"Aldous Huxley- Brave new world."

Introduction
The book setting is in London in a futuristic scope almost six hundred years into the future after Ford. In this context, human life is highly industrialized and under the control of a few highly placed people in the World State. The first chapter of the book introduces us to the setting of a lab where the human beings are created and structured according to a strict caste system. In this particular set up, there are depictions of dehumanized life where the natural processed of birth, aging, and death are considered as great horrors to this new world. In this new world the main focus in ensuring social stability by taming down all the normal aspects of normal growth. The director of this institute quotes the planetary motto of, “Community, Identity, and Stability (Huxley 6). The major instruments of attaining social stability in this society include The Bokanovsky and Podsnap processes.
The society is divided into five caste system into Alpha, Beta, Gamma, Delta, or Epsilon. The Alpha is the leaders and thinkers in this society, while the others are programmed in a way that makes them less physical and with lower intellectual impressive. For a young age, the children in this society are reprogrammed to remove their natural senses and undergoes sessions to make them docile, hypnopaedic which deals with sleep and a program called centrifugal bumble-puppy that is meant to remove the natural emotional status and desires about the human relationship from the society (Huxley 30).
One of the outliers in this society is Bernard Marx, who is an Alpha-plus male who appears to be very discontented with state of affairs in this world. The world seems to be concerned only with material comfort and physical pleasure which are attained by a using a drug called soma and recreational sex. His peculiar state makes him be scorned by women other than Lenina Crowne who invites him to a vacation in the Savage Reservation. The savage reservation is far from London and an ideal evidence of past life where technology is not used to control humanity. In this place, the natural process of aging, giving births and diet are applied.
In the Salvage Reservation, is a woman who came from the Brave new world and had a son with the Director of Hatchery Center. The young man referred to as John is eager to join the world that his mother had always talked about. The Director of Hatchery Center is horrified when Bernard brings back the woman and his child. The director is humiliated for his connection to natural birth and flees from the city. John, who is referred to as the Savage from his uniqueness attracts a celebrity status.
His mastery of poetry of Shakespeare attracts followers to him and also gives Bernard some status after being regarded as a social outcast. The ways of London appear strange, confusing and repellent to John. The disgust is caused more by the recreational sex, soma, and similarities in all beings. At a point, he attempts to prevent members of Delta from taking their soma ration, but this causes riots and prompts his arrest alongside Bernard and an emotional engineer.
The world controller acknowledges that there are shortcomings in this brave new world but states that loss of freedom and individuality are just small costs that they have to bear to attain stability. Bernard and the emotional engineer are banished from the community, but John is confined within the Brave new world in London. John resolves to live a life of seclusion. The results of this are that John could not fit in this society and resolves to commit suicide. Having understood the general storyline in the Huxley’s book of a Brave New World, the analysis beyond will look into the theme of oppression and conformity. It is clear that the in the Brave New World, different means and measures have been put in place to oppress the people and force them to abide by a particular conformity. Anyone acting differently is considered as an outlier and a social outcast from the community.
Theme of Oppression and Conformity
In the Brave New World, maintaining the community stability has been given top priority. This is achieved by denying the people’s freedom by stifling their right to think and speak independently. The world states are controlled by controllers who use genetic engineering and conditioning which shadows the people’s ability to think (Huxley 7). Henry Foster, the genetic scientist, expounds how the embryos in the development stage are subjected to intellectual growth. This is achieved by reducing the embryo’s oxygen level a critical point of brain’s development. In this society, the specification of the caste system determines the level of oxygen levels depleted where they are increased from Betas to Gammas, Deltas, and Epsilons who are the most stunted. Foster, the genetic scientist, indicates that the lowest placed caste member, Epsilons do not need human intelligence. Throughout the life community members from infancy to adulthood, there is a repetitive conditioning to the members of the society to reinforce the people’s recognition of the message such as alphas are clever; gammas are regarded as stupid while the Epsilons are considered to be stupid people who cannot read or write.
Control over the members of the Brave New world leads to a phenomenon of social predestination. Every member of the Brave New World passes through biological engineering before birth that pre-decides the specific social class that would join. The embryos are classified as per the class of their DNA donor into Alpha, Beta, Gamma, Delta, and Epsilon. Control is thereby indicated to have occurred even before one comes into existence in this new world. The caste systems are characterized by capabilities. The Alpha and Beta classes are considered to be intellectually and physically superior. This makes them destined for managerial and office work. The lower classes are subjected to manual labor. This differentiation in the embryo stage is done by controlling the amount of oxygen supplied to the developing embryos (Huxley 24). The lower class are meant to be below par and thereby receive a limited amount of oxygen.
Among these classes, the member is divided into more specific groups through the Bokanovsky groups. The members or each group have the same DNA and thereby can be selected to carry out similar roles that are within their genetics. For every group, the jobs assigned to them are as per their preparations from the embryo stage and in the pre-nattily stage. The Bakonovsky groups can work on a single task as they modified to operate in the same manner that perfectly suited the process (Huxley 26). This indicates that no individual is at liberty of making a decision of the role or task they can perform in the society.
It quite evident that in the Brave New World, the controllers do not use physical force to control the community. Their popular method is hypnopaedic conditioning as a means of brainwash people. The people then agree to the life principles that create the basis of their benevolent dictatorship. Phrases such as “Old clothes are beastly,” “Ending is better than mending,” and “I do love flying” are used to push people to accept fulfillment as a materialistic and group sports activity as a way of supporting mass production. The controller of this world uses soma as a drug that is euphoric, narcotic, and pleasantly hallucinate drug that makes them forget any discontent that they may be having and restores them to their state of artificial happiness and instant gratification.
Oppression has been carried out in this society using technology to control society. Being in futuristic setting technology has been used to control the society. The controllers of the Brave New World has installed rigid control of reproduction through technological and medical techniques such as Bokanovsky process and hypnopaedic conditioning. In this community, there is the use of complex entertainment machine that produces harmless leisure and high levels of consumption and production. These are considered to be the basis of the maintaining the stability of the World State. Technological innovations have also been used to create a drug that tones down any independent thoughts among the community members.
The State in this community has explored into science and technology to create solutions that can provide seamless, happy, superficial society through things called feelies (Huxley 31). The state is this case censors and puts a limitation on science. The reason for putting limits on the exploration into science and technology is the fear that in pursuit of the truth, the control of the State would be threatened. The State put efforts in ensuring happiness and stability meant the adoption scientific research in a manner that contributed to technologies of control and not just random innovations.
In this Brave New World, the controller enhances similarity among the members of each of the five caste category by calculated poisoning with alcohol and produces. The end of result of this is sub-human people who are equipped to carry out tasks but not from an independent perspective. It is clear that, especially among the lower-case member of this society, it is impossible to exercise individuality. This has led to the creation of identical, easy to manipulate society. In this society, the emphasis is put on stability at the expense of individuality. The desire and ability to be different is a foreign thing in this new world.
Lenina reminds Bernard that when the individual feels, society reels. Bernard, who is somehow different from the rest of the community struggles without no success to attain a genuine human emotion that goes beyond the normal societal constraints. In this community, the possibility of love is considered as a great threat to the thread of stability. It is, for this reason, one is expected not to regularly engage with the same partner. The feeling for loves is also counteracted through recreational sex that is specifically structured to blur any distinction among lovers on emotions and urges. Therefore the commonly prescribed and practiced ritual of orgy-porgy is a form of control to the member of this society.
The Orgy-Porgy is taken as an organized release of sexual urges that undercuts any possibility of passionate feelings of one person to another (Huxley 29). This is because members of this community subordinate even their sexual pleasure to attain the prescribed joy of their society’s unity. This is an act that Bernard feels degrading. John, having been brought up outside the Brave New World, in the reservation where love and personal feeling are appreciated, finds these orgy sessions, not in line with his held belief. After his experience in orgy-porgy session, John must have had his feelings violated that the following morning he commits suicide.
Another big control measure in the Brave New World is the drug soma. The drug is used to serve to prevent individuals from experiencing stressful negative effects of conflicts that the society may not prevent. Issues such as pain, stress, grief, humiliation, disappointment which as a pointer to unique identifiers of individuality still occurs in this controlled society (Huxley 69). To curb occurrences of such feeling, the members of the Brave New World are required to take a ration of soma tablets on the go into an extended soma-holiday to clear the negative feelings and other emotions. The society makes it a requirement and encourages everyone to take some soma as a means of social control by eliminating the effect of potential conflict. John recognized this method of ensuring control, and he attempted to plead with the Deltas to throw away their ration for the soma drug, but this leads to rebellion. The somatized members of this society are unaware of their degradation and not capable of even understanding that they are individuals (Huxley 78).
The idea of control is seen in the constant attempts to undermine the individuality efforts of Bernard and John. They both struggle with this which helps bring out a deeper understanding of the stakes. Bernard appears as one who rails loudly about the inhumanity of the systems. He is outraged by injustices that are committed against him. However, Bernard does not do much to help those oppressed by the social system.
John, who comes into the system as an outsider, consciously challenges the Brave New World with a view that every individual is granted their freedom. However, his call to freedom hits the ears of people who have never known freedom, and they do not heed his call. John is in a position to frame his objections philosophically. He even holds an exchange with the World Controller Mustapha Mond. Despite John being an Alpha Plus by genetics but had not undergone the conditioning process necessary to make him conform to the ideals of the society. John can carry out a comparison of the Brave New World from the life in Savage Reservation. This gives her him an ideal reference point in the making his call for a free human life with all its danger and pain.
The events in the Huxley indicates how control is best effected when introduced at an early age. The contrast demonstrated by Huxley between John and the other society member indicates the effects of oppression and control at an early age. John was not subjected to procedures and practice that removed individuality from a person, and for this reason, it is not easy making him conform to the practices in the Brave New World. In the world, the members of the society are an introduction to control measures right from early development as a foetus. The children in the Brave New world are continuously subjected to activities that suppress their freedom as individuals. They are taught to grow in a controlled society where they conform to the set standards without any defects. This is practiced through hypnopaedia where they are taught to dislike some things by listening to repeated mantras as they sleep. The young ones are continuously brought up in a controlled manner where they are taught to dislike things like flowers that seemed to support nature and natural processes. The young ones in the Brave New World are introduced in sex orgies at an early age thereby bringing them up in a structured manner.
A presentation of the two worlds as presented by Huxley, the Brave New World, and the Savage Reservation, offers an opportunity of getting a reference point to carry out some comparative. The society at the Brave New World is at technologically advanced stage making the Savage Reservation appear primitive. The community at the Brave New World is structured into caste system as opposed to the Savage society that is socially organized into families. The caste system is one where a lot of control is put over the community members as opposed to family setup that members have the option of choosing whom to relate to.
In the Savage Reservation, natural processes are allowed to take their course. This points out to no attempts to diverge the manner in which things occur. The situation is different at the Brave New World where technological advancement is used to divert the normal functioning of the system. This is the core foundation of the control in the Brave New World. Some processes still functional in the Savage Reservation include natural birth, eating of natural food, and processes of death. In the Brave New World, these processes are controlled by the Controllers thereby limiting the freedom that the members of the society have.
John who is an Alpha by genetics is brought up in the Savage Reservation has not been subjected to policies of confinement. He is therefore well aware of what it means to possess some freedom as an individual. This is why upon being introduced back to the Brave New World, he is challenged and fitting in proves too hard for him.
It is clear by the end of the book that all efforts to redeem individual freedom from the control of the World State has failed. The power of convention as created by hypnopaedia and mob psychology outdid the attempts to liberate the people. Helmholtz and Bernard who made attempts to fight for individual freedom end up being banished from the society into the Falkland Islands where there may be limited be some freedom but within the limits of a restrictive society. John who remains in the City of London fails in his mission to fight for freedom that he ends committing suicide. The theme of control and oppression tries to solve a dilemma of the effects of technological advances to solving problems in the current world such as fights, poverty, diseases, and aging. Technology helps solve this as indicate in the Brave New World but at the cost of freedom for individuals.

Works Cited
Huxley, Aldous. Brave New World. 1932