Just like in Anthem, there is no individualism in Brave New World. This is done by different measure. In Brave New World, people have no individualism because they cannot chose what caste they are in, they are born into it. Furthermore, each caste is given it's own colour, so an Alpha cannot be distinguished from all the other Alphas, a Beta cannot be distinguished from all the other Betas and so on. They also have no individual thoughts, just like in 1984 their brains are filled with slogans. For example: "A gram is always better than a damn" (page 80), or "Everybody's happy nowdays" (page 81). Since their early childhood and even before that, their thoughts have been destroyed, brainwashed. An illusion of utopia has been created so that everyone believes that they are happy. They have no individual opinion, their only opinion is that they are happy.
In Anthem, the citizens have no individuality either, but for different reasons. They cannot decide for them selves. They can't have preferences for certain things over others, they don't decide where they live, what job they have or where they work, what they eat, and even with who they make love, when, and where! That is all decided by the government. Anything that would make one more unique, more of an individual, anything that makes them stand out, is considered as evil, like the fact that Equality is taller than his brothers. Speaking of equality, did you notice how strange his name is? In Anthem everyone has weird names like "Equality", "Fraternity", "Union", or "Liberty". This is done so that an illusion of utopia is created, just like in "Brave New World". By having names such names (which ARE ironic), the citizens think that their life is happy, so they do not wish to revolt. But the ultimate killing of individualism in this novella is that everyone speaks in plural. There is no "I", only "we", just like Equality said at the very beginning of the book: "We are one in all and all in one. There are no men but only the great WE, one, indivisible and forever." But both Bernard and Equality are different from the rest. Both have not been brainwashed. Both know what it means to be an individual. Equality has succeeded in becoming an individual, of escaping his communist society and of discovering the word "I". Will Bernard succeed? He certainly loves being alone, rather that in crowds, like Lenina likes. He had asked her if she would like to be alone with him and talk. She did not understand what he liked in being just the two of them and talking and walking. Bernard also seems to be the only one to understand that "owning everyone else" is just like owning meat. He said so himself: "like meat, like so much meat" (page 47), so I hope he gets to defeat the government and the world controllers.
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