A piece of literature that I will be speaking of today is the dystopian novel, Brave New World written by Aldous Huxley in 1931. The reason that I am writing about this novel is I feel that it applies a few concepts of what we have read about in class quite well. If you are looking for something that displays the concept of the “One and the “Other”, injustices amongst individuals in two parts of the world. The book itself takes place in a dystopian society where everyone is given a drug to numb their feelings, and those individuals who do not take this drug are on the outskirts of town and are see as outsiders, as they do not follow the beliefs present in the center of the city. So how do the applications apply in this book? Quite easily. Let’s begin by looking at the establishment of the “One and the Other”. In this book Huxley establishes a relationship like this with the people in the city and those outside of it, the people inside the city are unaware of so much and are being controlled by a government, yet they believe they are living their best life. While, those on the outside are considered monsters and beasts, but are in control of what they feel and see. Due to this, we see the city, the “One” establishing those on the outside as the “Others” due to being of different culture and overall, just a different being. When it comes to injustices, these are present in every facet of the book from within the city when it comes to an individual who is not being suppressed by the drug and is seen as different, to the reaction of the city people to the outsiders, seeing them as beasts and danger, even though nothing is inherently wrong with them. What I think Huxley wants us to take from this is not to fall into the trap of letting someone control us, resulting in injustice when it comes to power. As well as, do not view people different than you as entirely different human beings as they are likely similar to you. I feel this work inspires a lot of questions revolving identity of a person, power in governmental systems, and injustices amongst people of different views and backgrounds.
