If you one of those people who ever learned about Karl Marx, you would notice one of his works called "The German Ideology", he says that, "The production of ideas, of consciousness, is a first directly interwoven with the material activity and material intercourse of men, the language of real life. (Marx in Adams, 1971: 632) And Freud as a theorist of the self believe that, "This human textuality can be seen not only as world and self, as the representation of a world in terms of a self at play with other selves and generating this representation, but also in the world and self all implicated in an intertextuality." (Spivak in Con Davis, 1984: 520-521)
Nevertheless, when you read the Aldous Huxley's novel, thoughts of Marx and Freud are not merely real, because you will meet a lot of subjects which are strange and you never find them in your real life, at least in the present time.
"Brave New World" is probably set six hundred years in the future. The world has submitted to domination by World Controllers, whose primary goals is to ensure the stability and happiness of society. The novel begins at the Central London Hatchery and Conditioning Center, a production factory for human beings. A group of students is being given a tour of the facilities by the Director. It is a part that I quote from the novel,
"Tall and rather thin but upright, the Director advance into the room. He had a long chin and big, rather prominent teeth, just covered, when he was not talking, by his full, floridly curved lips. Old, young? Thirty? Fifty? Fifty-five? It was hard to say. And anyhow the question didn't arise; in this year of stability, A. F. 632, it didin't occur to you to ask it. (Huxley, 1971: 16)
Besides the all characterizations of the director which are quite normal and familiar to you, perhaps you wonder, what is the narrator talking about? "in this year of stability, A. F. 632," Can you imagine living in that era? So, what does the world exist in "Brave New World"?
Louis Marin, one of structuralism theorists introduces to us what is called "A generated Utopia", Marin looked at utopia from the meaning suggested by its etymology, Greek ou, "no," and Greek topos, "place." In contemporary usage utopia is something in which we find (or construct) an unlikely state of perfection. (Marin in Con Davis, 1984: 283)
In "Brave New World," we'll find social motto "Community, Identity, and Stability" frames this social structure. It is described that a society seeks to create the maximum happiness. Limiting the intelligence of each person to fit the job which that person will be given is one way this society makes them happy. It is creating effective and efficiency, which goals to make the whole society happier. Everybody's happy is a sort of perfect image of great world.
Marin said, "Therefore, utopia has a two-sided nature. On the one hand, it expresses what is absolutely new, the possible as such, what is unthinkable in the common categories or thought used by the people of given time in its history." (Marin in Con Davis, 1984: 286) We can find many extraordinary things which are unthinkable in "Brave New World," such as factory for human beings which employs the scientists to process ovaries until grow them in embryo bottle.
Each human is categorized into one of five castes that pose Alphas and Betas on top position, then Gammas, Deltas, and Epsilons as having little to no intelligence. Through the use of science, people are not only created, but also conditioned to guarantee they will be happy member of society, lately we can call it as utopian society.
There is no really religion to speak out, but rather a system of ideologies which represents Ford as its leader, Ford is their god of utopian religion, that's what they call the era as A. F. (Annum Ford), the year of our Ford.
It is presented soma as well, a tablet used to create pleasant sensations without any after effects, especially for the members of utopian society.
Then Marin continues by saying that,
"On the other hand, utopia cannot transcend the common and ordinary language of a period and of a place. It cannot transgress completely the codes by which people make reality significant, by which they interpret reality, that is the system of representation of signs, symbols, and values which recreate, as significant for them, the real condition of their existence." (Marin in Con Davis, 1984: 286)
Even, people of "Brave New World" utopian community don't speak in new weird language, but there are several words have different meaning and even strange to them. They are not aware what do married, old, death, give birth, sympathy, emotions, religions (except Ford), books or literary works mean.
They deconstruct the meaning of love from faithfulness becomes having sex, the terms of mother and father represent dirty words in utopian society, but usually more humorous. However, the changing of meaning in this sense can be determined by using deconstruction/poststructuralism approach, since "Deconstruction and poststructuralism aim at describing the limits and definitions to be assumed, the social relationship of power that are served by these definitions, individual and subjective ends that are served, and other such matters." (Derrida in Con Davis, 1984: 297)
There is no individualism characteristic in utopian society; history and religion are viewed as dangerous and potentially corrupting. Having a history gives a people sense of time outside of their own time frame. In this condition, it is impossible for the members of utopian society to have a subjectivity of making signified of signifier. The deconstruction of meanings they got from utopian dogma which is called hypnopaedia, sleep learning used to teach moral values. Those meaning deviations are created to make the condition of utopian world seems to be something real.
In conclusion, I would like to say that at this moment maybe we can say the world exists in "Brave New World" as utopian world. But, when literary works can become description of our society condition, whether in the past, present, and even in the future, it will be very terrifying, won't it?
Can you imagine the condition of our society in the future where having sex with a lot of people even in a very young age is allowed and normal; drugs are legal, and the other amoral actions are not forbidden because religion have been left behind. And don't you realize that the some of the utopian inappropriateness are being done in our real world today? In every single day, some of the media are hypnotizing you to become materialistic and make you judge people by how they dressed or from their physical appearances only.
Since you still believe that what brings happiness is religion, people are faithful to their couple, and people don't banish their individuality, our real world won't turn to "Brave New World", Aldous Huxley. Or maybe we should create another version of utopian world where its society is kind persons, tolerating and helping each other. Then we believe it to become our real world in the future.
References:
Adams, Hazard, ed. Critical Theory since Plato, (London: Harcourt Brace Jovanovich Publishers, 1971)
Con Davis, Robert, and Ronald Schleifer, Contemporary Literary Criticism: Literary and Cultural Studies, (New York & London: Longman, 1984)
Huxley, Aldous, Brave New World, (London: Penguin Books, 1971)
No comments:
Post a Comment