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Jason Mubaslat International Studies Mr. Arnold Brave New World, Surrogates & Equilibrium In 1932, Huxley finished a novel that could be seen as a social foreshadowing that circulates in the history of present-day American culture dealing with sex, drugs, and total social perversion. Many people would have a hard time to imagine living in a world without mothers and fathers, a place in which all those around you are actually human clones or zombies with no personality, a vast array of people that are not seen as unique individuals but a social body. I related this futuristic world with a couple of dystopian movies such as Equilibrium and Surrogates. Both societies resulted from the absence of spirituality, feeling emotion and love while abusing technology using scientific advances. The society described above, becomes a reality in A Brave New World, a novel illustrating how the advancement of science can affect humanity greatly. In the World State people take soma to be happy while in Libria people take prozium to suppress all emotions and eliminate instability. All of these dystopian worlds have in common that the characters suffer so us the readers dont have to while leaving us with an interested thought to ponder; is it better to be happy or to be free. A Brave New World takes place in 632 A.F many years after civilization started to be controlled. Civilization is reconstructed into a new society after an epic global nine year war. The war was so brutal and tiresome, that the World controllers decided to control the world's actions through means of science such as Father in Equilibrium. The World State had the option of choosing between the high art and happiness where in Libria they sacrificed the high

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art. In Huxleys novel, children are no longer raised by their birth parents. Instead, children are transferred through a specific system which is called Bokanovskys process similar to the infant cleric training process. Starting at infancy, children are brainwashed to think and act in accordance with their social class. The World State society predetermines human embryos to certain levels of intelligence, and chemically eliminates becoming sick or old. Children are placed in different castes to decide divisions in labor. Reproductive technology plays a key role in the social control of Brave New World. Reproduction takes place in a Hatchery. Excised ova are inspected for abnormalities, fertilized then put into incubators and then undergo the "Bokanovsky Process". Each embryo is treated for 8 minutes with X-rays until rather than the cells dividing normally, they "bud". Each bud has the potential of becoming a separate but identical embryo. These buds are then subjected to various chemicals such as alcohol, until they also bud. This process is repeated many times until an average harvest of 11,000 identical embryos can be created from one egg. These 11,000 identical brothers and sisters become a "Bokanovsky group" such as clerics, surrogates, and firefighters. Bokanovskys process is one of the major instruments of social stability which each of these dystopian worlds aim to achieve. Each embryo is then bottled, labeled and sent down the conveyor belt to the "Social Predestination Room". It is here that they are given a caste designation which ranked from the highest ranking of Alpha . The clothing system worked as follows, Beta wear green, Delta wear khaki and Epsilon children wear black, and all of their information is carded into the main card index and stored. It is also here that they are "sexed". It is also in this futuristic world that their caste designation determines how much oxygen they will receive in their bottle. The lower the caste, the shorter the oxygen." The lower caste

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Epsilons are oxygen deprived because for the labors they are destined to perform, they will not need human intelligence. The Bokanovskified, pre-sexed, caste designated embryos are then taken out of storage when needed and transferred where as children; they are subjected immediately to sleep learning tapes on the "conditioning wards". Hour after hour as they sleep, the children receive sleep reinforcement of their perfect world. Similar as in 1984 and Equilibrium where the people are brainwashed to the governments propaganda. As they mature, they naturally assume the responsibilities and the rules of their castes, duties, jobs. Very few people question, as their caste is assigned from birth. But if they do, they are exiled to an island where their questioning can't contaminate others such as the sense offenders being sent to combustion and in 1984 thought offenders are taken away. As a result, the society remains stable and unquestioning. Everyone easily fulfills society's obligations and there are few surprises. If things should get stressful for any reason, there's always the wonder drug "soma". If anything goes wrong, there's always the soma holiday from life. Most of the Epsilon workers are paid in soma tablets to keep them happy. After all it wouldn't be very beneficial to have an unhappy underpaid workforce fighting high unemployment rates. Leisure time is often spent at the "feelies", a theatre where the emotions and responses of the actors can actually be experienced which are like movies that engage all the senses and involves a lot of casual sex afterwards. In these worlds we meet 4 persons Cleric Preston, Bruce Willis, Winston in 1984 and the savage John whom is the main character in Brave New World. Although Bernard Marx is the primary character in Brave New World up until his visit with Lenina to the Reservation, after that point he fades into the background and John becomes the central character. Bernhard and Helmholtz are "thinkers" commiting thought crimes and heavy sense offenders. They haven't

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conformed properly. They actually do some thinking of their own. Bernhard is also peculiar in the respect that he is not of the average height as his class. Lenina, a girl just doing her job, taking her soma, and having her sex which is also in 1984. She and Bernhard goes to the reservation in New Mexico for their holidays which Leninas verdict on Bernard was just odd,odd,odd for not having sex and they meet the savage John. He is the son of the director of the London hatchery. So the young John learned to read, and he had read a lot of Shakespeares plays which the knowledge of Shakespeares works served him in several important ways allowing him to verbalize his own emotions and reactions to criticize World State values; community, identity, stability. It also provides him with language that allows him to hold his own against the intimidating philological skill of Mustapha Mond. Meeting a lot of problems in this not so perfect society, both Bernhard and Helmhotz are sent away to islands, but John gets sent away to a lighthouse. After some months he is seen whipping himself because he feels guilty of enjoying his time away. This causes a lot of people to come to see for themselves. This caused John to lose his mind, that night he and the many other people there had a long orgy, and he even took some soma. When even more people came back the next evening, he had committed suicide, and he hung inside his lighthouse. Some may ask why he committed suicide but it is obvious once observing his life. John, the savage, has been a loner all his life, he was not accepted in the society, and the only comfort he had was his mother and loyal Shakespeare. Through his childhood his mother told him lots of stories of the Utopian society how she thought the outer world was. But, when he finally came there, he found that this Utopia was nothing like what he had expected. People thought they had the best society ever but John saw through all this and saw the true reality. People weren't actually free, they were trapped by their own minds whether it be Soma, Prozium or Big Brother. John truly started to dislike the civilized society

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after this, and decided to leave society on his own terms from hanging himself which is more respectable than Winston in 1984 whom just goes to the coffee shop and watches the news after leaving room 101. So in conclusion this essay depicts a dystopia in which an all-powerful state controls the behaviors and actions of its people in order to preserve its own stability and power. Power in Brave New World, 1984, Equilibrium and Surrogates is maintained through technological interventions that starts before birth and lasts until death, which actually can change what people really want. Last but not least the all these governments retain control by making its citizens so happy and superficially fulfilled that they dont care about their own personal freedom. In Brave New World the major consequence of World State control would have to be a major loss of humanity. I believe that power pursued ruthlessly by organized institutions will lead to a human nightmare and that this culture will only become real if all destruction is rampaging throughout the universe. Even though some may argue that society has already become blind to the social conditioning of premarital sex, excessive drug use and the acceptance of everyday violence through one major problem which is weakness. This essay shows that together we can build a better new world that doesnt revolve around television, media and some new crazy drug.