From Dystopia to Utopia: an analysis of Aldous Huxley’s Brave New World and Island

Details

Supervisors

Bragard, Véronique

Faculty

Faculté de philosophie, arts et lettres

Degree label

Master [120] en langues et lettres modernes, orientation germaniques

Abstract

enTough dystopian and utopian stories seem very different from each other at first sight, the two genres have a lot in common. The present dissertation discusses the parallels and discrepancies between Aldous Huxley’s dystopian book Brave New World (1932) and his last and more utopian novel Island (1962) and is divided into four main chapters. The first part presents a theoretical framework by discussing the plots of Brave New World and Island, as well as the influence that Huxley’s life experiences have had on the two books. The second chapter provides an analysis of Huxley’s essay “Brave New World Revisited”, which enables a better understanding of the creation of Brave New World, but which also offers solutions to the problems tackled in the dystopia. Since these solutions serve as basis for the society depicted in Island, connections between the two novels are established. In the third part, the topics which are recurrent in both Brave New World and Island are compared and analysed. These topics are drugs, freedom, spirituality, group living and sexuality. The main aim of this comparison is to determine how similar topics can be approached in two different ways to describe two different contemplations of society and how Huxley managed to rewrite Brave New World’s society to create the society of Island. Finally, the last chapter focuses on the ending of Island. Though Huxley’s last novel ends on a pessimistic tone, the message conveyed by the book is a message of hope.