The Price of Happiness and Stability

In the book Brave New World, by Aldous Huxley, the topic of price is brought up many times. I’m talking specifically about the price of happiness in the society of the future. Through most of the description of the society, readers can see what people have paid in order to be “happy.” In the first chapter readers are introduced to predestination, when students are given a tour of the hatchery, where it is explained that “‘We decant our babies as socialized human beings, as Alphas or Epsilons, as future sewage workers’” meaning that people no longer get to choose what they can be (Huxley 13). As more and more information is given to readers about the society, it is possible to see all the differences between their society and ours, and see everything they have given up. During John’s encounter with a World Controller, Mustapha Mond, they discuss all the things that are being given up. The Controller says that “You’ve got to choose between happiness and what people used to call high are. We’ve sacrificed high art” and also that “‘we can’t allow science to undo its own good work. That’s why we so carefully limit the scope of its researches” (Huxley 220, 227). Later, the Controller states that they have given up religion as well in order to be happy.

At the beginning of the book, the one person who is unsatisfied with all the concessions is Bernard Marx. He wants to be able to love, to have privacy, etc. When he talks to Lenina, “‘I want to know what passion is,’ she heard him saying. ‘I want to feel something strongly’” and later, he also asks Lenina “‘wouldn’t you like to be free to be happy in some other way, Lenina? in your own way’” (Huxley 94, 91). Bernard has a reputation for being unorthodox and for going against the flow. He doesn’t like society the way it is run, and believes that they are giving up too much in order to experience happiness “‘everybody else’s way’” (Huxley 91). However, once Bernard brings John to civilization, and he becomes popular, he sort of drops those ideas, and “Success went fizzily to Bernard’s head and in the process completely reconciled him... to a world which, up until then, he had found very unsatisfactory” (Huxley 157). Then, when threatened to be sent to an island, he drops all of his previous values and opinions, and says “‘You can’t send me. I haven’t done anything. It was the others... Oh, please don’t send me to Iceland. I promise I’ll do what I ought to do’” and in that moment, he abandons his previous beliefs about the price of happiness being too high, and obviously he would rather pay that price and be happy like everyone else than to go to Iceland and risk not being happy (Huxley 226).

The role that Bernard plays of criticizing the society is taken over by someone who has deeper morals, and adhered more strongly to their values. That person is John, the “savage.” Many time throughout the book, after he is introduced, John quotes from the Shakespearean line that goes “How many goodly creatures are there here! How beauteous mankind is! O brave new world, that has such people in ‘t!” This quote has significance, because it symbolizes John’s opinion of the new world he is exposed to. He starts off saying it earnestly, and each time he says it there is more and more sarcasm, until the scene after Linda, his mother, dies, he says “‘How many goodly creatures are there here...How beauteous mankind is! O brave new world’” but this time, “the singing words mocked him derisively” (Huxley 209). He no longer believes that the world is good anymore. He believes that they have sacrificed too much for what he calls, “‘false, lying happiness’” (Huxley 179). When John and Mustapha Mond, the Controller, are discussing the pros and cons about the society they live in, Mond says that they have things that have “‘All the tonic effects of murdering Desdemona and being murdered by Othello, without any of the inconveniences’” to which John replies, “‘But I like the inconveniences’” (Huxley 240). Mond then asserts that “‘We prefer to do things comfortably’” and John responds with “‘But I don’t want comfort. I want God, I want poetry, I want real danger, I want freedom, I want goodness. I want sin” (Huxley 240). Mond tells John that

“you’re claiming the right to be unhappy… Not to mention the right to grow old and ugly and impotent; the right to have syphilis and cancer; the right to have too little to eat; the right to be lousy; the right to live in constant apprehension of what may happen tomorrow; the right to catch typhoid; the right to be tortured by unspeakable pains of every kind” (Huxley 240)

To which John replies, “‘I claim them all’” (Huxley 240). This conversation sums up everything about costs. John wants things that are human, he wants to have religion and art, he wants to feel, but Mustapha Mond would rather people be happy than to have all those things. Everything that he sees, all the sacrifices he has chosen to take, as a World Controller, to him are worth it. The price of happiness is lower than the reward. The same goes for Bernard. Though he may have started off thinking that he would rather feel and be happy in his own way, after tasting what happiness in their society is like, he realizes that he would rather be happy than risk not being happy but have the ability to feel. However, John thinks that the price is too high. Everything he sees, the absence of religion, of high art, makes him sad, and the presence of unnatural things, like the Bokanovsky group of Delta children at the hospital, appalls him. He believes that the happiness is too fake, and that the price paid is too high. All the characters have their take on whether or not the price is worth it. Lenina’s is shown when Bernard talks to her about being free and having your own kind of happiness. Helmholtz’s is shown when he says he would rather go to the island and meet people like him and risk not being so happy. The description of the society emphasizes the loss, the social predestination, the strict caste system, etc. and the gain, the happiness, the drug, soma, which doesn’t have side effects, the open sex life, etc. This trade-off the referred to throughout the book.

My methods of close reading allowed me to see some things I would never have seen before, like how the Shakespeare quote is symbolic, or how John’s slut-shaming of Lenina and the rest of the society is the opposite of what happens in Daisy Miller: instead of everyone shaming one person, it is one person shaming everyone. I paid a lot more attention to detail, but mostly I looked at symbols and a little bit of intertextuality, but I was able to find quite a bit of. Besides the obvious direct references to Shakespeare, there is sort of a link to Romeo and Juliet between John and Lenina. They both want to be together, but they can’t because their society sets them apart. Then one of them dies and the other commits suicide. I know it’s a bit of a stretch, but there are others.

I really liked the book and would recommend the book to other people, because even though it was written the early 20th century, there are still many concepts that apply today. For example, instead of trading freedom for happiness, today we trade freedom for safety, in the form of laws such as the Patriot Act, which guards us from terrorists, but also opens up the possibility of our house being raided randomly. We also trade privacy for security, in the form of the NSA monitoring our communication. The book’s satire and sarcasm is also very humorous, and makes for an entertaining read. There are also probably many more deep messages that I didn’t catch, so I would like you to read it and tell me.