Erin Simonds

Period 4 English

Thursday, January 14, 1999

The reader follows Bernard Marx, a smart but physically imperfect member of the Brave New World. Created with too much alcohol in his egg, Bernard is shorter than most men, but has the mental capacity of the highest caste of citizens – the Alpha Plus’s. The plot, as flimsy as it is, begins with Bernard taking Lenina to an island of outcasts – ‘savages’ that do not live by the rules and norms of Brave New World society. Here in this outpost of 1930’s English society, Bernard and Lenina meet John, the abandoned son of the Controller, one of the ten most important men in the Brave New World. John was raised not under the hand of conformity, but rather by free will, learning from his own experiences.

When brought back to the New World, John and his mother, Linda (the Controller’s former lover) are faced with a society begging for answers – a mass paparazzi, in a way. Linda, away from soma for so long, had lost her resistance to the drug, and dies from an overdose the day she returns to the Brave New World. John, furious at the way the Brave New World is run, cuts off the supply of soma to the Delta’s (the fourth class of people), causing a riot. Because of this, Bernard, Bernard’s friend Helmholtz, and John are given a trial. Bernard and Helmholtz are exiled to Iceland, and John is forced to stay and live in the Brave New World. When a mob comes to John’s house to see him crying, he kills himself.

The book does not have a solid base of characters nor a thorough plot – it relies almost entirely on a vivid setting and Huxley’s insistent message. This exact same layout is used in Island, Huxley’s last book, and his last word in "the fable and vision that began with Brave New World" (Clareson 34). In Island, which was written a year before he died, Huxley makes his final attempt at conveying his vision for a good Utopia. To convey his message, Huxley uses the same blueprint that he used in A Brave New World, but with about three times the amount of text. The most significant difference between the two books is Huxley’s approach at the story. In A Brave New World, Huxley sought to create a warning against a conformist society, while satisfying the expectations of literary community in the process; with Island, Huxley wanted only to convey the entirety of his vision of a good Utopia. Both books use a flimsy plot, upon which a vivid, message-bearing setting is hung. These two elements then support characters: mouths for Huxley’s ideas. The two novels work together as a unit, bearing Huxley’s first and last expressions of his dream for a society bound by harmony, not conformity.

Island is Huxley’s grand attempt to make public his vision for a true Utopia. Instead of the false-Utopian-technological-mega-society which Huxley presents so horridly in Brave New World, the Utopia of Island is confined to a true miniature society: the people of Pala. This fortunate island was virtually abandoned by history – its people were allowed to develop a culture isolated from conflict, but kept current with beneficial outside technology and occurrences. The result was a small island in which the people live with true mental freedom – practicing a form of Buddhism, in fact – while just twenty miles away was the chaos of the real world. There is no greed, no violence and even death has a certain faint charm about it and scarcely interrupts the flow of talk (O’Donovan 17). One could consider the island of Pala a ‘diamond in the rough’ – an oasis of serenity in a hectic world. It is on this perfectly secluded island, untainted by war or industrialization, that Huxley brings to life his Utopia.

The Utopia consists not entirely of the perfection of the island itself, but also of the psychological peace of its people. As Huxley drops the main character, Will Farnaby, into the story, the reader is immediately acquainted with the skill that the Palaians have over gaining true peace of mind. After Farnaby’s tragic shipwreck on Pala, he is treated psychologically through mere conversation with the young girl who found him. Later in the novel, the reader finds that the Palaians have an extraordinary control of the conscious and unconscious mind – much of it based on their modified Buddhist beliefs. The product is "an extraordinarily happy people, in sharp contrast with the confused humanity in the rest of the world. They are free. They are wholesomely emotional. Their intelligence reaches its potential. They are fundamentally in tune with nature. They enjoy life to the fullest, moment by moment" (Pfeiffer 101). The perfection of Pala, combined with the tranquility of Palaian life, makes Island the perfect manifestation of Huxley’s vision of a true Utopia.

Much as Huxley relied heavily on setting in A Brave New World, he again conveyed many of his ideas for a ‘good society’ through the environments and customs that surround the characters of Island. On Huxley’s island, Pala, "East and West have united to produce Utopia" (Herzog 74). When one writes a story about a Utopia, there are some complications concerning how to get in all of the details that make the society work. Instead of relying completely on characters – a technique that Huxley was never fond of – Island effectively presents much of what would define it as a Utopia through a complex setting. In choosing a model by which to present his dream Utopia, Huxley probably chose Pala in order to show how such a society could conceivably develop and prosper in a 20^th century world. To justify the actual possibility of such a society growing with little outside influence, Huxley included a brief synopsis of Pala’s history during one of Farnaby’s conversations.

 

"’…Pala as a whole has been extraordinarily lucky. It’s had the luck, first of all, never to have been anyone’s colony. Rendang has a magnificent harbor. That brought them an Arab invasion in the Middle Ages. We have no harbor, so the Arabs left us alone and we’re still Buddhists or Shivaites – that is, when we’re not Tantrik agnostics.’

‘Is that what you are?’ Will enquired. ‘A Tantrik agnostic?’
‘With Mahayana trimmings,’ Ranga qualified. ‘Will, to return to Rendant. After the Arabs it got the Portuguese. We didn’t. No harbor, no Portuguese. Therefore no Catholic minority, no blasphemous nonsense about its being God’s will that people should breed themselves into subhuman misery, no organized resistance to birth control. And that isn’t our only blessing: After a hundred and twenty years of the Portuguese, Ceylon and Rendang got the Dutch. And after the Dutch came the English. We escaped both those infestations. No Dutch, no English, and therefore no planters, no coolie labor, no cash crops for export, no systematic exhaustion of our soil. Also no whisky, no Calvinism, no syphilis, no foreign administrators. We were left to go our own way and take responsibility of our own affairs.’
‘You certainly were lucky.’" (Island 92)

With the reader thoroughly acquainted with why Pala’s success was plausible, he can more completely understand Huxley’s "blueprint" for a good Utopia, and inspires one to consider how such a society could be developed in the real world. A fantastic history does not qualify a fantastic society, however. The true benefit that the setting contributes to Huxley’s message lies in the advances that the people of the island have made in spiritual health. The Palaians have such a bountiful and pleasant society because everyone there was raised with teachings of Eastern religion, such as Zen and Buddhism. These religions have allowed the people to gain complete control over not only their mental actions and feelings, but over some physical aspects as well. One enormous contributor to the society’s prosperity is the Palaian ability to manipulate the mind into relaying less pain from injury. With this skill, as well as the mastery over psychological balance, the people have little individual difficulties.

With individual problems almost entirely nonexistent, Pala’s main concern is group satisfaction. Recognizing that population detracts from a society’s opportunity to prosper, Pala encourages birth control, which keeps its population growth rate to about 2% per year – less than half of India’s rate. "The island contains a minimum of machinery and consumer goods, but a splendidly daring agriculture" (O’Donovan 18). The Experimental Station, built on the island about 30 years before the reader is involved in the story, was an ambitious attempt at finding better food sources. The product of this endeavor was a super-productive strain of cattle, disease-resistant crops, and a nearly fat-less mass production meat. Huxley’s plan, apparently, was a practical one involving much consideration for the development of self-sufficient communities, and tackling the problems, such as population, which detract from success.

Huxley’s manifestation of the ideal society does not survive solely on luck, mental skill, and good organization – the people of Pala use narcotics to assist the learning process. "Moksha", a mushroom-derivative, is consumed by the Palaians to help them transcend to new levels of consciousness. By coming more in touch with their own minds, the Palaians believe that they can be more at peace with themselves and their society, allowing a more fruitful life. Huxley pursued a similar idea with "soma" in A Brave New World, but "it is the purpose that differs. Brave New World takes soma for a harmless binge. The Palaians use the mushroom extract as an opening wedge into ultimate consciousness" (Walsh 46). Huxley seems to be quite inclined towards using narcotics to better the human psyche, and in both of his Utopias, no-side-effect "happy drugs" served important roles in the daily lives of the people. For the Brave New Worldlings, soma countered the potential depression of their confined lives. To the Palaians, the moksha was not a temporary source of happiness, but a tool used in achieving greater self-willed happiness. Huxley’s "father’s agnoticism and [his] mother’s nonsectarian faith" (Paulsell 149) probably contributed to Huxley’s tendency to include unorthodox religions and drugs in his Utopian model. The fact that "in the 1960's … drugs gained broad social acceptance" (Musto) could account for much of Huxley’s decision to use drugs as a form of spirituality in Island. Since "many young people used drugs in a search for spiritual insight" (Musto) during the 1960’s, Huxley may have found narcotics to be a beneficial part of spiritual life (despite our society’s taboo of drugs) and hence included the idea of moksha in Island. Clearly, Aldous Huxley’s vision for a Utopia was not going to be hindered by the social norms of his time.

The setting of Island is composed of a rich culture, a strong economy, a geographically convenient environment, and an overall bountiful society. Although most of Huxley’s design for a Utopia is presented through this setting, some of the theological aspects are revealed by using the characters. Of course, these characters are only present for technical purposes – without them the book would be an enormous essay, and that was not what Huxley wanted to use to communicate his ideas. Unfortunately, with all of the ideas of an essay to be packed into a narrative, the characters in Island serve more as marionettes than as instruments of literature. Much as Huxley did with the characters in A Brave New World, the characters of Island were only needed to provide him with a means to communicate his voice to the reader. Essentially, the characters were merely puppets through which Huxley could be as didactic as he pleased.

Of course, being the skilled writer that he is, Aldous Huxley tried vainly to avoid being didactic in Island, as the most profound messages are those that go unsaid. This is a terribly difficult task, and "late in his life he expressed this continuing concern in a letter to his son (20 August 1959):

Clearly, Huxley had all intentions of avoiding being didactic, but as he stated in his letter, "the job is one which cannot be accomplished with complete success". "Complete success" is a bit of an understatement, as almost all of the book is distinctly Huxley’s tone. Despite this technical complication, Huxley does convey a lot of what he needed to say about society and Utopia through the mouths of the characters. His tone is consistently separate from that of the true characters, but his messages are the same. Huxley used characterization sparingly, and hence there is little to discuss, but there is an irrefutable presence of Huxley’s "slant on things" in every dialogue.

Huxley did not have to try so hard to avoid the problem of didacticism in A Brave New World because he wrote it as the antithesis of his dream. It was not so much a compilation of the specifics of his vision, but rather a slightly disguised warning against the very Utopia that he defined as the Brave New World – one of conformity and without individuality. Since the message of A Brave New World was not Huxley’s true vision (instead the inverse), it was not as difficult for him to write the story without including his own ‘voice’.

Characters are skillfully employed - and only when necessary, as Huxley used plot and character minimally in his novels. Inarguably, Huxley was capable of developing excellent stories, as demonstrated in any of his short stories, but as he progressed "…toward more open discussion of spirituality and idealism in a mystical unity of all things, longer fictional formats worked best for him" (Frakes 42). Huxley didn’t develop deep, round characters in A Brave New World because they were unnecessary – all he needed to do was get his point across, and that he did, and with surprisingly little didacticism. Since the more significant messages were conveyed through the setting of the book, it seems that Huxley again used the characters "…as little more than mouthpieces for his ideas" (Firchow 18).

Technology and conformity were the two evils in A Brave New World, and Huxley did his best to emphasize that by subjecting the reader to a false-Utopia. The way of life in the BNW is monotonous and without choice, but the citizens know their society as a Utopia because the system has eliminated disease, famine, and supposedly, dissatisfaction. At the heart of the system lie Huxley’s targets – oppressive technology and forced conformity. By presenting the reader with John, a ‘savage’ of the BNW, Huxley introduces the contrast necessary to promote the reader’s antipathy towards the World Controllers. John was not raised in the BNW, but rather in a colony of people holding the ancient culture, which is really that of 1930’s Europe. He was therefore permitted to read books, and consequently, he knows the Utopia only as an amalgam of stories from his mother and Shakespearean plays. When John is brought to the Utopian BNW, he shares the view that any Westerner would today, offering the reader someone to quickly relate to. With John, Huxley masterfully coaxes the reader into identifying with the ‘victim’ of the System. By demonstrating the hardships and concerns that John faces upon encountering the BNW, Huxley presents the reader with a situation in which the reader knows almost first-hand the sting of forced conformity and oppressive technology – again emphasizing the view of both elements as evil.

By luring the audience into resenting the control that the BNW has over its citizens, Huxley's message against conformity is effectively conveyed, but his warning against technology is presented without the need of characters. Instead, Huxley offers his warnings on technology through the lengthy passages of narration and setting description.

For instance, the tour guide spends a considerable amount of time discussing the reproductive practices of the Hatchery. He tells the group (and the reader) about the elaborate system of fertilizing ova in test tubes (bottles) and letting them develop completely artificially. Although the idea of then forcing the ovum to multiply into 15,000 twins is a bit shocking even in the 1990’s, test-tube babies are now considered sound alternatives to childbirth.

One of the practices discussed in the novel, however, will probably forever upset readers. In chapter two, the tour group watched a conditioning routine which consisted of letting several babies touch flowers or books and then electrocuting them, to enforce that books and nature are bad. To the reader, this shows quite poignantly that the restrictions of the BNW are quite strict, not allowing people to engage in behavior that could disturb their required duties in life.

Finally, by the end of the first three chapters, the reader is fully aware of the cruel practices that form the members of the BNW, but has yet to encounter a flock of real characters. That is, several characters with feelings, emotion, and of course, problems. Through the characters of Bernard, Lenina, and Helmholtz, Huxley brings his points to life. Huxley finally shows his message (that life in a "Utopia" is often hellish) through human actions, not monotonous speech about technology, by creating a character that loathes ‘Utopian’ life. He then employs the difficulties and internal struggles of these characters to convey the idea of being unhappy in a society of never-ending happiness.

Huxley’s method of transferring his message to the reader in BNW is very unique, but, in the end, quite effective. By the time the reader reaches the fifth chapter, he already has extensive background information about the society, and has several different situations to bring to mind the wrongs of that society. Everything from the bland discussion of forcing uniformity, to the realistic, feel-it-yourself pain of being an outcast in a perfect world, brings the reader to the conclusion that striving for group satisfaction can crush the potential for individual happiness.

In both A Brave New World and Island, Huxley strives to present the reader with a realistic model of his Utopia – be it the actual dream, or the exact opposite. Both novels survive using a strong setting to convey the feel of an oppressive Brave New World, or a serene, secluded island. With the reader engulfed in a vivid setting, Huxley employs characters as puppets through which he can talk about the good and bad in each Utopia. In the end, Huxley succeeded; Island, despite its didactic feel, provided a true grand finale to the quest for expression that began with A Brave New World.