Brave new world chapters 16-18

Chapters 16-18 are the key for understanding the connotation of the novel Brave New World, because it explains the entire concept of stability, identity, and community, through Mond’s and John’s dialogue. Mustapha Mond elucidates that people need to select between happiness and freedom, between emotions and pleasure, between beauty and consumption. They continuously need to sacrifice one of them, declares Mustapha Mond, “that’s the price we have to pay for stability. You’ve got to choose between happiness and what we used to call high art. We’ve sacrificed it” (Huxley, 220). Freedom, beauty, art and truth make the world unstable. They do not combine with consumption and propaganda. They are not suitable in a world where everything must be perfect. Nevertheless, John disagrees with Mond; he rather be free than pleased. John likes the beauty of the world, likes to have feelings and express them through Shakespeare, he likes to believe that there is a God, and that everyone depends on it. He stated, “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, 240). Happiness has its price, but john does not want to pay it. He wants authority and danger, he wants to live risking his life full of adventures, because he know that one day he will die, and that he want to have lived every moment of it. Mond agrees with John, but he rather control the people’s happiness around him; he knows that “stability isn’t nearly so spectacular as instability. And being contented has none of the glamour of a good fight against misfortune… Happiness is never grand” (Huxley, 221). Mond agrees with John, that this society does not provide you the real idea of life, where you can risk and discover new perceptions, and yes, a programmed and controlled one. He also prefer being free rather than happy, but, he is the controller, the fordship, so no one tells him what to do. That is why Mond likes being in the Brave New World,