Brave New World

Brave New World

Discuss the ideas of dystopia and utopia within Brave New World. What should be the goal of any society? What purpose does the individual serve within a society, and how does it define individuality? How stability is maintained, and is it good for any purpose? What might you be willing to give up for world peace, no hunger, poverty, etc.? How would you define utopia? Is utopia possible? Using specific examples from the novel, explain your position.

The definition of utopia is: an imagined place or state of things in which everything is perfect. This Utopia could be anything according to the person or a society's idea of what a utopia is. Most people would describe the perfect place as somewhere where there is peace, no fighting, no need for guns or medicine, a place where nothing could possibly go wrong. There is also the dystopian aspect of this: An imagined place or state in which everything is unpleasant or bad, typically a totalitarian or environmentally degraded one. Although most people wouldn't like to imagine a place of dystopia, but there are places that are dystopian to some people. One person's place of utopia could be another person's place of dystopia and vice-versa. In this novel, Brave New World, the characters all had ideas of what the perfect place would be and most of them were not satisfied with the place that they were living even though the society around them viewed it as a utopia.

In this novel, I believe the whole idea of it was for the leader of the society to create a utopian society where everybody was happy no matter what. Mond was "the leader" of this civilization and his sole responsibility was to maintain happiness within his society. And this should be the goal of any first world country. Mond kept this society a utopia for the majority of it's people, nobody was ever sad or mad and if they were they took a drug known as soma which messed with their mind to take them on a "soma vacation."

An individual inside of a society is to do his/her job to help maintain status quo, or simply to make sure everything runs smoothly. In this society people are made by the thousands in a certain way to put them in a certain caste. Each caste fits into certain jobs and duties and has a specific way of living life. The lower they are in the caste, the easier the job is and the dumber the person is. There are also likely to be made hundreds of that same person in the lower castes. These people are made in a certain way when they are being "made in a jar," certain chemicals and certain things are done to these people to make sure that they come out the same way in society. If there are hundreds of people doing the same job and hundreds of people that look exactly the same in a society then individuals don't really have their own way of living. In this society there really is no individualism, except in the upper castes, they get to kind of live their own life and they all have different jobs but they are still expected to act a certain way. This upper class of society is still expected to maintain status quo and not become their own person.

Stability is maintained in a society basically by not letting anything get out of control