In the novels, Fahrenheit 451 by Ray Bradbury, and Brave New World by Aldous Huxley, the characters live in an seemingly utopian society. In Fahrenheit 451 people of the society are very robotic like and steers away from knowledge that gets people too emotional or think too much. It’s a very organized and demanding society where structure is key. Overall this society is technologically advanced but also thinks individuality is a sin. A Brave New World is also a very technological society based in the future where people are created by scientists in batches asexually instead of sexually.
Citizens of World State are put in classes where it defines their social, economic, and intellectual status. This is a very unorganized society where people take drugs called soma daily which helps create their false happiness The society I would rather live in would be the society in Brave New World. One reason is the sense of happiness, however it’s false I would still be blindly happy for the most of my life. Another reason I would like to live in this society is because of the constant use of drugs. I understand that drugs are bad for your health but living in a high all the time must be great.
Another reason would be is the lack or stress; anxiety from making decisions and from family or peers would be nonexistent. The final reason I would like to live in this society is because of the absence of strife. If I was forced to choose between these two reprehensible communities I would chose the Brave New World’s society out of my own hedonism. The false sense of happiness may seem like an unattractive quality to have however I would rather have distorted happiness for a long time rather than small bursts of real happiness.
In the novel A Brave New World, the citizens have a false sense of happiness. Mustapha Mond is one of the higher ups in this society and he also one of the ten people in the society that has previous knowledge of the nation’s origin. He is defending this society when he states, “Actual happiness always looks pretty squalid in comparison with the over compensations for misery” (Huxley 225). Thus I agree with Mond because actual happiness is hard to come by and when it’s discovered it is usually taken away fairly quickly.
The society in Fahrenheit 451, it’s citizens also experience the feeling of a false happiness but the feeling is more real and it can be altered. Unlike in A Brave New World, people of this civilization can have emotions and be unhappy with their lives. Most citizens take medications to make this feeling go away but it’s still much easier to realize how unhappy you really can be in this society. To make this happen less often the societies government tries to get rid of this altogether, “If you don’t want a man unhappy politically, don’t give him two sides to a question to worry him; give him one.
Better yet, give him none” (Bradbury 58). In the Brave New World’s society Bernard is the protagonist who carries the largest feeling of false hope because he is the person that is getting the feeling of joy from the sense of superiority (Tejvan 1). Citizens of both communities get to this feeling with the use of drugs that help them forget their worries and misery and puts them at ease. Drug use has a very large part in the novel Brave New World and plays a small roll in Fahrenheit 451.
In Fahrenheit 451 the main use of drugs is sleeping medications and sedatives that helps the citizens of this utopia to relax and feel less. Mildred Montag uses these sedatives a lot, “Every night the waves came in and bore her off on their great tides of sound, floating her, wideeyed, toward morning” (Bradbury 10). This shows that people in this society don’t take drugs for recreational use and it doesn’t give them a high, it just puts them to sleep. However in the Brave New World’s society, the drug they take called soma is used on a regular basis. This recreational use of drugs has a very negative impact on the body.
People in our society and this society use drugs for the reasons including; “they make them feel more relaxed, or more confident when relating to others, they may feel drugs help them forget their worries or problems, they may feel drugs make them feel happier, their friends are doing it, and they don’t want to feel left out, or not cool” (Recreational Drugs 1). In this community taking soma is apart of mostly all of it citizens lives. People of World State encourage drug use because it makes people feel more relaxed and content with their job and life, therefore avoiding conflict.
A quote which shows one of the leaders of this society pushing the protagonist to take this drug like it’s no big deal in this society and he is right, “Glum, Marx, glum. ‘ The clap on the shoulder made him start, look up. It was that brute Henry Foster. What you need is a gramme of soma” (Bradbury 66). The usage of drugs helps take things off the minds of citizens in this society like worries about the future, conflicts and especially stress. Stress is the enemy of the mind. It cause cause mental and health problems and in a world in which they eliminated all health issues, they had to relinquish stress in order to obtain this goal.
Stress that can cause physical effects are; heart disease, erectile dysfunction, chest pain, back pain, stomach upset, loss of sleep, and muscular aches. Some mental side effects stress can cause include; anger, anxiety, depression, restlessness, fatigue, and irritability (Medical news 1). Thus both societies try to eliminate stress altogether. Even though in Fahrenheit 451, citizens of the society take drugs that relaxes them they still feel stress. This includes the stress of finding a wife/husband, or a job, and being able to perform to the society’s expectations can be stressful.
Society expects children to run rampant and wild. One teenager who disagrees and can’t relate to this is called abnormal by the government and then the government makes her “vanish”, “I guess I’m everything they say Tam, all right. I haven’t any friends. That’s supposed to prove I’m abnormal. But everyone I know is either shouting or dancing around like wild or beating up one another. Do you notice how people hurt each other nowadays” (Bradbury 27). Trying to fit in this society and fulfill all their expectations on how I should act and be sounds like a stressful environment I would not like to be in.
In Brave New World’s society there is no stress. Soma helps with this of course, however when groups of children are born they are put in certain groups. No matter what group they are put in, they are blindly happy. There is no stress for finding a job because they are decided for you depending on what class you are born into, “Only an Epsilon can be expected to make Epsilon sacrifices, for the good reason that for him they aren’t sacrifices; they’re the line of least resistance” (Huxley 226).
There is no stress for finding a spouse because people just have casual sex with each other with no emotional connection whatsoever. There is also no stress when meeting expectations of World State or your peers. Everyone has the same false sense of happiness and follows the government’s expectations and needs as long as they get their daily use of soma at the end of the day. The final reason I would like to live in Brave New World’s society is because the lack of strife. I don’t know many people who enjoy disagreements or conflicts.
In Fahrenheit 451 there is the possibility of conflict. Although conflict doesn’t happen on a regular basis in this society, it can come about. It could be an external conflict with your boss or peers. It could also be an internal conflict with yourself about your lack of interest in your job or relationship/marriage issues, “We’re heading right for the cliff, Millie. God, I don’t want to go over. This isn’t going to be easy. We haven’t anything to go on, but maybe we can piece it out and figure it and help each other” (Bradbury 63-64).
This shows that many citizens in this society can experience conflict which can cause anger and sadness, all qualities I don’t want to live with. However in Brave New World’s society there is no conflict. People are modified even before birth to accept who they are and how they have been placed on a society’s scale. It doesn’t matter if you are placed on the lowest end of the scale or the higher end of the scale, citizens go about their day being content with their own jobs, not being envious of others.
One of the society’s leaders gives an example if they were to make everyone Alphas, “We believe in happiness and stability. A society of Alphas couldn’t fail to be unstable and miserable. Imagine a factory staffed by Alphas—that is to say by separate and unrelated individuals of good heredity and conditioned so as to be capable (within limits) of making a free choice and assuming responsibilities. Imagine it! ” (Huxley 225-226). At the end of their day which there was not mentally challenging at all, they take soma and have casual intercourse and the same thing happens the next day and the day after that and so on.
Therefore citizens of World State go through the day at ease and without strife. In conclusion, between Fahrenheit 451 by Ray Bradbury and Brave New World by Aldous Huxley, I would chose the society of Brave New World to live in. It’s attractive qualities like having a false sense of happiness, recreational drug use, absence of stress and the lack of strife lure me into choose the society. In Brave New World’s society their “God” is Henry Ford, also known as “Our Ford”.
Henry Ford was an American industrialist, the founder of the Ford Motor Company, and the sponsor of the development of the assembly line technique of mass production. The reason they praise Ford is because of his invention of mass production. Making children in this society is done in a lab and dozens of children are made at the exact same time, like he did in making the first motor vehicle using an assembly line. It could be a reason on why I like this society better than Bradbury’s society. Everything is the same, there is no change, and people are content and know what they want in life.
