Extended Essay - English A1 HL

Linus Müllerschön
Candidate Number:
Date:

What warnings do Aldous Huxley and Anthony Burgess

present to their readers in their respective dystopias?
What techniques of conditioning and control do the
authors use in their created societies?

Word Count: 4042

The Abstract:
The Introduction

There have been an uncountable number of novels which take place in the future, or at

least in the author’s perception of it, but very few have been as impacting and as widely

known as Aldous Huxley’s Brave New World and Anthony Burgess’ A Clockwork Orange.

Both of these authors chose to set their novels in a distant dystopia, and both have very many

things in common, but are also very different. The word dystopia basically means the opposite

of utopia, which “in its most common and general meaning, refers to a hypothetical perfect

society”.1 Also, “a dystopian society is usually characterized by an authoritarian or totalitarian

form of government, or some other kind of oppressive social control”2 and this applies to the

two novels as well. The worlds that these two works take place in both seem very abstract and

hard to imagine, as nothing is similar to what we are used to. Especially in Brave New World,

but nevertheless also in A Clockwork Orange, a large amount of effort has been put into

controlling and conditioning the societies by the government, in order to make them “better”

and increase the satisfaction of the human race as a whole. Human beings are being

conditioned and forced to become “ideal” men and women who all have their permanent

place in a totalitarian society, during which they lose their free will and forced to act in certain

ways, in order to create a perfect society without unrest, worries or any cause for complaint.

Although this might sound like a change for the good, the processes used in the two novels

also rob the people of their own thoughts and power to act, thus creating a type of slave to

society, forced to comply with rules they would never otherwise follow; humans that are

conditioned to accept their roles, the only motive being to avoid problems that could arouse in

the societies and cause trouble for the leaders. What warnings do Huxley and Burgess present

to their readers, and what techniques of control and conditioning are used in their novels?

How do they illustrate the loss of humanity in their portraits of future societies? But first of

all, what do the titles of the books imply?

The Titles

The title of a book is one of the most important things that an author can come up

with, as it is usually the first thing that a reader sees and needs to attract and arouse curiosity

amongst all sorts of people. Therefore, the title of a book requires careful planning and cannot

just be a ‘spur of the moment’ decision. Burgess put a lot of thought into the title of the novel,

including in it both personal and historical meanings and indications. “I had always loved the

Cockney phrase ‘queer as a clockwork orange’, that being the queerest thing imaginable, and

I had saved up the expression for years, hoping some day to use it as a title” says Burgess in

an interview about A Clockwork Orange.4 This implies that Burgess means his book to be

confusing, “queer” and hard to understand as a common reader, but it can also mean that the

society and the characters in the book are what the title and the Cockney phrase describe. Yet

according to him the title also has another meaning. Burgess served in Malaya, Malaysia in

World War 2 and in the local language “orang” is the term for human being. 4 The title could,

from this point of view, therefore mean “The clockwork of a human being”, where clockwork

is the internal functions of a human, things that make a person “tick”. When you combine

these two meanings that inspired Burgess to come up with this title you can deduct that A

Clockwork Orange means (in a very objective way) “the queer and confusing internal

functions of a human being” and although this might sound very weird at first, there is a

connection to the book within it.

The title for Brave New World comes from Shakespeare’s play The Tempest, in a

speech made by the character Miranda in the first scene of Act 5:

"Oh wonder,
how many goodly creatures are there here,
how beautious mankind is,
O brave new world,
That has such people in't!"5
Miranda describes the “brave new world” to be full of goodly creatures and depicts how

“beautious” mankind is, which is exactly the same mistake that everyone in Brave New World

makes. The story of The Tempest is very similar to Brave New World as they both contain a

secluded world which is completely free of any negative thoughts and feelings. In

Shakespeare’s play it is the little island that Miranda and her father are on and in Aldous

Huxley’s novel it is the whole entire planet except for a few “reserves” where people still

share our idea of a normal lifestyle. This means that both of the texts are very similar to each

other and Aldous Huxley most probably based his novel on Shakespeare’s play but reversed

the concept that Shakespeare used. In The Tempest it is the one island that is cut off from the

rest of the world and completely changed whereas in Brave New World it is the whole entire

planet that is changed and only a few carefully controlled places are still what we define as

normal.

Synopsis

A Clockwork Orange was first released in 1962 by Anthony Burgess, and was often

seen to be the follower of previous great dystopian novels such as 1984 and Brave New

World. The story revolves around a youth named Alex, who lives in a troubled London of the

future. He often goes out with his “droogs”, meaning friends, followers or accomplices in

crime, to commit acts of so-called “ultraviolence” and is completely free to do whatever he

pleases. Nevertheless there is an end to everything and Alex soon gets caught red handed, put

into a rehabilitation clinic and is chosen to be the first victim of a brand new procedure that is

designed to make culprits like him “good” again. This procedure renders him completely

incapable of committing any type of violence, making him an open target for anyone that

wanted to hurt and harm him for whatever reason. He is unleashed upon the world in a

crippled state and is completely unable to defend himself, resulting in him getting harassed

and beaten by several of his old friends and also the people that he himself has harmed. In the
end two of his old “droogs” who are now police officers, take him out to the forest and nearly

kill him. He manages to save himself by finding a house, incidentally the same one at which

he killed a woman earlier on in the book, and is taken in by of his unknowing earlier victims.

With the help of some friends, the rescuer of young Alex (who attempts to commit suicide

due to the treatment he received and the fact that he cannot listen to his favourite music

anymore) manages to frame the government because of their ill-treatment and their cruel

methods of rehabilitation, “and the ensuing political fuss results in the removal by the state of

his conditioning”3. Therefore allowing the political party that his former victim, “Something

Something Rubinstein” and his friends where part of to win the elections. A very peculiar

thing worth mentioning about this book is the way in which it is written. Anthony Burgess

created his own version of youth slang called “Nadsat”, which is used by Alex. The entire

book is written in this slang and is therefore very difficult to understand whilst starting to

read, as the first part where the words of Nadsat are really explained is at the end of the book,

where young Alex needs to explain himself and his slang to the adult politicians that are

taking care of him. This chapter in the book seems not only to lead the story to the ending, but

Burgess probably put it in for the exact reason of educating his readers about the harder parts

of Nadsat.

Brave New World takes place far in the future, in a world where everything is

considered perfect by everyone, but in truth it is far from that. We encounter several

characters in the story, the most important ones being Bernard Marx, Lenina and John (the

savage). Bernard Marx is living his life as an outsider in the society of London, and has

always had different likes and dislikes than everyone else. He is attracted to a female worker

called Lenina who works at the same company as he does, and therefore they see each other

on a regular basis, although she is usually with a man named Henry. Nevertheless, Lenina

feels attracted by him because he is so different from anyone else, and therefore presents a

new experience to her, so naturally when he asks her to come to a savage reservation with him
she accepts the invitation. On their trip they find a woman who went missing several years

ago, and it turns out that she gave birth to a boy, which is considered extremely unorthodox

and pretty much prohibited by the society. The boy, who is called John and can by now be

considered a young adult, catches Bernard’s attention and so he decides to take him and his

mother Linda back to London. Bernard was on the verge of being exiled, but the discovery of

John saves him and almost instantly Marx becomes one of the most desired men in London.

John, who is attracted to Lenina (but due to his reverence of Shakespeare not only in a

physical way), very quickly learns to hate the new world that he has been taken to and decides

not to cooperate with anyone anymore, which results in Bernard’s downfall and ultimately in

his exile. He goes off to live by his own in a lighthouse and quickly becomes a tourist

attraction, because everyone wants to see what the “savage” is like. After he loses control one

evening he is so guilty and ashamed of himself that he commits suicide and ends his time on

earth.

Societies

Both societies in these two novels take place in future Dystopias, the meaning of

which was explained in the introduction. Especially in Brave New World one notices what the

control and conditioning has done to the society, and how everything is changed. The whole

world is controlled by ten so called World Controllers, who set the rules and state what people

should be doing. These rules are furthermore helped by the use of conditioning the embryos

of people (this is only possible because in these times babies aren’t given birth to anymore,

rather they are created in a factory called “hatchery”), not only in order to create thousands of

people from one egg cell, but also by manipulating the embryos and later even the babies.

Everything is geared towards consumption and production, whatever activity a human being

does, it is meant to be as consuming as possible, effectively creating a sort of cycle that never

ends. The people work to keep up with the constant demand of items, and in their free time
they consume whatever it was they built or worked on during their working hours. The people

are kept eternally busy, not leaving any time for thinking or free will. The society also doesn’t

allow strong emotions such as unhappiness, which is enforced by a set ratio of a drug called

“soma”. It is described as the rush of alcohol and other drugs without the bad side effects such

as headaches and sickness, and everyone is forced to take a specified amount of this every

day. Everything is seen in a casual manner, even the most intimate actions that the reader

could come up with, such as sexual intercourse. This is seen more as an activity to keep the

humans satisfied, and even the babies are taught how to do it. Women are advised to switch

partners as much as possible and it is considered queer (and even reckless and dangerous) if

they stick with the same person for longer than a month or two. On the other hand, it is seen

as completely disgusting and taboo to give birth to babies, resulting in very well thought

through plans that women have to go through at a certain point in their lives, consisting of

medications that constantly need to be taken. Everything that could be dangerous to world

order is banned, such as Shakespeare and the Bible, along with anything that reminds of the

world before the controllers took over.

The society in A Clockwork Orange is quite different from the one displayed in Brave

New World, but it rests on the same ideas. The reader doesn’t notice very much of what is

going on as all we see is London from the eyes of a violent teenager, therefore limiting our

view on what the society was like. We do find out that the streets of England are ruled by

gangs of youngsters who go around beating, raping and stealing from people just because they

have nothing better to do. Nobody is really there to enforce the laws and it doesn’t seem like

the youths ever bother going to school, or even listen to their parents anymore. It is as if

everything has gone out of control and a sort of anarchistic movement has formed on the

streets, sparing no one.

Main Characters

“In a world where material comfort and physical pleasure—provided by the drug soma

and recreational sex—are the only concerns”6 there is a single person who emerges as

unhappy and upset, and this is the protagonist of Brave New World, Bernard Marx. He

occupies a high seat in society as an Alpha plus psychologist in a community of humans that

are in a large extent very similar to each other. Nevertheless there is something different about

Bernard Marx, and everyone knows it. Rumours go around that alcohol was accidentally

added to Bernard’s blood surrogate, therefore making him smaller in stature and different

from the other people that should be exactly the same as him. He has a deep hatred for all the

“fools” that go around and live life exactly like the hypnopaedia, or sleep teaching, taught

them to, and therefore does his best to be as different as the controlled society allows him too

without rousing attention. He is appalled by the sharing of mates and by the open mindedness

of everyone, and seems to be the only person that still has a little bit of shame, more similar to

our present society than to the society in the novel. The female protagonist in Brave New

World is called Lenina. She works at the same hatchery that Bernard Marx also works at, as

part of the vaccination process. Both Bernard and John the savage desire her for her beauty

and she is attracted to both of them at certain points in the book, although they never engage

in the normal acts of society, such as sexual intercourse. She is also different and unorthodox,

which makes her more intriguing than other minor characters in the novel, because she dates a

single man for a prolonged period of time, which is quite unusual in Brave New World. John

the savage, although he only comes in at a later part in the story, also plays an important role

in the story. Bernard discovers him during a trip to a reservation, where the people still live

like they did before the World Controllers changed everything. He turns out to be the son of a

woman named Linda and the Director of Hatcheries in London so Bernard takes him back to

London in order to present him to the new world. John is unable to fit into the new society,

mainly due to the fact that all of his knowledge comes from a very old compilation of
Shakespeare’s works. There is a lot of attraction between him and Lenina, but due to her

being way too fast for him, the relationship is destroyed by his Shakespearian ideals. He is

unable to live in the modern age London, as many of the principles and rules completely clash

with his own, and after Bernard gets exiled he commits suicide.8 The author decided to add

some parody to the book, through the names of his characters. Bernard Marx is a pun on Karl

Marx and his socialistic ideas, whereas Lenina represents Lenin (there are several other

examples which will not be mentioned). As this book was written between the two great wars

it could be making fun of the Soviet Union and Communism in general, by showing what a

disaster it would be if the communists did dominate the world, or at least most of it.

There is only one character in A Clockwork Orange that we ever hear from, and that is

Alex, a teenager who patrols the streets of London with his gang of evil-doers. Alex is what

one would expect to be the perfect example of free and uncontrollable youth that have nothing

to do. Although he is a brutal and aggressive person one notices a sort of style that he

incorporates. If you take, for example, a person that is considered to be at the height of the

Hip-Hop and Rap fashion, complete with all the necessary things such as clothing, jewellery

and the current slang, you would get the closest comparison to what Alex is in his own society

and time. He and his followers, although still young, have a love for violence and alcohol,

spending most of their evenings roaming the streets of London and sitting in the “Korova

Milkbar” a dark bar in the heart of London. They commit many crimes, beating people half to

death, robbing homes and having fights with other such gangs; the final crime that Alex

commits with his droogies is the act of breaking into an old woman’s house in a richer area of

London, which results in Alex murdering the inhabitant of the house after the whole thing

goes wrong. This causes Alex to be caught by the police and puts an end to his violent youth.

Control and Conditioning

 The control and conditioning in A Clockwork Orange is mainly represented by the

procedure, which is used on Alex and is comprised of various harsh experiments performed

on him. He is given a chemical which brings him into a nauseating state and is then forced to

watch extreme acts of violence, many similar to what he used to do. At first he enjoys these

scenes and doesn’t know what the doctors are trying to do but slowly his body relates the

scenes of violence with the nauseating feeling and therefore makes him incapable of violence

without immediately getting sick and very weak. Also, there are many hints of control and

oppression in the language that Alex uses, for example the Nadsat word for police officer is

“millicent” which is comprised of the Latin number “milli” meaning 1000 and the French

number cent meaning 100. This could hint at the large amount of Policemen that exist in the

London of that time, and although there are so many of them they are quite useless at

hindering Alex in his early criminal career.

Brave New World takes the whole process of control and conditioning a large step

further, and the complete society is remodelled and made to occupy a constantly happy state

of mass consumerism. A single egg is split into thousands of eggs, causing the whole

population of cities to look very similar; embryos are cultivated in large factories or

“Hatchery and Conditioning Centres” and are bread towards their roles in societies from the

moment that they are fertilized. Once the fertilized eggs have grown into embryos they are

cultivated and conditioned immediately, speakers repeat the same things over and over and

over again and the fluid in which they swim is, for example, injected with alcohol in order to

slow the growth of the brain and other functions such as size, body build or even looks. Once

the babies are born they are conditioned even further, they are told what they like, what they

do not like, and everything that has anything to do with their thoughts and intentions in the

future. “We predestine and condition. We decant our babies as socialised human beings, as

Alphas or Epsilons, as future sewage workers or future Directors of Hatcheries” claims the

present director of the in London situated hatchery (p 10-11). In other words, they are
completely robbed of any free will and turned into exactly what the society of Brave New

World needs and wants. There are several different levels of human development, Alphas,

Betas, Gammas, Deltas and Epsilons for example, ranging from the classes that occupy

complicated and intellectual positions (the Alphas) all the way to a mere sub-human slave

designed to serve the higher classes and perform tasks that are considered as degrading or

dangerous (Epsilons). These classes are then split into sub classes, for example Alpha plus-

plus our Delta minus.

Both of the authors base the way that control and conditioning is used in their books

on the work of a single man, Ivan Pavlov. He was a researcher and a scientist in Russia in the

late 19th and early 20th centuries and based most of his life on “the phenomenon known as

conditioning”4. He was the first scientist to experiment with animals in order to test the

conditional reflex of the mind, in other words he would program the animals into reacting to

different stimuli, visual or auditory ones, and compulsively doing or knowing something

because of this stimuli. A common example of his research was that Pavlov would ring a bell

and the dogs he was teaching would automatically know that it was time for food, and

although this proved to be false in the end due to there not being a single bell in all of

Pavlov’s laboratory, it is still a very good example of the type of experiments that he did. This

experiment is very similar to the way that Alex was conditioned in A Clockwork Orange, just

replace the bell and the food with violence and nausea in the example above respectively. The

same thing counts for Brave New World. The young children are also taught using Pavlov’s

Technique, for example when on pages 17 and 18 the babies are allowed to play with books

and flowers, but as soon as they have their minds fixed on these objects they are given a “mild

electric shock” and are deafened by shrill bells. “They’ll be safe from books and botany all

their lives” says the Director of the Hatchery and Conditioning center, and all this just in order

to stop them from wasting the communities time, have them fill up the factories and consume

more material goods. This also shows you how much the society of Brave New World is
focused on consuming and making sure that the normal people do not have any free time to

spend.

The Conclusion

The worlds in Brave New World and A Clockwork Orange are just two indications

of what could happen if humanity focuses too much on perfection and control. Through their

novels the authors tell us that we should never take away a human’s free will and his ability to

decide between good and evil, right or wrong. Alex’s story shows us what happens when we

try to use inhumane ways, methods that are used on animals, in order to make people become

(what they call) “better”, and the happenings of Bernard, Lenina and John indicate the grave

errors that occur when humans are produce, rather than conceived. A human’ spirit cannot be

underestimated or taken away, and trying to do so only results in disasters.

Conclusion needs to be expanded and possibly some words cut away in some places.

Obviously still needs a little revising.

1
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Utopia - 31 August 2005
2
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dystopian - 27 August 2005
43
http://home.cerrocoso.edu/swiridoff/Resources/Literature/burgess_clockwork.htm 11/23/99
4

54
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Brave_new_world - 29 August 2005
35
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/A_Clockwork_Orange - 30 August 2005
6
http://www.cliffsnotes.com/WileyCDA/LitNote/id-45,pageNum-5.html
87
http://www.sparknotes.com/lit/bravenew/characters.html ©2005 SparkNotes LLC
48
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ivan_Pavlov - updated 28 September 2005