Upon finishing the sixth chapter of Aldous Huxley's Brave
New World, I came to the realization that this utopian future was greatly
comparable to a book that some of us have read over last summer for tenth grade
honors English. Ray Bradbury's Fahrenheit 451 was also set in the future, and I
concluded sometime through the course of reading Brave New World that the two
novels have a resemblance.
One of the similarities I have noticed between these two novels
is the desire of the people to avoid feeling any type of sorrow. The people who
resided in the world of Fahrenheit 451 would shield themselves from negativity
through different forms of entertainment, particularly through technology. In
Brave New World, people used the substance known as soma to enter a state of
happiness, completely disregarding anything that inflicted sadness or anger
upon them.
Another similarity I noticed was that citizens of both
worlds were completely blinded by the current state of their world that they
are greatly startled upon hearing about their history. In Fahrenheit 451,
people underwent great shock to hear that firemen originally put out fires
rather than start them, which they did in particular to books. In the beginning
of Brave New World, the students who were participating in the tour found it
unbelievable to hear that sex at a younger age was greatly immoral in the past.
Has anyone else found any other similarities between these
two futuristic novels?
Brave New World did remind me of Fahrenheit 451. The first thing I noticed was also, the loss of history and knowledge in the two worlds. The people of these two different worlds only know what they have been taught and trained to believe. Another similarity I noticed was the hero/main character of the book was, in both books, lonely. I think that maybe the feeling of being lonely or empty led them to wonder about their worlds and later try to change it.
ReplyDeleteI cannot agree with you more on this ! As I was reading I also felt the similarities of Fahrenheit 451 with Brave New World, for they are both futuristic, science fiction novels, the people are oblivious to how unhuman their society really is. Just as in Brave New World, there were no real feelings in Fahrenheit 451, for I remember the main character Guy in Fahrenheit 451 leaving his wife once he new there was a place where he would belong, for he knew he did not actually love his wife.
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