Brave New World, by Aldous Huxley, is
a classic example of a utopian dystopia. While Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep fits into the category of a
dystopia, there is still the idea of a perfection that goes completely wrong,
exemplified in the androids. Brave New
World, is a society showered in love, and to the outside eye is a perfect
society, but the perfections come at a cost.
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Everyone is born from a test tube and is
conditioned to do everything in Brave New
World, there is no real free choice. Societal rankings are set, and the
best were designed to be the best, they are the smartest, the best looking, the
most talented, and across the board better than all the other classes of
people, yet they are not better than any other of the top class of people. This
causes there to be no class warfare and no civil strife, everyone is perfectly
fine with their standing in society, and unhappiness is impossible.
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This mirrors to a degree the fears and ideas in Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep,
where the androids can be seen as the perfect humans, that the regular people
fear. While there is the group of ‘chickenheads’
that are deemed repulsive, much like the lower classes portrayed in Brave New World. Both novels touch on the
idea of identity, where in Brave New
World no one really has one, and in Do
Androids Dream of Electric Sheep no one, not even internally can know for
sure if they are man or machine.
Brave New World is a utopian dystopia, a world
where there is no suffering and everyone is happy, but really it is a sad
world. People have meaningless lives, and to the outside eye it would be
impossible to see the difference between anyone in their own class of people. Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep is a
hardcore dystopia, it is clear that world is to shit, but it would be
impossible to see the difference between androids and humans, which kills the
concept of identity, for one can not even know if they are man or machine.
Your example made me think of another similar story: The Giver. Though I read it a long time ago, I remember that it was about a community where everything was planned and controlled. Everyone is happy and normal but lack distinct personality. The people in the story may as well be robots because they have no real control of their lives or individual paths. Like you mentioned, "the concept of identity" is nearly nonexistant in the world in The Giver. When the main character of The Giver, a young boy, has a dream about the opposite sex, he is given medication to suppress his natural feelings. In this society people are basically stripped of the ability to choose. The boy is selected as "the receiver" of memories and the dark horrors of his society are then revealed to him. I personally find stories about societies that differ greatly from ours but still contain certain similarities very interesting.
ReplyDeleteReagan, why do you find these types of stories interesting? Do you think these stories are about societies that are that different from our own, or do authors use problems in our society and show how those problems could unfold?
ReplyDeleteI liked this post because it made me realize, if everyone was the same then there would be no conflict. There would be nothing to fight about if there weren't any differences between people. Like you said it would make for a very boring society because of the obvious lack of identity, since there would be no real distinction between individuals as in "Brave New World." This also makes me think of the movie iRobot but the difference in that movie is that one of the robots in that movie actually was able to acquire a personality. I wonder what the thematic differences would be in the two stories for one to require an identity and one to leave it out completely?
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