BRAVE NEW WORLD SOCRATIC SEMINAR

PRE-WRITE
Analise Gates
1.)
Brave new world is a satire novel describing a
future of technological advances and false happiness. Aldous
Huxley portrays many complex messages to his readers. The
book is surrounded by this idea of a society that is
completely happy. Yet, this happiness is no where near real
happiness. The drug Soma clouds the realities of the present
and replaces them with happy hallucinations, and is thus a
tool for promoting social stability. I believe that Huxleys
message in the novel is that will be rot with consumerism
and pleasure seeking behavior so much so that we will lose
our human values and individualism.
2.)
The Brave New World society is surrounded by the
idea of completely happy society. The people of this system
are given and Drug, Soma, that clouds the realities of the
present and replaces them with happy hallucinations.
Although this society is happy, they are nowhere near true
happiness. True happiness can not be obtained by a drug.
John the Savage rebels against this notion of false happiness.
He argues that society must also know how to be unhappy in
order to create and appreciate beauty. Taking soma prevents
the people of Brave New World to feel unhappy and
appreciate true happiness.
3.)
What you need, the savage went on is
something with tears for change. Nothing costs enough
here. pg 239
When John the Savage states this, he means that their society
must know pain and unhappiness to experience what real

happiness is. John makes himself suffer to appreciate what real

happiness is. In doing this, he feels pain and suffering but he feels
that he would rather live in a world with true feeling, even if that
means his misery, over a world with false feelings. Because there
are no true feelings in this society, John decides to take his own
life.
4.) Unlike the Brave New World society, I believe in our
modern day society we as people focus more on beauty than we
do comfort. The Brave New World society sacrifices their freedom
and happiness for comfort and social stability. especially in
America, we embrace our freedom and happiness and would
never give either of them up. We focus on living our lives to the
fullest and in doing this we must feel pain, suffering and sadness.
The only way to live a perfect life is to feel sadness to appreciate
the greatness of happiness. As humans we strive to succeed and
comfort is the enemy of achievement. There is no beauty without
happiness. I believe that our society desires beauty over comfort
80% to 20%.