In one criticism of Aldous Huxley's Brave New World, the author writes that the New World is an "unsettling, loveless, and even sinister place." And, it is because the New World is such a place that Huxley begins his satiric novel in the manner that he does--to purposely alienate his audience. For, Huxley seeks to elicit in his audience disturbing feelings that the futuristic society has eliminated. Having described the New World as "a nightmare" in his Brave New World Revisited, Huxley wants his disutopia to disturb, not provide any "joyful anticipation."
In his novel, Huxley hopes to excite his contemporary audience of the 1930s and work on the complacency of his bougeois audience regarding Communism and "Fordist American Capitalism" with its concept of mass production. In addition, Huxley touches on his audience's revulsion of the Pavlovian behavioral conditioning with the hypnopaedia of the citizens in the New World.
In short, Huxley seeks to alert and warn his audience of the dangers of technology, biological and mechanical. In his introduction to his novel, he overtly states his theme:
The theme of Brave New world is not the advancement of science as such; it is the advancement of science as it affects human individuals.
The opening chapter gives the audience a shocking intoduction to this theme, one that, hopefully, will move his readers from their bourgeois complacency.
No comments:
Post a Comment