BNW Response #1

There are some aspects of Brave New World’s society that are relevant to the present day and some that are far-fetched. Stability, for example, is a word that is very important in most countries today. Leaders and their parties want stability and try to achieve it through different ways. The far-fetched about this idea in Brave New World is the government controlling people in order to preserve its own power. The people are so superficially fulfilled that they don’t care about their personal freedom.

Another example of Brave New World’s society that’s relatable to todays is the idea of class rankings. In the novel, five class systems made up society: Alphas, Betas, Gamma, Delta, and Epsilon. While there is not a traditional class system anymore, as there have been in previous years, most societies are still divided into classes based on wealth – that is, upper-class, middle-class, and lower class.

An idea that is somewhat stretched in relation in today is the idea of human cloning and manipulating genetics. In Brave New World, babies are developed in test tubes in a lab and are chosen based upon their abilities and appearance. Conditioning is fixed genetically, physically, and psychologically for the social destiny they belong to. During the last few years this idea has come about; couples, for example, pick sperm donors by their appearance or family/genetic history.

I think Huxley’s vision of Utopia world is nowhere near where we are today and I think there is a strong contrast between the two worlds. The birth of a child and being a parent, for example, are some of the most memorable events for a woman (and man). In Huxley’s Utopia, however, the words ‘mother’ and ‘father’ are unheard of and if one is caught having a child, they will be punished and exiled.