Year 12 IB Extended Essays 2018

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suggest that the most powerful totalitarian state would be one that does not overwhelm and frighten its citizens, but instead convinces them to love their slavery. In both novels, the ultimate goal of the governments is to discourage exclusive relational unions that could destabilize the established allegiance to the state. Discussion Both authors portray the totalitarian governments in their novels as all-powerful and the control of sexual relations as central to societal stability. In Brave New World and 1984 , the government’s control over their citizens’ sexuality begins at an early age. In Brave New World , young children are deliberately trained to be sexually curious. Early in the novel, the Director of the Central London Hatchery and Conditioning Centre leads a group of older students to a garden where hundreds of naked children are playing a “rudimentary sexual game” (Huxley, 2014, p. 29). Through the promotion of early sexual encounters, the Director ensures that promiscuity is fostered as a societal norm. Huxley forwards the notion that education is a key element of control in a society, by placing babies into an educational facility, a “conditioning center” (Huxley, 2014, p. 1). The conditioning center represents a contrived ‘Garden of Eden’ and reveals a society where humans are the experimental product of a laboratory; emotion and love are entirely absent in this process. In this world the government takes on the role of God as they tightly control the artificial environment and citizens are little more than puppets being encouraged to act on primal urges. The educational facility has a garden where the children play “naked in the warm June sunshine” (Huxley, 2014, p. 23). Erotic play is encouraged and is observed by scientists. One young boy in the nursery is considered to have psychological issues because he “seem[s] rather reluctant to join in the ordinary erotic play” (Huxley, 2014, p. 26). He is seen as a threat to societal stability and is taken “to see the assistant superintendent of Psychology” (Huxley, 2014, p. 26). Huxley presents the reader with the idea that both stimulating and satiating the sexual instinct is