Ap English 12 Politcal AND Social Issues Essay

Jon Weinerman

Many works of literature deal with political or social issues. Choose a novel or play that focuses on a political or social issue. Then write an essay in which you analyze how the author uses literary elements to explore this issue and explain how the issue contributes to the meaning of the work as a whole. Do not merely summarize the plot.

            Throughout the course of human events, there has always been someone to write about societies issues. Whether it be from the scribes in Egypt, or the yellow journalists who caused the Spanish American War; literature has always been published dealing with political or social issues. It’s simply in human nature to document and pay attention to such controversies, since they directly or indirectly affect everyone in the society at some point or another. Aldous Huxley’s Brave New World is perfectly fitting for a social commentary. The actual world that Aldous Huxley lived in was riddled with social issues that influenced and inspired his writing. He incorporates the assembly line, world politics, world literature and medical advances, rampant in the 1930’s, to make his point about the potentially frightening future society seemed to be leading itself to.

            Huxley begins his novel with disturbing images of humans being “decanted” in a factory, as if it were a normal thing.  This is a direct comment, not just on scientific and medical advancements, but industrial advancements as well. Henry Ford’s creation of the assembly line and the advent of mass production had millions of people feeling that Huxley’s world of AF 632 was a possibility. The creation of humans as opposed to the natural course of birth shows Huxley’s fear of the rapid scientific advancement. This was a time where contraceptives such as birth control pills became very popular and Huxley takes that and uses it against society, saying that it could one day prevent us from sexually reproducing altogether. Huxley fears that the world could potentially become a world full of cloned twins, with no individuality, simply “Community”.

                        Science is used in this imaginative world of Ford as a means to create a kind of “pseudo-happiness” that everyone believes in. The World State has artificially removed all bad, sad, and negative emotions to control what they call “order.” Huxley takes his fear of this emotional control and manifests it in the symbol of Soma. A world where popping a pill masks and cures sadness makes it so people may never actually feel true happiness. This is a major fear of Huxley’s because the pharmaceutical industry seemed to be making excessive progress in the 1930s. Socially, it was viewed as productive and many people thought positively of the advancement, but Aldous Huxley saw it as creating our very own ammunition.

            Huxley approaches another point of commentary with an appeal to the ultimate literary authority of the legendary and iconic, Mr. William Shakespeare. He does this for two reasons: to promote the idea of having independent thoughts, and to show that literature cannot and will not die. In Brave New World, hardly anyone knows who William Shakespeare even is, let alone reads and enjoys his works. In fact, the only two known Shakespeare readers are John, the Savage and Mustapha Mond, one of the twelve “World Controllers.” Mond simply is familiar with all the works of Shakespeare, but never publically expresses it, while John is constantly talking about plays and quoting them in public. John is strongly in favor of reading, as well as love, instead of reciting hypnopaedic phrases for mental conditioning and then having obscene sex parties with everyone. If Shakespeare or great literary works in general, for that matter, were to be eliminated from the World altogether, Huxley fears that government could posses control over individuals’ thoughts and beliefs.

            Aldous Huxley also uses the character of Bernard Marx to make a general political comment. He characterizes Marx as a rebel, someone who strays from the path that everyone else walks along. It is no coincidence that he is named and modeled after Karl Marx, the Enlightenment Era philosopher. Karl Marx is the man who came up and implemented the first attempt at true communism. This also coincided with the Russian Revolution where communism was also attempted. Bernard Marx is like Karl Marx in the sense that they have both succeeded in making political change. Karl Marx’s triumph was in the Russian Revolution and Bernard Marx’s triumph was in exposing the Director as a “savage” who committed the “sin” of sexual reproduction. Without people like this, Huxley fears the World may never progress in the way it is supposed to and politics may end up in a dystopian, totalitarian mess.

             Aldous Huxley’s, Brave New World, shows us that what we love and value as a society could potentially be the downfall of us all. Huxley’s use of characterization, symbols, appeals, and metaphors all provide a link to the era in which he lived. 1930s America posed controversial issues in medical and industrial aspects of life as well as political, which all boil down into the social pool of conversation. Huxley warns his society to the dangers and evils of indulgence and progress. His overall message coming down to, “Be careful what you wish for.”