Use of language to emphasise control in Aldous Huxley's BRAVE NEW WORLD
...g,” and “ending is better than mending”. Slogans like these are easy to remember, and since they are planted so deeply into the people’s minds, they can be produced at any given moment. Religious control is not so much exercised as it is evident through the worship of Henry Ford and mass production. Huxley uses religious images to show that the system of mass production is valued so highly in this brave new world, that it has become the new religion, so religious control has taught the citizens of the brave new world that it is Ford and mass production that they should believe in. The Solidarity Service described in chapter five has replaced the Christian mass. There are hymns (i.e. songs of praise) and the President makes the sign of the T (as opposed to the sign of the cross). Characters also use phrases like “Our Ford” replacing the word Lord with Ford. Social control is set in motion in the conditioning centres. Humans of the brave new world are created in castes. These castes are: Alpha, Beta, Gamma, Delta and Epsilon, Alpha being the most superior caste, and Epsilon, the most inferior. In conditioning, each caste is taught to appreciate the other castes with phrases such as “we can’t do without anyone” and “Even Epsilons are useful”. This ensures a smooth running society, where everyone knows their place and is happy there. Each caste is also taught to be happy in their place. Following, is an example of the repeated hypnopaedic advice being fed to a group of Betas. “Alpha children wear grey. They work much harder than we do, because they’re so clever. I’m really awfully glad I’m a Beta, because I don’t work so hard. And then we are much better than the Gammas and deltas. Gammas are stupid. They all wear green, and Delta children wear khaki. Oh no, I don’t want to play with Delta children. And Epsilons are still worse. They’re too stupid to be able to read or write. Besides, they wear black, which is such a beastly colour. I’m so glad I’m a Beta.” The society’s stability depends on the emotional stability of the people in it. The people have to be kept at a certain level of happiness at all times and this emotional control is achieved through conditioning and the use of drugs (soma). “‘And that, put in the Director sententiously, ‘that is the secret of happiness and virtue – liking what you’ve got to do. All conditioning aims at that: making people like their unescapable (sic.) social destiny.’” Soma is a drug that lets the characters in the brave new world. Soma is an essential part in the lives of the people of the brave new world. They have been fed such slogans as “a gramme is better than a damn,” “a gramme in time saves nine,” “one cubic centimeter cures ten gloomy sentiments” and “was and will make me ill, I take a gramme and only am.” Soma is described as being “the perfect drug…euphoric, narcotic, pleasantly hallucinant (sic.) … a holiday from reality whenever you like, and come back without so much as a headache or a mythology”. It is because “everyone’s happy nowadays” that the society retains the stability upon which it relies so heavily. Genetic control is referred to in Brave New World as “predestination”. Each caste is determined while humans still exist as embryos. This is done by varying the amount of oxygen each type of embryo receives. Mr Foster’s explanation of the clinical subject of genetic control is somewhat joking. “ ‘Nothing like oxygen-shortage for keeping an embryo below par.’… ‘an Epsilon embryo must have an Epsilon environment as well as an Epsilon heredity’… ‘The lower the caste,’ said Mr Foster, ‘the shorter the oxygen.’ The first organ affected was the brain. After that, the skeleton. At seventy per cent of normal oxygen you got dwarfs. At less than seventy, eyeless monsters…” However, the descriptions Huxley uses remain clinical in their rigidness and sterility, e.g. “They were passing Metre 320 on Rack 11. A young Beta Minus mechanic was busy with a screw-driver and spanner on the blood-surr...