BRAVE NEW WORLD

In Brave New World, the authorities encourage all humans to sleep with as many other people as often as they can. In previous generations, institutions such as marriage controlled these impulses. People tried to confine their impulses, buy when they no longer could, such institutions unraveled.

By abolishing institutions such as marriage and encouraging behavior that society once considered immoral, the leaders of the new world have gotten rid of the inherent dangers of these sexual impulses. However, Huxley also suggests that the freedom of these impulses undermines humanity's creativity. Complete freedom to have pleasure has made each person like an infant, incapable of adult thought and creativity. For example, Bernard longs to have more control over his impulses, but the display of such control unnerves others who have learned to be free with their impulses.

The society in Brave New World can only survive because it has destroyed any remnants of human relationships and bonds. The relationships of father and mother no longer exist because all human beings are born in a scientific lab. The relationship between husband and wife is no longer necessary because society shuns monogamy, and all men and women learn to share each other equally.

The cost of such actions is that human beings cannot truly experience the emotions of love. Both John and Lenina begin to feel these strong emotions over the course of the novel, but they cannot act on these emotions in a constructive way because neither can comprehend how to have such a relationship in their society.