can be as harmful to society as it is helpful. His blindness kept him from devoting his training to a kind of science that valued only the achievement of progress, an idea that he rejects in his novel. Huxley claimed that his love of both science and literature helped him to realize the limitations of both. Huxley's blindness, a condition he suffered from beginning in his childhood, did influence his views on science and art. He believes that the structures of monogamous sex incite lust and passion in those that cannot restrain themselves, but he also recognizes that a society of complete sexual freedom deprives people of the base desires that, in a way, make a person human.ĭo you believe that Huxley's blindness influenced the way he viewed society? Why or why not? Huxley's views on the subject are therefore mixed. Sexual plurality, which Huxley’s readers would have considered a moral vice, is a chief component of social stability. Monogamous sex, which was a chief moral value of Victorian society and the generations that followed, was ironically a mechanism that released great moral depravity in humanity. Huxley uses irony to make a statement about the social use of sexuality in modern society. In what ways does Huxley moralize sexuality in the novel? Both John Savage and Mustapha Mond agree that humans have an innate impulse towards belief in a god, but Mond sees that impulse as useless and something that society must control in order to ensure stability. When Bernard participates in the Solidarity Service, the participants feel a kind of Fordian Holy Ghost in a ritualized ceremony that engenders belonging and solidarity amongst the citizens. The government cannot completely suppress religious impulses in society, but they were able to control such impulses. Is Huxley’s society able to suppress religious impulses completely? The reader should not understand each character for their personality so much as for the thoughts and ideas that they represent. For instance, Bernard Marx personifies the unrest and hubris of socialist thought. Like many novels that depict dystopian futures, Huxley's novel relies less on character development than it does on the personification of social and political thought in the names, attitudes, traits, and flaws of each character. John shows the reader how beauty can come from tragedy and how turmoil and unhappiness are necessary conditions for great art.ĭiscuss Huxley's use of character development in the novel. His love of Shakespeare - the ultimate achievement in art and beauty, according to Huxley - represents his desire for aesthetic transcendence in the human soul. John Savage represents humanity's base desire for beauty. What traits of humanity does John Savage represent in the novel? Huxley comments on the scientific progress of the twentieth century, which caused a great amount of advancement but which also led to mechanisms of war. Thus, society must suppress the advent of certain ideas. Science, for instance, can reduce the amount of labor necessary to keep lower castes busy and upper castes satisfied with their work. Society must restrict science because too much scientific progress can result in social instability. Why does Mustapha Mond insist that science must be constrained in the same way that art and religion are? Instead, the greatest happiness comes through scientific and social conditioning that makes each person content with who they are and what they do. Happiness is stability and emotional equilibrium in people's lives rather than things that we might associate with happiness, such as achievement, advancement, love, and beauty. Huxley's utilitarian society seeks the greatest amount of happiness for the greatest amount of people. Discuss Huxley's vision of a utilitarian society.
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