The Concept of Othello in The Quote

This quote is so important in the book because it shows the society of Brave New World so clearly. Everybody is ‘happy’, everybody gets along, and nobody wants to change. In this quote it shows that the Controller Mustapha Mond understands that the society is fragile and hangs in the balance as single change could alter it entirely. He knows that the people have no capabilities of understanding something properly like Othello because its ways and language was never taught to them. It shows how the people just go about their day to day from working to being social with others since being alone is looked down upon. The whole scheme and trick of the society that was only created because people were tired of war and crime, is brought out into the open and stated plainly. The people are only happy because they have been ‘conditioned’ to be happy in their own situation with the sleep teaching and classrooms as kids, and if they ever feel unhappy they can simply take soma, the hallucinogenic drug, to make them happy again.

Even their happy drug doesn’t have any bad side effects afterwards because it needs to be a “happy” experience. It’s possible that if people in the reservations were ‘conditioned’ to like their surroundings like those in the “savages” civilization had been, then they would be happy too. The people in this society may not be actually happy because they didn’t really have a clear view of what happiness is. The ‘happiness’ of the people seems to be as if it’s just contentment and being satisfied with what they have as they have been conditioned to not want anything more. They can deal with their life, they have no objections, but none of them truly feel the rush of excitement from being truly happy, even if it’s just for a short time.

One of the reasons for this is that nobody tries anything new because there is nothing new to try experience wise. They can’t try a new sport or read any new and different books because there are none. There are new things, but they all have to be tested and made sure they won’t make the populace feel something they are not supposed to or get ideas. Pretty much everything they do is routine, nothing is completely new so the element of surprise and excitement for new things is gone. The only new things they may get is a new “feely” show which still follows the society rules. The people never feel love, never truly care about anybody else, they have never really felt true emotion, so they are told that the only emotion they feel is happiness and they believe it. So, this quote brings to light a lot of how the people live, and how they are controlled.

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