Free Will in "Brave New World"

In the novel Brave New World by Aldous Huxley, the concept of free will is brought up in the context of new technological advances. Is it right to predetermine a person’s life because you can? Or do you let them grow naturally and see what happens? This is the central problem surrounding the motif of free will in Brave New World. In the novel, technology controls every aspect of human life in a future society. People are given hypnopaedia in order to condition them from a young age, as well as given drugs when they are still embryos in order to put them into a certain social class. Essentially, this new society plays God and assigns people predestined lives. People are made to be a certain way and no matter what they do with their lives, they are unable to change what they do, or even who they are. This philosophy can be viewed as a perverted concept of creationism and is used to point out how ridiculous and wrong it is to predetermine a person’s life.

The character of John the Savage is the main way that Huxley is able to demonstrate the motif of free will. John the Savage is a character that lives on a reservation and isn’t subjected to the hypnopaedia and embryonic drugs. He is able to think, feel, and do as he wants. When he is brought to the conditioned society, he finds himself dealing with very serious culture shock. He sees how people have been controlled and how it is against the law to even quote Shakespeare. John reacts to this predestined world by making a series of choices that are completely his own mind and in doing so, demonstrates how important free will is. One of the major things that John does is starts a fight over the drug SOMA. He refuses to take it after the death of his mother and as a result of his anger, he starts a fight with the Deltas who are bringing him SOMA. After this episode, John goes into exclusion, hiding in his house and practicing Christianity (which is against the society’s rules). After he is hounded constantly by the members of the society, John hangs himself, choosing to end his life rather than be apart of this new world. John’s decisions in these incidents show how powerful free will is. John chooses to not take SOMA when everyone else does, chooses to continue practicing his religion when Christianity has been banned, and dictates how he will die instead of letting the society get the best of him. Even though the new society eventually drives John insane, John still is always in control of his life. In essence, John symbolizes free will in a society that is given predestined lives. John always acting of his own free will shows that it is important to make your own choices in life and that it is wrong to be given a predestined life or have free will taken away from you. Brave New World suggests that free will is something important and should be fought for at all costs.