Prose
Passage 2: (236-238)
The
World Controller Mustapha Mond in Brave New World is characterized by
his almost prophetic nature; with access to restricted books from the past, the
knowledge of the basis for the current society, and the power to control the
society’s future in his hands, Mond should be one of the most reliable
characters in the novel. Huxley, however, uses this characterization along with
repetition and contrasting diction to create irony, in order to show that the
wise Mustapha Mond is just as conditioned as the rest of society.
Huxley
begins by portraying Mond to be one of the most knowledgeable men in the New
World society. In a novel where the majority of intelligent commentary comes
from the narrator himself, Huxley, it’s a surprise to see Mond discussing
“political inefficiency” with ease, and he immediately stands out as a
character that should be reliable simply for his extensive credentials (Huxley
237). In addition, Mond is not only aware of the conditioning that occurs in
society, but is the cause of that conditioning; the man in charge of forcing
citizens into happiness should have a thorough understanding of the workings of
the society itself.
Despite
such an assumption, however, or perhaps because of this assumption, Huxley
imbues devices such as anaphora, polyptoton, and anadiplosis to shed light on the
facade of the World Controller’s supposed supreme knowledge. Though Mustapha
Mond acts as though he has the hidden secrets to why the dystopian society is
acceptable, it is crucial to note that these phrases of repetition render Mond
to sound just as conditioned as the rest of the mindless society hypnotized to
believe what the higher-ups believe they must. Mond’s characterization as an
all-knowing being contrasts directly with his claim that “Passion and
neurasthenia mean instability. And instability means the end of civilization”,
a claim that relies solely on the idea that one concept leads to another, and
the next leads to another, and the last leads to the destruction of all mankind
(Huxley 237). The statement can’t be qualified as hyperbole; Huxley
purposefully has Mond validate the conditioning of society through repetition
in order to reveal that he is similarly conditioned through repetition, whether
it is from an even more authoritative official or from his own attempts at
rationalizing why an entire population should be forced to feel happiness.
A
key component of Mond’s rationalization is that while society in the present
has had to sacrifice ideals of nobility and heroism, the cost is more than
worth it to banish instability. When Mond describes the society of the past
with the society of his present, however, the diction used to describe the past
is far more appealing than that used to describe the present. Mond proudly
notes that current society is free from “objects of love to be fought for or
defended” and instead is able to focus on “the natural impulses” (Huxley 237).
Though Mond is making a strong case for the maintenance of stability, his word
choice doesn’t make a strong case for the maintenance of humanity, and it is
that which reveals that the all-powerful, all-knowing World Controller Mustapha
Mond is not wise enough to know which is more desirable: stability or humanity.
Huxley
may have characterized Mond as a near prophetic intellect, but it is this
characterization that allows Huxley to create irony in what the expectations of
Mond’s intelligence are and what the realities of Mond’s intelligence are.
Repetition and contrasting diction illuminate the great Mustapha Mond’s secret:
that he, too, is conditioned to believe what he believes.
My, my. We have certainly run the gamut of dystopian novels in our literature presentations—I wonder why 20th century authors are so cynical about the world? Amulya, I think you did an excellent job of showing what made Aldous Huxley’s vision of dystopia different from Orwell, Sinclair, and London. Your presentation was very cogent: the “take-home idea” you kept repeating was how the society in Brave New World destroyed all individuality, simply by repeating logical fallacies and false ideas over and over again, through hypnopaedia. I can’t help but be reminded of Franklin Delano Roosevelt’s wisdom—“you should never use a small falsehood; always a big one, for its very fantastic nature would make it more credible - if only you keep repeating it over and over and over again”—Roosevelt said this in 1944; perhaps he had been reading Huxley? You have some good insights on how Huxley uses paradox and irony: I was interested by your second prose passage analysis, which discussed how the “World Controller” Mustapha Mond had fooled himself using the various methods of conditioning, which, ironically, he understood and used to pull the wool over the eyes of the people!
ReplyDeleteI am a little doubtful, though, of what you said of the general public in the first prose passage analysis: “if they hear something from someone they’re told to believe, then they will believe it”. Doesn’t society always have its skeptics? I know you probably qualified this claim in your presentation, where you talked about the outcasts like John, but people do have an inborn tendency to resist authority when their pride has been dented. Perhaps Maslow’s hierarchy of needs also comes into play here: the society of Brave New World places safety above all else, “stability”, but once basic needs are satisfied, don’t people search for love, acceptance, the higher tiers on the pyramid? What has the government done to control them? Maybe the answer lies with cognitive dissonance, the tendency of people to revise their own beliefs when confronted with contradictory impulses. All-in-all, I think you presented a very insightful exploration of Aldous Huxley’s Brave New World.
As soon as I saw the name of the character who you describe as prophetic through your examination of the text, I immediately had to share a connection that I saw which provides an additional layer of complexity. The character that you examine in this essay, The World Controller Mustapha Mond, actually receives him name from a nickname given to the Prophet Muhammad of the Islamic faith. In Islam, Muhammad is the most important prophet in a long list of prophets who have been sent by God to guide different groups of mankind. One of his principle nicknames, Mustapha, is today given to thousands of children around the world to honor his memory and his contributions to advancements in civilization.
ReplyDeleteIt is particularly interesting that you mentioned how the character named Mustapha in Huxley’s work seems “prophetic”. Personally, I doubt that this connection could be purely coincidental, given that Mustapha is a very uncommon name in the Western world. More than likely, Huxley used this name as an allusion to Prophet Muhammad and his title of prophet. This means that your interpretation of the text which determines that Mond is almost prophetic in his characterization falls in line with the possible intentions of the author to begin with. I think it would be interesting to further delve into this topic and other possible nominal allusions that Huxley could have used in his works.