2019 Year 12 IB Extended Essays

Huxley relies on people’s fundamental beliefs on the right of individual freedom in his society to effectively demonstrate the dangers of losing one’s individual identity - achieved by demonstrating the dystopian society in Brave New World, which attacks the foundations of individualism and is devoid of any forms of personal identity.

The Perception of Happiness Versus the Truth

Through-out history, humanity has grappled with the philosophy of happiness and its correlation with existence and our own attainment of happiness. Brave New World takes happiness to be the sole purpose of life and sacrifices any other truths in the pursuit of continuous happiness. However, Huxley uses this ideal to warn against the belief that the purpose of life is happiness. Huxley instead insists that “happiness is not achieved by the conscious pursuit of happiness; it is generally the by-product of other activities” (Huxley, 1945). In the late 19 th century, the rise of industry in the United States allowed people to access goods like never before with corporations perpetuating the notion that one could not be happy unless surrounded by things. Subsequently, American consumerism became a way of life with Huxley becoming highly critical as people became more materialistic in pursuit of happiness – as in Brave New World , consumerism is essential to the stability of their society. Through hypnopædic conditioning, consumerist ideas have been ingrained into the citizen’s thinking as they are taught that “ending is better than mending” and “the more stitches, the less riches” (p.44). In Brave New World , happiness comes from consuming mass-produced goods such as Obstacle golf and promiscuous sex. This idea of ‘happiness’ achieved through consumption is perpetuated through the symbolic use of zippers on all clothing worn by World State citizens. Zippers symbolise easy access to sexual promiscuity and intensify the idea of instant gratification, being the quickest and simplest method to initiating sexual acts with the sounds of zippers pointed out every time a character initiates sex: “zip,

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