Utopia vs Brave New World

Report - Utopia vs Brave New World

The two versions of utopia expressed in Thomas More's Utopia and Aldous Huxley's Brave New World illustrate man's ultimate quest for happiness. The dictionary defines utopia as an imaginary political and social system in which relationships between individuals and the State are perfectly adjusted, and herein lies fault of both visions. Centralized control was required of both worlds to function as they are presented. Women, particularly, had less freedom as they were considered the weaker sex. They did not take into account the value of the individual and enforced the idea that the community was more important. To further the stability of the utopia, a form of brainwashing was used to pacify and suppress the population and resulted in a lack of true freedom. Both imaginary worlds were imperfect because the authors realized utopia, a true utopia, was impossible.


For utopias to work, every person must cooperate; and for that to occur, there was a centralized government that controls every aspect of life. The danger in this comes from the minds of the few controlling the lives of many. In Brave New World, the fate of the entire world rested in the hands of the Ten World Controllers. They controlled the caste of the embryos being 'decanted'. They controlled the scientific paper being published. They even controlled the lives of the individuals in the Savage Reservations by an electric fence so that they did not contaminate the 'civilized world' with different ideas, specifically those that referred to the "Bad Old Days".

Similarly, in More's Utopia, the people were ruled by a single Prince, who was elected by syphogrants chosen by the people, and had absolute power over them. Even though there were rules against conspiring and enslaving the people, there were always ways to circumvent the system. This system assumed that humans were perfectible as long as there is a acceptable social order put in place, but this is not so. More's introduction of a simple, but severe punishment system (that is, his way of dealing with the few rabble, who would disrupt the 'public good'), was his recognition of the rebellious nature to challenge the happy yet monotonous lifestyle of the Utopians.

The character Lenina Crowne, the perfect example of conditioning, was the symbol of the Brave New World's ultimate control. However, her one flaw was that she lingered too long with one man, in a society that preaches long, drawn-out relationships as unorthodox. From the Alpha-Plus caste, Helmholtz Watson, a hypnopaedia scientist of exceptional skill, shows his independence in a different form. His mental excess isolated him from the community and made him aware of his differences. "Did you ever feel you had some sort of extra power?" (Brave New World, Huxley. p62) he said to Bernard, the protagonist, while talking in secret. The extra power he was referring to is individuality. Huxley included these examples to show that even the perfect system has its flaws. He understood that the human spirit would eventually rise to the surface, fighting against the stable, utopian way of life making a perfect world impossible to achieve.


Because of utopia, sacrifices were made to maintain social and political stability, and one of these sacrifices was the lack of freedom for women. "Women, for the most part, deal in wool and flax, which suit best with their weakness, leaving the ruder trades to the men" (Book II Utopia, More. p28). Looking at this in its historical context, this might have seemed normal in the 16th century, but it shows that even in Utopia, where all is supposedly just and fair, the oppression of women by men was still deemed necessary. Throughout Raphael's description of Utopia, it never once talked about women being in positions of power. They received vague and infrequent mentions, and only when the job could only be filled by a woman, such as the nursing of young. All trades were controlled by men and "The same trade passes down from father to son, inclination often following descent;" (Book II Utopia, More. p28).

In Brave New World, the oppression of women was more subtle, but no less present. From the beginning of the novel, newly arrived students were allowed the honour of listening to the Director of Hatcheries and Conditioning speak. They were of the high Alpha caste, and all of them were boys. There are few women in the highest caste of the World Controlled Earth. The positions of power such as the Director of Hatcheries and Conditioning, the World Controller Mustapha Mond, and Alpha-Plus-caste researchers Bernard and Helmholtz were all held by men. In contrast, Beta-caste factory workers, Lenina, Fanny, and Linda are all female. Linda, who had gone to the Savage Reservation with the Director had been abandoned there twenty-five years ago. Although there was a search, they came up with nothing. "... the social body persists although the component cells may change." the Director said as a consolation (Brave New World, Huxley. p87). This blatant disregard for women, and human life in general, was one of the imperfections of the two utopias which makes true utopia impossible to achieve.


The emphasis put on the group rather than on the individual indirectly means that the individual was expendable. Huxley calls the symbol of the bottles in the red light "innumerable rubies" (Brave New World, Huxley. p50). Rubies are valuable, but with so many of them, the value decreases, therefore losing one or two will not matter.

The theme of Huxley's Brave New World is "Community, Identity, and Stability" (Brave New World, Huxley. p1), with the first being the result of the latter two. Identity is a part of genetic engineering, and stability was what everyone desired to achieve. These themes are represented in the book by the symbolic meaning of the phrase "Children are from bottles" and the hynopaedic teaching that "Everybody belongs to everybody else."

Community referred to the thought of the human race as one whole unit. Everyone was connected, by their actions towards each other in everyday life, the usefulness of even the lowest caste, the Epsilons, and sexual desires. The individual in Bernard, however, was disgusted by the thought of "having anyone", referring to sexual relations with women. Part of this had to do with his shorter physical stature than normal Alpha-Pluses, which only serves to reinforce his individuality. This put in jeopardy the stability of the community as a whole, and was the main reason he is exiled to the Falkland Islands.

The identity of a person was determined by the State, and is therefore meaningless. The "Bokanovsky Process" created up to ninety-six identical twins, furthering the idea of a collective identity. Since there are less physical differences, it minimized conflicts, emotions and change which threatened world stability.

More's Utopia goal was also stability though it had to be approached it slightly differently do to the lack of technology. Raphael described simple, yet severe laws to deal with troublemakers. For example, adultery and pre-marital sex were punished by slavery, and for repeat offenders, it was death. Travelling without permission was also punishable first by disgrace, then slavery if he was once again convicted. Because of the lack of conditioning, he used these powerful deterrents to prevent people from becoming idle.

Another method of stability is population control. No cities are to have above sixty thousand families, and the family size was limited to a minimum of ten and a maximum of sixteen. Children of a particularly fruitful couple are taken to another that did not have as many children. These facts further reinforce the interconnectedness of the community as children belong not to the parents but to society in general much like the decanted children of Brave New World. The population on the island was also kept constant and the surplus were moved to the mainland to fend for themselves and conquer more territory.

One of the general concerns for the population growing too big was the constant food supply and available resources. As the population grows, the more valuable resources become. Huxley set Brave New World with a constant population of two billion people worldwide. A permanent crisis created by overpopulation "justifies permanent control of everybody and everything by a central government" (Brave New World Revisited, Huxley. p17). Though this may be true, it also lowers the chances of new ideas being perpetuated. A constant population in a utopia allowed only a certain number of individuals to have new and innovative thoughts. This allows greater control of those individuals and therefore an easier task of maintaining stability. A true utopia should allow for progress and the advance of knowledge. Stability in this form was one of the imperfections in the utopias since it leads to inflexibility and eventually to stagnation. Therefore utopia is unattainable.


The flaw of brainwashing the population to keep it under control was evident in both novels. In Utopia, different sacrifices were made but the result is the same: the loss of real liberty. Elders, at every meal, gave a moralizing lecture and though short, it is very much like the hypnopaedia of Huxley's utopia because of the constant repetitions. They also mixed the young with the old at any sitting to prevent any rebellious attitudes from springing up. Gardens were kept by each family as the only source of competition. People were not allowed to gather in parties or groups, and everyone lived in full view of others so that they do not even think of acting peculiar for fear of being judged.

Though it looked as if the Utopians had more freedom than the citizens of the Brave New World, it not truly free will, because free will allows the possibility for evil. Without that possibility, it is not truly free. "If you deprive a man of the potential to do evil, does anything good that he does make any difference? If a contest is set with no way to lose, does winning mean anything?" (Villains by Necessity, Forward. p300).

In Brave New World, hypnopaedia was used to instill moral messages to the brains of young children. Lower caste babies were subjected to loud noises, and electric shocks to keep them away from books and nature through multiple repetitions. The drug soma provides all the comforts of Christianity and alcohol with none of the side effects. Monthly adrenaline treatments kept violent, and passionate tendencies fulfilled without consequence. Religion, family, high art and emotions were eliminated to prevent independent thought. With these gone, true freedom disappeared with it.

Fear, drugs, oppression and lack of freedom are all bad things and yet they exist in these utopias. It only furthers the argument that utopia is impossible.


The evidence presented by the authors in both books can give only give the conclusion that a utopian world is unattainable. Centralized government can try to control everything but eventually some people were bound to evade the system, due the indomitable human spirit. The oppression of women in both novels shows that total control leads to the a devaluation of human life. The individual was no longer important, and the sense of community was not only encouraged, but actually enforced to prevent independent thought. The suppression of those thoughts mirror the suppression of freedom, which in a utopian society should be promoted to stimulate progress. That progress can only be continue however with change and conflict, two things that the utopias presented by More and Huxley directly work against since stability was the ultimate goal.

In our pursuit of happiness, utopia should not be sought after. To truly experience happiness, one must also feel pain. One would not know light, if one has never seen the darkness. In Shakespeare's King Lear, Kent proclaims, "Nothing almost sees miracles/But misery." (King Lear, Shakespeare. II, ii, 168-9) meaning miracles, and happiness are most appreciated by those who are in a state of misery and misfortune. The dynamic balance of good times and bad, the conflict, the pounding force of life, is the true utopia.

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