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Prophetic Quality in Wells’ The Time Machine and Huxley’s Brave New World
H.G. Wells’ The Time Machine is a fiction novel whose concepts are founded on time travel using a special device to navigate forth or back in time selectively for a purpose giving an insight into the future of the society. Huxley’s Brave New World, on the other hand, is a novel whose concepts are founded on a Utopian society and the wave of technology and genetic modification. The two novels have different ideas presented in a somewhat different manner but have a level of prophetic quality in them because they give a prognosis of modern society. Thus, Wells’ The Time Machine and Huxley’s Brave New world reveal foresight that describes the current social and educational institutions as well as the moral functions of the modern society. This paper assesses how ideas in Huxley and Well’s works contain a prophetic quality that is a representation of modern society.
Huxley’s Brave New World has vatic insights into modern genetic modification. The narrative commences in 2540 when children are born in hatcheries and technologies that allow for children to grow in artificial wombs and the rise of indoctrination programs that divide people according to their physical abilities and intelligence. Those who did not conform to these practices were alienated from “savage reservations” in remote areas (Huxley). Eight decades after Huxley wrote this novel, human beings are living in conditioned environments, and the world is filled with engineered humans. It also reaches a point when these human beings will no longer quest for a revolution because they feel that they have achieved their desired servitude. Huxley says he ate civilization, and it poisoned him perhaps because of the rot that comes with it or the fact that after humans have become satisfied, they will no longer need a revolution (Huxley). Thus, Huxley’s narrative seems as if it is a foreknowledge of what has already begun and thus bringing out its prophetic quality. Huxley’s visionary legacy is quite relevant today more than ever. His writing not only gives a glimpse of the future that Huxley’s vision but also gives an insight into his understanding of the human potential. Therefore Huxley’s perception is percipient because it prophesies a utopian society.
Similarly, Huxley presents a notion of obsession with happiness, where individuals would stop at nothing to achieve it, a widely-recognized concept in modern society. The modern society is fueled by happiness because everyone is looking for happiness regardless of the impact or even at the expense of other people. This has sparked concepts such as that of the American Dream. For instance, today, society does not perceive drugs and sex as being destructive. Instead, people are encouraged to indulge as long as they make them happy. Drug abuse is not as serious as worse a century ago because people take it as a means to attain happiness. This has ultimately contributed to the ill and rot that exists in society today. In accordance with Huxley’s foresight, human beings have become controversial beings, evident from the quote “But I don’t want comfort. I want God, I want poetry, I want real danger, I want freedom, I want goodness. I want sin.” (Huxley). This, however, raises a question on a utopian society where people have controversial morals and are driven by self-interest than the good of the entire society.
Contrastingly, Wells presents a prognosis of possible inequality and social class in a dystopian society. The Time Machine was written in Britain at a period of great anxiety due to economic inequality and social class issues. The industrial revolution was an era of wealth to members of the upper class, and rather than equal distribution to members of the lower class, there was great inequality on the basis of social class, which acted as an augural sign of what was to happen in the future. Well, quotes,” At first, proceeding from the problems of our own age, it seemed clear as daylight to me that the gradual widening of the present merely temporary and social difference between the Capitalist and the Laborer, was the key to the whole position.” (Wells). This statement has prophetic quality because it gives an insight into the modern-day exploitation of the poor by the rich and the divisions of people based on social and economic class, which has become heightened because humans have become more inhumane. Additionally, the time traveler journey into the future reveals a society full of elites such as doctors, journalists, editors, and psychologists who are perceived as people who have the power to inflict change in Britain society. Further explaining the gap between the Morlocks (the elites) and the Eloi, who are the servant’s “he hates to have them waiting at dinner,” in Victorian England. Thus the narrative of the ancient world is a dystopian projection and sibylline predictions of a future founded on inequality within the present-day Victorian social classes.
Furthermore, the devolution of man had been far-sighted by Wells. He explains that it is possible for humans to fall back from being perfect and become imperfect. All the species in the Time Machine have lost their intelligence and have forgotten their culture and language (Wells). According to Wells the Time Machine, humans have diverged into creatures that are no longer smart or strong, and neither are they more moral but are contemporary individuals. He says that the current race had lost its “manliness” and “developed into something inhuman” and “unsympathetic” illustrated by the present-day wars and brutality amongst people (Wells).
Conversely, H.G Wells and Aldous Huxley’s novels offer profound insights into moral, economic, and social forces and foundations that shape humans. However, whereas Wells’s concepts are that of a dystopian society, Huxley designs his novel to satirize utopian forecasts on authors such as Wells, who had a dystopian prognosis of the future. Nonetheless, they both act as cautionary novels of impending danger due to the change of human nature and the environment (Boer). In both cases, the title of the novel give has prophetic quality. For instance, the time machine is in itself a technology feat that masters the change in humans over natural processes. It is also metaphoric in that it can only master humans but has no effect on their fate or overall duty in the universe (Wells). The Brave New World, on the other hand, gives insights into a percipient and utopian society (Huxley). Therefore, both have wide-range relevance in the world today (Boer).
In a nutshell, Wells’ The Time Machine and Huxley’s Brave New World both present their predictions of the modern world. However, whilst Huxley envisions a utopian society where technology has benefited human beings, and happiness is the topmost priority, Wells predicts that the modern society is a dystopia due to decay in moral, the existence of social classes, and economic inequality. Nevertheless, both have wide-range relevance in the world today.
Works Cited
Boer, Roland. “Review of Ehud Ben Zvi (ed.), Utopia and Dystopia in Prophetic Literature.” The Bible and Critical Theory 4.1 (2011).
Huxley, Aldous. “Brave New World (1932).” London: Vintage (1998).
Wells, Herbert George. “The time machine. 1895.” New York: Berkley, and (2005).