The brave new world

1. The history of the formation of the genre.
Utopian literature reflected the social need to harmonize relations between the individual and society, to create conditions where the interests of individuals and the entire human ­community would be merged, and the contradictions tearing the world apart would be resolved by universal harmony. As a genre, utopia originated in the Renaissance. The English writer Thomas More published a book where he described the structure of the state of Utopia, at the same time revealing the vices and shortcomings of his contemporary way of life. Already in the 16th century, the problem of the imperfection of society arose, and writers tried to find ways to resolve it in the creation of ideal worlds. So, according to T. More in an unreal idealistic state, everyone is materially equal, there are no class divisions, no privileged ranks, moreover, excessive wealth, an abundance of precious stones and metals are attributes of thieves and violators of the law. Thomas More tried through the flawless, "brave new world" to show the futility of many modern things and orders, to convey to the reader, in his opinion, the most perfect model of the state. A similar line can be clearly traced in such utopian works of the Renaissance as T. Campanella's "City of the Sun", F. Bacon's "New Atlantis", etc. Later, this line will pass through the works of Voltaire, Rousseau, Swift and through the utopian fantasy of the 20th century.²
In the 20th century, the development of the European and, in particular ­, British, utopian tradition continued. The heyday of utopia in the first decades of the 20th century was based on the "scientific euphoria" that seized the public consciousness at that time - when the intensification of scientific and technological progress and, most importantly, the sharp increase in the influence of scientific achievements on the quality of life of the population gave rise at the level of mass consciousness to the illusion of the possibility of unlimited improvement of material life of people on the basis of future achievements of science and, most importantly, the possibility of scientific transformation not only ­of nature, but also of the social structure - according to the model of a perfect machine. And G. Wells, the creator of the utopian model of the “ideal society” as a “scientific” society, completely subordinated to scientifically confirmed expediency, became a symbolic figure both within the framework of literature and within the framework of public life in the first decades of the 20th century. In his novel “People as Gods” (1923), G. Wells contrasted a truly scientific society with Utopia (himself the choice of the name testifies to the reliance of G. Wells on the tradition coming from T. More).
Particularly noteworthy are the ­utopian models reflected in the literature of the first decades of the 20th century, which were based on the idea of “creative evolution”, that is, a person’s conscious change in his own nature, the direction of his own evolution in one or another desired direction.³
The social utopias of the first decades of the 20th century to a large extent assumed a direct relationship between the Human right to a decent life and its ­fundamental change (as a rule, social selection is also acceptable). To a large extent, this duality of utopian consciousness in the context of the basic values of humanism formed the basis of anti-utopian consciousness. And the same duality of utopia also determined some blurring of the anti-utopian genre. By its very definition, the genre of dystopia involves not just a negatively colored description of a potentially possible future, but precisely a dispute with utopia, that is, an image of a society that claims to be perfect, from a value-negative side. (When defining more particular basic features of anti- ­utopia, one can be guided to a certain extent by the characteristics of the genre given by W. -G. Browning- from his point of view, dystopia ­is characterized by: which cause him the greatest dislike. 2) The location of the dystopian world at a distance - in space or in time. 3) Description of the negative features characteristic of a dystopian society in such a way that a feeling of a nightmare arises.) However, in real works of the dystopian genre - precisely because of the duality of utopia - often a society presented as generally dystopian is simultaneously revealed from the side of its acquisitions (thus, It is no coincidence that, on the whole, the dystopian world from A. Huxley 's novel "Brave New World" absorbed a number of features that - with some adjustment - will become part of the utopian world from A. Huxley 's novel "The Island" (1962)). Equally, works of the utopian genre may contain an anti-utopian element (G. Wells, “People are like gods”).
2. Features of the dystopian genre and their reflection in English and American literature.
The heyday of dystopia falls on the 20th century. This is connected both with the flourishing of ­utopian consciousness in the first decades of the 20th century, and with attempts at incarnation at the same time, with setting in motion those social mechanisms that made mass spiritual enslavement based on modern scientific achievements a reality. Of course, it was primarily on the basis of the realities of the 20th century that anti-utopian social models arose in the works of such very different writers as J. Orwell, R. Bradbury , G. Franke, E. Burgess , and A. Huxley . Their anti-utopian works are, as it were, a signal, a warning about the possible imminent decline of civilization. Anti- utopian novels are similar in many respects: each author talks about the loss of morality and the lack of spirituality of the modern generation, each anti- utopian world is just naked instincts and “emotional engineering”.
Anti-utopian motives are present even in the great utopian G. Wells, despite his ­disapproval of the "chaos" of the real existence of contemporary Western society. The fact is that Wells saw two ways to overcome this "chaos". One path is the path back to the totalitarian past, to tribal consciousness, to the unification of "scattered" human units into powerful communities - national, state, imperial, which, by definition, must be at enmity and periodically fight with other similar communities (otherwise there will be no binding each of these communities began); the other path - the path forward - is the path of gradual awareness of community on the basis of universal human unity, when the individual does not dissolve in any limited community (nation, state, etc.), but becomes part of the universal human brotherhood. The "anti-utopian" model of overcoming the imperfection of real life appeared in the novel by G. Wells "The Autocracy of Mr. Parham " (1930).
The novel simulates a fantastic situation when ­a history teacher came to power in England (a symbolic detail in the artistic world of the ­Wellsian novel ­, which marks Mr. of the Golden Age", "Paradise Lost"). Alas, the anti-utopian model created by G. Wells ­turned out to be prophetic: in fact, the novel turned out to predict much of what would happen in the 1930s-1940s (starting from the mechanism of the coming to power of a totalitarian dictator - and ending with the Second World War, only in Wells' novel it is unleashed by England).⁴
dystopian ­society of J. Orwell in the novel "1984" evokes direct associations with the Soviet society in the Stalinist version. In the "new world" there is a "ministry of truth" - "the guiding brain that drew a political line, according to which ­one part of the past had to be preserved, another to be falsified, and the third to be completely destroyed ". And the inhabitants of this society are brought up ­on simple truths, such as “War is peace. Freedom is slavery. Ignorance is power”. The world in the novel is divided into several states, controlled by one idea - to seize power. States constantly at war with each other keep their citizens in complete ignorance, moreover, set them up with hostility against the same inhabitants of other countries. Daily " two minutes of hate", news reports filled with cruel and horrifying details - everything is done only to maintain the presence of fear among the population. War in this world is rather needed not for power over other territories, but for complete control within the country.
The world of Ray Bradbury in the novel Fahrenheit 451 is less cruel than the world presented by J. Orwell. Bradbury 's main crime is reading books, or at least having them at home. There are dedicated fire brigades that destroy books. “Why is fire full of such inexplicable charm for us? The main charm ­of fire is that it destroys responsibility and consequences. If the problem has become too burdensome, go to the furnace "- this is how ­the Brandmaster, head of the fire station, formulates the ethical credo of his "dystopian" world . Bradbury saw the obvious elements of "programming" the personality in the contemporary ­bourgeois society of mass consumption.