Evolution of they dystopia (Click to select text)

As Aldous Huxley wrote the novel Brave New World, he combined the horrific future blight found in other dystopias with the ever-present flaws of a suppressed feudalistic society. This combination created a revolutionary vision of what an early twentieth century world would evolve into following its present path. Brave New World outlines the mindless suppression of an ignorant society through the mechanical brainwashing of a world overrun by technology. From Huxley's birth to Brave New World's inception, the corruption of a great communist government had not yet occurred. While it was an unnerving fable in its time, the chilling future foretold in Brave New World lost plausibility with the development of a debauched communist government. George Orwell wrote the novel Animal Farm as a direct result of the events surrounding the Soviet Revolution. In writing the Communist Manifesto in 1848, Karl Marx theorized the creation of a revolutionary new form of government which had the potential to cure the ills plaguing early nineteenth century capitalist Europe. The creation of a government based on these principles occurred in 1917 with the Russian Revolution. The corruption which followed within this government gave Orwell the basis to construct the dystopia found in Animal Farm. The feudalist dystopia found in Aldous Huxley's Brave New World is altered by the inspirational theories of Karl Marx and by the Russian Revolution, into the communist dystopia found in George Orwell's Animal Farm. The castes found in Brave New World depict an accurate representation of segregation in feudalistic society. This is most efficiently portrayed during the tour of the factory where "people are created on an assembly line. . .(Smith, 1)" and engineered to perform the social task associated with their respective caste. Huxley highlights the prejudice and contempt with which the upper castes look upon the lower castes and the pride which is artificially instated within every individual: ‘Alpha children wear gray. They work so much harder than we do because they are so frightfully clever. I'm really awfully glad I'm a Beta, because I don't work so hard. And then we are so much better then the Gammas and Deltas. . .'(Huxley, 27) This bigotry depicts one of the keystones of a feudalistic dystopia, the scorn found between classes. In dystopian literature the suppression of the ignorant masses is commonplace while exploitation of the caste system makes the feudalistic dystopia unique As a feudalistic society, Brave New World must have an oppressor or feudalistic ‘lord'. Mustafa Mond, the director, is the leader and virtual dictator of the world state. To fulfill his classic role as a feudalistic dystopian leader, Mond monitored the World State making decisions as he saw fit and acting on his every whim. "The fundamental political axiom of Mond's [society] is the belief that to achieve stability one must first stabilize the workers(Baker, 126)." He utilizes the horrific technology which condemns the population to a life time of mindless servitude between doses of soma. Education is controlled and "in the sterile post-Ford world the man who liked Shakespeare would soon become an anachronism(Frierson, 264)." He explains while lecturing a group of Alpha students that "‘. . .that is the secret of happiness and virtue— liking what you have to do. All conditioning aims at that: making people like their unescapable social destiny'(Huxley, 15)." The suppression of a weaker people is the cornerstone of the feudalistic society found in Brave New World. Mechanical brainwashing allows the totalitarian bureaucracy to instill values in the different classes so that they keep each other in check. This is done through the development of a hierarchical pyramid where the government allows a few educated ‘alphas' to control the numerous lower classes. "‘It's an absurdity. An Alpha-decanted, Alpha conditioned man would go insane if he had to do Epsilon semi-moron work. . .'(Hux