2007: AP Open Question Essay 2

2007. In many works of literature, past events can affect, positively or negatively, the present activities, attitudes, or values of a character. Choose a novel or play in which a character must contend with some aspect of the past, either personal or societal. Then write an essay in which you show how the character’s relationship to the past contributes to the meaning of the work as a whole.

            The Arch-Vicar of Aldous Huxley’s Ape and Essence promotes a life built solely around the quest to appease the devil Belial, whom the Arch-Vicar believes is the destroyer of mankind and the reason behind civilization’s deterioration. Indeed, the Arch-Vicar is so convinced that the blame for the apocalypse lies on Belial that he has devoted his life to worship and sacrifice to Belial, in the hopes that the demon will not do the same to the Arch-Vicar’s society as he did to the society of the past. In Ape and Essence, Huxley uses repetition and personification to rationalize why the life of the Arch-Vicar, and indeed the new society as a whole, revolves around mollifying the devil Belial, painting the events of the novel’s past, or the events occurring during Huxley’s time, as the path to human destruction.

            Huxley uses repetition to emphasize how the people of the past didn’t realize the influence Belial had on them, the influence that eventually led them to their self-inflicted demise. The machines that man was so proud of itself for creating are described as “foolproof, skillproof, talentproof, inspirationproof” (Huxley 71). By repeating the word ‘proof’ after every word, Huxley is able to play on the commonly-held positive connotation of foolproof, for if even a fool can operate a machine, anyone lacking skill, talent, and inspiration can do the same. In a sense, the machines of the time that were made to be operated mindlessly could only lead to mindless individuals. The Arch-Vicar is firm in the belief that it was these mindless machines that led to the downfall of man, as Belial swept in and erased everything that made an individual what they are. Because of what happened in history, the Arch-Vicar is determined to not let Belial do the same to himself and his community, which is why the society is staunchly faithful to Belial.

            The repetition continues with the Arch-Vicar’s more than cynical view of progress, which he believes is nothing more than “the theory that you can gain in one field without paying…the theory that you alone understand the meaning of history; the theory that you know what’s going to happen fifty years from now; the theory…” (Huxley 73). The word “theory” is used as an anaphora for the descriptors of progress, and serves to emphasize the Arch-Vicar’s ridicule of the idea that progress can always be positive, that man even knows what progress is in the first place. It is for such a reason that the Arch-Vicar calls progress only a theory, because from his own perception, the progress of the past has only led to what his present is: a barren landscape with little growth, a people suffering from deformity, and a civilization that has stagnated in terms of spiritual and scientific growth. Progress, in the Arch-Vicar’s eye, must have been the work of Belial, as no man could’ve thought on his own that the work of mindless machines and destructive warfare could bring goodness, and because of this, the Arch-Vicar and the rest of the society determinedly continue to offer only to Belial, ignoring any pursuits of knowledge or happiness to pursue the good graces of the devil.

            The evil of the machines of the past is made even clearer through Huxley’s vivid personification of the technologies of that time, characterizing them as the root of the devil Belial in mankind. The Arch-Vicar notes that it was the machines that were responsible for “Fouling the rivers, killing off the wild animals”, and generally turning the Earth into the decrepit wasteland that it is during the Arch-Vicar’s time (Huxley 74). By directly placing the fault of such an act on the machines, the blame for the Earth’s destruction falls on the shoulders of the machines. The Arch-Vicar doesn’t absolve humans of blame, however; instead, it is because the humans were fool enough to buy into the idea of technology, to put so much stock into their revolutionary machinery, that Belial was able to take over their hearts and gradually rot away at man from the inside.

            In such a sense, Huxley returns to his original point about the relationship between man and machine, that “flesh would be subordinated to iron and mind would be made the slave of wheels” (Huxley 71). The Arch-Vicar has already revealed that he places the blame for mankind’s unraveling on technology. To say, then, that technology became man’s master is to say that humans had a hand in carrying out their own destruction, not through their will but through the will of what they created. Technology absorbed so much of man’s free thought and individuality that he was no longer able to refuse the allure of technology’s wasteful tendencies, and destroyed himself because of it. The Arch-Vicar stands firm in that the reason they are so enveloped in Belial’s crushing embrace is because of machines, and because of their ancestors who so blindly followed their machines, and it is this that leads their society to become what it is.

            The Arch-Vicar may blindly serve the demon Belial, but he does not do so without reason; after the tragic demise of mankind in the past, the Arch-Vicar can only conclude that Belial’s wrath forced humans to destroy themselves, and that Belial is more than willing to do the same to his society. Through repetition and personification, Huxley reveals that the Arch-Vicar’s past—Huxley’s present-day—is the reason for his unwavering reverence for Belial, as the Arch-Vicar prays that the ruination of previous societies will not come to fruition in his own.