The following Inspiration diagrams have been posted to aid student preparation for the below in-class exam: "Community, Identity, and Stability" (small pic.), Lenina vs. John the Savage, and the Us vs. Them files.

“There is no civilization without social stability.  No social stability without individual stability.”

“Community, Identity, and Stability!”

Brave New World Essay

     First published in 1929, Aldous Huxley's Brave New World is if anything more applicable today than at the time of writing.  Individual human needs subordinated to modern mass organization: propaganda, censorship, and large-scale mind control.  Genetic engineering and social conditioning threaten to change human nature at the deepest levels.  Total immersion in mindless entertainment, with hyper-sexuality divorced from love and rampant sensory stimulation devoid of any deep feeling.  Sterility, shallowness, and conformity.  Empty pleasure and endless trivial distraction.  This was what Huxley saw in our future.  His book is a warning.

     But a warning of what?  Mustapha Mond and the other 10 Controllers have created a smoothly operating social machine defined by an absence of violent conflict or intense suffering among the general population.  But at what cost?

     Mustapha would answer that, whatever the cost, it was well worth it.  He would answer that we could no longer afford to be what has been traditionally called "human."  Mustapha claims that "you've got to choose between happiness and what people used to call high art. We've sacrificed the high art."  He claims that he has and his "brave new world" have therein found a better way (indeed found "happiness"!), and this "better way" means restricting freedom of thought and organizing society along very rigid lines.  It is, Mustapha argues, a clear step forward for mankind.  "Look where mankind was headed before us!" he might say.  It is an argument not without merit.  But is it the best argument?  What is left unsaid by John the Savage?  What could you add to Symon's objections?

     This is where I want you to concentrate in this essay.  In the utopia in Brave New World Aldous Huxley raises certain fundamental questions about mankind and human society.  To name just a few: Is it better to be free than to be "happy"?  Is freedom compatible with happiness?  Is the collective more important than the individual?  Should the individual be limited/controlled for the greater good?  How much?  Is there a "human nature"?  Or are humans infinitely malleable?  Can mankind be conditioned by science?  Can children be taught effectively to think in only one certain way?  To come to only preconceived conclusions?  Can young people be taught so well and so thoroughly that they never question their teachings later?  Can alterations made by advanced science to mankind be made permanent at the DNA-level?  Should humans be changed thusly?  Can society be made "stable" this way?  Is stability more important than freedom?  Why?  Or why not? These questions go directly to the heart of Huxley's novel.  

     Your task in this assignment is to wrestle with these issues and draw insightful conclusions to them.  In a multi-paragraph essay, write a letter to Controller Mustapha Mond arguing that the price he and his society have paid for stability is not worth the cost.  Various characters in the novel have already started to make the argument; I want you to broaden and deepen this point of view, making it more coherent and complete.  Make sure your essay goes into depth and is well written; use your best ideas and your best words.

     Come into class on the day of the essay with your outline completed; you can use any and all notes that you can fit on the back and front of this sheet of paper as you write. You will have ninety minutes to complete this essay.  It is worth 100 points.  Good luck!

NOTE: Check out essay rubric here.