Aldous Huxley`s `Brave New World` and George Orwell`s Nineteen Eighty Four: Propaganda and force in two twentieth century British utopias

Abstract

The most sombre aspect of the two books is the ease with which human nature can be dominated whether by science or by brute power. Huxley and Orwell were both aware that within the society they observed, people were easily influenced. They were, in fact, being conditioned all the time, subjected all the time to pressures, mostly stemming from those with money and power which were hard to resist. The test-tube baby and the Bokanovsky process are the logical extensions of brainwashing by advertisements and propaganda and official education. Big Brother is the logical extension of the uncritical acceptance of political power. What is, in a sense, revolutionary about both books is the concept that human nature can be changed, by whatever means, and changed not for the better, as traditional religions and idealisms have aimed for, but for the worse. Human nature has always responded to the suggestion that it can be improved, but in these books there is* the suggestion that it might voluntarily co-operate in its debasement.