Every person has a slightly different view of everything they read.
Brave New World by Aldous Huxley is a novel all about this idea of a world where we use science to create people of certain castes that are only good for specific tasks. I find the story very interesting so far and I can tell that there is a lot of room for interpretation and controversy surrounding the concept of farming and training people. To begin, I’d like to mention the different castes. Castes are like the different social classes in the story. Each of the castes has their own thing that they are good at, what other caste(s) they are compatible with, their likes, and their dislikes, all of which are the same throughout each member of a specific caste. This is the first thing that comes to mind for me when analyzing the novel from an archetypal view. The following is a couple of quotes that mentions all of the castes and their corresponding colour, keep this in mind since I’ll be referring to it later.
Castes
“Alpha children wear grey They work much harder than we do, because they’re so frightfully clever. I’m really awfully glad I’m a Beta, because I don’t work so hard. And then we are much better than the Gammas and Deltas. Gammas are stupid. They all wear green, and Delta children wear khaki. Oh no, I don’t want to play with Delta children. And Epsilons are still worse. They’re too stupid to be able to read or write. Besides they wear black, which is such a beastly colour. I’m so glad I’m a Beta.” (Huxley 29)
“Mulberry-coloured Beta-Minuses came and went among the crowd” (58)
To put a definition to the perspective, “An archetype can be: a statement, pattern of behavior, or prototype (model) which other statements, patterns of behavior, and objects copy or emulate.” (Wikipedia). For this specific example, I’m looking at the prototype/model aspect of the archetypal view. The novel has created a model for what the current norms are for society, they now build and train people all the way from even before birth to follow these models they have created for each caste. Life has now become following the same pattern in behaviors for every person with other castes to ensure that people don’t get bored just being who they are.
Colours
The next main thing that I would like to mention is their assigned colour. Each caste has its own designated colour that they wear, that way any member of another caste can quickly identify if they are compatible with that person or if they should avoid them. If you think about it, a person’s caste is almost identical to a person’s archetype. Personally, I am 67% a caregiver, 22% creative, and 11% intellectual. This is referring to how much of each of the main archetypes I am most similar to. Each caste works the same way, while a person is developing they force certain situations and chemicals onto it to make it more like a certain archetype to keep society balanced.
Symbols
Now, I’d like to run through some of the characters to see how they compare to some of the main Archetypes found in literature. To begin, let’s talk about Helmholtz Watson and Bernard.
Helmholtz Watson is an Alpha male who is said to be nearly the perfect example of his caste. Helmholtz is very smart, strong, and wise like a mentor. In Chapter four, Helmholtz said “‘These women!’ he said, as the machine rose into the air. ‘These women!’ And he shook his head, he frowned. ‘Too awful,’” (63). Helmholtz, having everything he could ever ask for in Bernards’ eyes, is wise and sees little meaning in women and sex, saying “Too awful” when a flock of women throw themselves at him. Helmholtz has everything Bernard wants in life
since Bernard is considered sub-par for his caste, but Helmholtz knows better and helps Bernard understand that they are individuals and that following your caste isn’t everything you should care about. This is why I see Helmholtz Watson as the Mentor, to Bernard being the pupil.
My other main symbol that I see is the Soma. I like to think of soma as the Fox in the novel although the fox is usually used to describe a character. Lenina says, “why you don’t take soma when you have these dreadful ideas of yours. You’d forget all about them. And instead of feeling miserable, you’d be jolly. So jolly,” (81). Soma is used to lift one’s spirits and to escape their worries, some people use soma so often that they find it difficult to socialize normally without it (JAMEADOWS).
So some people see soma as a way of life, like Lenina, to trick their minds out of worry, to keep social order. And there are others like Helmholtz who don’t seem to be active users and seek to feel successful on their own terms, not falling for the trickster that is brought out in people when they take soma.
Works Cited
“Archetype.” Wikipedia, Wikimedia Foundation, 10 July 2018, en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Archetype.
Huxley, Aldous. Brave New World. Arcturus Publishing Limited, 2018.
“In Brave New World, What Is Soma? Can It Be Compared to Prozac?” Enotes.com, Enotes.com, http://www.enotes.com/homework-help/brave-new-world-what-soma-can-compared-prozac-177079.
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