Brave new World e i Totalitarismi del 1900 tesina

“Non c'è civiltà senza stabilità sociale.

Non c'è stabilità sociale senza stabilità individuale.”

(Affermazione del Governatore, pag. 49) 1

Sommario

• Introduzione
• Analisi dei personaggi e del contenuto
• La società del mondo nuovo; analogie e differenze con i grandi totalitarismi del 900
• Marx: socialismo utopistico, socialismo scientifico
• Conclusioni

Andrea Forlani

Liceo Scientifico Cairoli

Classe V A

Anno scolastico 2012-2013 2

Introduzione

L’uomo ha sempre aspirato ad una società in cui vivere in pace ed in armonia. Tuttavia questa aspirazione è da sempre frustrata da egoismi individuali, da guerre e da disuguaglianze sociali.

Già attorno al 360 a.C. Platone nel dialogo “La Repubblica” presentò una società ideale in cui avrebbero governato i filosofi, unici ad attingere alla verità ideale.

Si deve a Thomas Moore l'utilizzo del termine “u-topia”. Dal greco non posto, cioè che non esiste. Egli nel 1516 intitolò appunto Utopia il libro in cui descrisse la società ideale realizzatasi nell'isola così chiamata. Intento dell'Autore fu descrivere un mondo perfetto, pur consapevole della impossibilità della sua realizzazione.

Marx attraverso il socialismo scientifico fornì un modello politico che avrebbe potuto giungere alla creazione di una società di uomini liberi ed uguali.

La costruzione intellettuale di società perfette, utopiche, è stato quindi un tema che ha appassionato l’uomo nel corso di molti secoli. In epoca a noi più vicina, il progresso scientifico-tecnologico, l'avvento dei regimi totalitari ha fatto intravedere ad alcuni scrittori e pensatori, fra cui Huxley, la caduta di tutte le utopie, cui hanno contrapposto la possibile nascita di mondi distopici, in cui un’umanità de-umanizzata avrebbe vissuto nel completo asservimento alle esigenze di una società tecnocratica o ad uno stato tirannico. 3

Society in Brave New World

Brave New World is set in London in 632 A.F. (After Ford). In fact, in this society in which progress, production and scientific development are very important values, Ford is considered a divinity because of the innovative production system he introduced. Other important keywords of the society described in the novel are STABILITY, IDENTITY and COMMUNITY.

Scientific progress makes now possible to create perfectly identical men or women in laboratories and send them to the same machines to do the same job. It’s a way to guarantee social stability and order.

In this new world people are divided into five castes using Greek letters from Alpha to Epsilon. Alphas are on the top of the social system and they have ruling roles. Epsilons are above all labour and servants. The castes are organized into a hierarchy. The members of the lower classes are produced using Bokanovsky process, which can be defined as the application of series production in biology: from one egg about 96 identical epsilons are created.

A very important element which allows this kind of organization is CONDITIONING: since they are children, the members of each caste have been conditioned to develop a mentality and a physical structure which reflect the class they belong to and the job they will be called to do when they are adult.

“This is the secret of happiness and virtue: to love what must be loved”

Some examples of conditioning applications are “sleep teaching” and the use of electric shock, which is needed to teach children what they have to dislike. This practice is used, for instance, talking about books and flowers: they must hate books because they can change one’s way of thinking and flowers because they’re linked to nature and nature itself doesn’t make people spend money. Children are also conditioned to find in sex a way to relax and stop thinking and worrying, but they’re not conditioned to love: family is seen as suffocating and talking about parents, or the natural way to have children, is a scandal.

History is considered foolish and there are forbidden books, like the Bible and Shakespeare’s plays.

This is the portrait of a society in which people don’t have to think about anything. After work, which they really like, they can have fun having sex, consuming goods and so on. And if they’re a bit depressed they can take some soma, a sort of drug which makes you travel in a fantastic world. One of the characters, Lenina Crown, talking about soma, says:

“I WAS and I WILL BE, words that make me feel ill; I take a gram and I AM”.

During the development of the novel, Bernard Marx, an Alpha and one of the main characters, realizes that there’s something strange in this society, that maybe freedom here is only apparent.

He decides to take Lenina, whom he really likes, to a reservation where the inhabitants are savages, they aren’t civilized and they reproduce in the natural way. Here they meet Linda, the wife of the director of the conditioning centre in London, who was abandoned in the reservation years before. They also meet John, Linda and the director’s son. Talking with Bernard, John tells him about life in the reservation, how her mother is considered a bad woman by the other women because she has a lot of men.

Bernard decides to bring mother and son with him in London, and soon he becomes famous and finally happy because John is considered a novelty by the people, something they’ve never seen.

But gradually, John, who had learnt reading Shakespeare’s books, the title Brave New World is taken from “The Tempest”, realizes that people here aren’t free, that they are controlled by the world they live in. He also falls in love with Lenina, but he doesn’t want her physically, and she can’t understand his feelings.

The passage of the novel in which he throws a lot of soma out of a window, crying to some Epsilons that they don’t need it, is very suggestive.

At the end of the novel Linda dies because she has taken too much soma, Bernard is sent away in exile and John goes away from London. Finally he commits suicide. 5