This is an interesting question to consider because I have
always thought the dystopian world presented to us in Brave New
World to be a lot softer and less harsh than the grim dystopian futures of
novels such as Fahrenheit 451. After all, if you rebel, you only
get exiled, rather than brutally tortured or killed. However, one of the similarities
that we can draw between them is how the future societies these novels present us with
clearly try to dismantle the bonds of love and affection in institutions such as
marriage and family.
Note how Brave New
World has managed to do this and why they feel that getting rid of parenting
altogether is a good idea:
readability="16">
What with mothers an dlovers, what with the
prohibitions they were not conditioned to obey, what with the temptations and the lonely
remorses, what with all the diseases and the endless isolating pain, what with the
uncertainties and the poverty--they were forced to feel strongly. And feeling strongly
(and strongly, what was more, in solitude, in hopelessly individual iolation), how could
they be stable?
In this novel
then, institutions such as marriage and the family have been dismantled because they
involve unpredictable and uncontrollable emotions that go against the stability that the
regime is so desperate to achieve.
In Fahrenheit
451, we can see that what comes between Mildred and Montag's marriage is the
"family" that is beamed onto the walls that Mildred spends so much time watching. We see
that in this world, media has deliberately interfered with and become more important
than the bonds of love and affection that are so intrinsic to human relations. Note what
Montag says about his relationship with Mildred:
readability="23">
Well, wasn't there a wall between him and
Mildred, when you came down to it? Literally not just one wall but, so far, three! And
expensive, too! And the uncles, the aunts, the cousins, the nieces, the nephews, that
lived in those walls, the gibbering pack of tree apes that said nothing, nothing,
nothing and said it loud, loud,
loud.
We see how family has
been superseded by a shallow, ersatz imitation transmitted by media that changes human
relations and attacks concepts such as love and loyalty. For Mildred, her "family" is
clearly more important to her now than her actual
family.
Both novels are thus similar in the way that the
future world that they present us with attack or dismantle institutions such as marriage
and family.
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