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Created with Fabric.js 1.4.5 Brave New World Themes Theme 1: The dangers of a too-powerful state. double click to change this header text! Theme 2: The unescapable pressures of society. Setting Character Exaggeration Theme Connection: In this dystopian story, the government controls all of the citizen's daily life. Everyone is assigned a job before they are even born, and never leave that role. Even their social life is controlled by the government by establishing all adequate forms of social customs that they are taught growing up in the government labs. In this society nobody has free thought or will, and the government can get rid of any individual that does anything against the state without the populace's concern because they were raised as the control being normal and right. In this story, Huxley tries to demonstrate how social pressure controls individuals. From Fanny's insisting to Lenina to date a different man every day to the "loud, insistent monotone" (huxley 257) chanting, the society, in the story repeatedly demands that all inside of it follow its customs. The author tries to reveal that no matter who you are (the slightly rebellious lenina to the society-hating John), you will bend to society's follies. John's death also demonstrated how society's pressure effects the individual because John hated society's customs so much that he couldn't live like that so he killed himself to emphasize the point that even those that try to rebel society can't avoid the pressure. The two themes are connected because society's pressures stem from the culture that the all powerful state creates. By controlling the social traditions of the citizens, whatever the government states is normal behavior, the citizens pressure each other to follow, such as objecting "to anything intense or long-drawn" (huxley 41) in relationships. The setting reveals the dangers of an all-powerful state by describing how a government that controlled all aspects of society might act like. In Huxley's imaginary society, the government brainwashed the citizens withpropaganda and torture to make sure no one acted out of line,or attacked their "ideals". The setting the author created introduced all of the characters as unthinking slaves that only did as the Controller said they could. By making all of the citizens seem incapable of free-thought, the author started to reveal how one couldn't escape society's pressure. All Fanny knew how to do when Lenina said she was dating the same man for a while was tell Lenina to date other men because that is what that is what everyone else is doing (because of the state), and because she was programed to think of the Director's rule that everyone owned everyone else, and "he'd be furious if he knew" (huxley 41), so everyone has to make him happy by obeying the state's rules. Huxley uses exaggeration to demonstrate how dangerous an over-powered state can be to its citizens.The all-powered state in his book controlled every aspect of a citizen's life, which is the concept behind the communism Huxley was trying to warn the reader about, but to the extreme. In the story, the state controlled how a person was born, which class the person was born, and the social habits of every individual in the state. If the state told the citizens that "God manifests himself as an absence" (huxley 234) and to pray to him we forget his presence, the citizens would forget their morals, and ignore God. Huxley went to this extreme to demonstrate the importance of distribution of powers in a state to its people to avoid the over-exaggerated dangers from a too-powerful state. John's character demonstrates the dangers of a over-powered government because he was a free spirit that rebelled against the government but because of his free thinking was his undoing because if anyone in an overpowered state rebells, "they'll kill him" (huxley 213), and get away with it because nobody dares to fight against a state that has power over everything if they want to live. Also, John's character reveals how overpowering society's pressure can be. John tried really hard to not listen to society's sexual customs, even attempting in "the whipping stunt" (huxley 256) to hurt himself until he stops feeling sexual impulses. But, John could not handle the pressure of the society's reporters that came to "visit him" and convince him to keep on whipping himself for their amusement because there were so many of them telling John what to do, and he could not withstand the pressure.
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