Island: Aldous Huxley's 1962 Utopian Novel Island and Its Literary and Social Significance in Postwar American Society a Thesi

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ISLAND: ALDOUS HUXLEY’S 1962 UTOPIAN NOVEL ISLAND AND ITS LITERARY AND SOCIAL SIGNIFICANCE IN POSTWAR AMERICAN SOCIETY

A THESIS SUBMITTED TO THE GRADUATE DIVISION OF THE UNIVERSITY AT HAWAIʻI AT MĀNOA IN PARTIAL FULFILLMENT OF THE REQUIREMENTS FOR THE DEGREE OF

MASTER OF ARTS

IN AMERICAN STUDIES MAY 2020

Kevin Martin

Thesis Committee:

Robert Perkinson, Chairperson Todd H. Sammons William Chapman

Keywords: Aldous Huxley, Island, Postwar Literature

DEDICATION

To Susila MacPhail, Thank you for your kind words to Mr. Farnaby. Had it not been for your words, I might not have ever understood that the ultimate life pursuit is,

“To achieve WIDER sympathies and DEEPER understandings.”

And these understandings and sympathies are for everyone.

ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS

I want to thank Robert Perkinson, David Stannard, and Bill Chapman for helping me gain admission into the University of Hawaiʻi American Studies Masters of Arts program. If not for them, I have no idea where I would be right now or what I would be doing. I would also like to express my gratitude for Karen Kosasa and Brandy McDougall for challenging me academically and opening my eyes up to literature, ideas, and practices I would not have found otherwise. I would also like to sincerely thank Todd Sammons for supporting me during this thesis process and becoming a member of my committee. He is the only professor I know who understands my obsession for Island – without him, I would have been lost and hopeless. Most importantly, I would like to thank Rumi Yoshida for always being so helpful, kind, and charismatic. Years from now, I will look back on my experience as a student at the University of Hawaiʻi as the time when I learned a great deal about the world, but most importantly when I learned to love myself.

ABSTRACT

In 1962, Aldous Huxley, one of the greatest authors of the 20th century, published a utopian novel titled Island. During his career, Huxley wrote eleven novels; Island was his final novel and the most important to Huxley personally. Island was not Huxley’s most famous or acclaimed book, but he and many others considered Island to be his most influential and far-reaching. Huxley spent his life traveling, studying the world, and looking for solutions that would liberate individuals from the tyranny of authoritarian control, discourage mass militarization, and halt the innovation of predatory technological developments. The intersectional of control, militarization, and industrialism left Huxley and many others disillusioned and pessimistic about the future of humanity. However, after a series of spiritual epiphanies, Huxley began to envision the possibility of the postwar period of 1954-1962 as a time where people could demand change and create a more equitable, inhabitable, and peaceful world instead of succumbing to the blight of modernity. At the time, it was a radical belief that the future of humanity could result in the betterment of the human race, as most of the popular literature of that era focused on destruction, suffering, and chaos. Most importantly, this particular utopian vision was unlike anything previously proposed, as it sought to integrate Eastern mysticism and Western science. This thesis argues that Island exemplifies the most salient social concerns from the postwar 1950s epoch in American society. By the 1950s, a growing resentment towards traditional American values became visible through various social movements such as the Beatnik Movement, the 1960s Anti-war Counterculture Movement, and the Human Potential Movement. I will examine three popular texts – Lord of the Flies by William Golding, On The Road by Jack Kerouac, and Silent Spring by Rachel Carson – to illustrate the difference between Island compared to other books of the time. Each one of those books became popular because they presented a searing critique of authoritarian control, colonial values, and mass industrialization, all of which Huxley provides a solution to in Island.

TABLE OF CONTENTS ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS…………………………………………………………….. ABSTRACT…………………………………………………………………………...… PREFACE……………………………………………………………………. 1: IMPORTANT LITERATURE 1954 - 1962……………………………………………………………. LORD OF THE FLIES (1954) BY WILLIAM GOLDING…………………………………………………….……. ON THE ROAD (1957) BY JACK KEROUAC………………………….……. SILENT SPRING (1962) BY RACHEL CARSON………………………………….…...

2. ISLAND – UTOPIA LOST..…….…………………………..

PALA...…….………………………….. CHARACTERS………………………………………………………………... IMPORTANT THEMES…………………………………...….……………………

3. CONCLUSION……………....……………………………………………………… ISLAND AND IT’S RELATIONSHIP TO SOCIAL MOVEMENTS…………………………………………………….…………………….………. BIBLIOGRAPHY………………………………………………………………………

PREFACE

During the three years I spent at the University of Hawaiʻi at Mānoa as a graduate student, I was exposed to a variety of great literature. I was lucky enough to have amazing professors who challenged me to read a diverse set of materials that opened my eyes to ideas, experiences, and histories that I would have never found on my own. However, one of the most important books that I read during graduate school did not come from a professor or course syllabus.

During my first summer as a graduate student, I was working full time as an intern in a construction engineering role for a general contractor on a project for the US Army in Hawaiʻi.

After a long day of work, I decided to stop by my local bookstore in hopes of finding some nice fiction to ease my mind and relax. When I walked into the bookstore, in the center in the main display was a book titled How to Change Your Mind: What the New Science of Psychedelics

Teaches Us About Consciousness, Dying, Addiction, Depression, and Transcendence (2018). As soon as I read the title of the book, I knew I had to buy that book and read it as fast as possible.

For many years, I had been struggling with debilitating Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder

(PTSD), anxiety, and depression. At a young age, I had experienced a series of difficult events within my own family and community; and, like many other disenfranchised young men, I enlisted in the US Army as a Cavalry Scout. Fifteen months later, I arrived in Afghanistan on

May 2, 2011 – the day Osama Bin Laden was killed. May marked the start of the fighting season, and the death of Osama Bin Laden only energized and emboldened Taliban fighters. Four months into my deployment, I was wounded in combat after my vehicle ran over two Improvised Explosive Devices (IEDs) in five days. Even so, the worst part of my time in the US Army was not combat or being wounded – it was the corrupt authoritarian control of the US Army. I had numerous abusive supervisors who managed to evade investigation, break the rules as they pleased, and weaponize their authority against anyone who dared to expose their malfeasance.

I was fortunate enough to grow up in a town in Connecticut with a great public school system, and that experience told me that my best way out of the Army was through education.

Consequently, the first day after I got back to America from Afghanistan, I went down to the education center on base and signed up for college courses. A few months later, after completing enough courses to qualify as a transfer student, I was accepted into Trinity College, a small selective liberal arts school in Connecticut, in 2013. As Trinity College is a selective liberal arts school, it is home to the wealthiest undergraduate population in the country: “In 2013, 26 percent of Trinity’s student body came from families with incomes in the top 1 percent. That was the single highest concentration of ultrarich students to be found at any college” (Tough

“Admissions Want”). At the time, I thought that was fantastic – I had gone from the lowest rung on the socioeconomic ladder (The US Army) to the highest (a student at Trinity College).

However, after about a year and a half at Trinity College, I began to realize that everything I had thought was true about achieving success in American society – money, power, and prestige – was all a façade. The elite liberal arts college that I had once believed would be a utopia turned out to be just as dystopic as my time in Afghanistan was. The social scene at Trinity College was entirely contingent upon one’s status, wealth, and vain pursuits. I met more people at Trinity

College, suffering from extreme mental health problems such as depression, substance abuse, and anxiety than soldiers who had PTSD from war. This disillusionment left me perplexed, and I realized that what was making the students at Trinity College so miserable was the same things

2 they were striving for – status, wealth, and material possession. It became apparent to me that, if achieving financial prosperity was contingent upon mortgaging my sanity, just to improve a corporation’s bottom line, then what was the point in striving to be wealthy?

This experience left me disillusioned and hopeless. I knew that as soon as I graduated from Trinity College, I was going to go as far away as possible to figure out the purpose of life.

Similar to the protagonist in Island, William Farnaby, I too decided to “intentionally shipwreck” onto a small island in the South Pacific, except mine was named Oʻahu – not Pala. The change of scenery, unique culture, and beautiful landscape did make a difference in me initially; but it was not the change I so desperately needed. Regardless, the spiritual awakening that I needed would not begin until two years after I arrived, was accepted into graduate school, and read Michael

Pollan’s book and subsequently Aldous Huxley’s masterpiece Island.

There is a specific passage in How to Change Your Mind that reminded me of my favorite class ever – AMST 643 Critical Traditions with David Stannard. Pollan explained how, historically speaking, Timothy Leary is most commonly considered the face of the psychedelic movement. However, Pollan states, “Huxley was inspired to try psychedelics and write about the experience by a scientist who gave him mescaline in the explicit hope that a great writer’s descriptions and metaphors would help him and his colleagues make sense of an experience they were struggling to interpret. So did Aldous Huxley ‘make sense’ of the modern psychedelic experience, or did he in some sense invent it” (Pollan 144)? AMST 643 was predicated around examining 1950s and 1960s America and investigating the truths that have been, for one reason or another, hidden in history. Huxley was a deeply intellectual man who made many contributions to American society and the global community through his writings. One of the main reasons why his writings became so popular was due to his interdisciplinary approach;

3 using the sciences, philosophy, religion, humanities, psychology, and pacificism to dissect complex problems. However, it was his devotion to humanity and aspiration to create a more equitable and inclusive world that made him not only a literary figure, but also a purveyor of human rights. Had it not been for Aldous Huxley’s ability and courage to interpret the psychedelic experience, it is possible that the therapeutic effects of these substances would remain lost in history.

Since reading Island, I have adopted many of the values, ideas, and practices put forth within it and have watched my life transform. This book is far from a fairytale – it is a guide to live one’s life by. You do not have to agree with any or every idea put forth in this book, but you can choose from the multitude of values, practices, and experiences that Huxley puts forth as an antidote to the perils of modern society. I am a happier, healthier, and better person because of

Island. It restored my faith in humanity and replaced my nihilistic perspective with one of love, compassion, and optimism. Knowing firsthand the transformative power that Island holds has inspired me to write about this text in a scholarly way in the hope of helping someone else find peace in this otherwise chaotic world.

INTRODUCTION

By the early 1950s, the United States and the Soviet Union were testing the next phase of nuclear weapons after the atom bomb: hydrogen bombs (Faragher 733). The first phase had begun ten years earlier, and when it became apparent that whoever created the first nuclear weapon would be the victor of World War II. Indeed, the first nuclear bombs that were dropped on the Japanese cities of Hiroshima and Nagasaki were so overwhelming and destructive they forced the Japanese Imperial Army to surrender. Even so, while the atom bomb signaled the end of World War II, it also heralded the beginning of the Cold War. With nuclear weapons, human beings had now created a weapon of mass destruction far more powerful than previously imaginable, and those who controlled its power would ostensibly rule the world. This dynamic only intensified with the hydrogen bomb, as it was “a thousand times more powerful” (Faragher

733) than the weapons dropped on Hiroshima and Nagasaki in 1945. Consequently, many of the world’s most prominent writers during the postwar 1950s era began to fear the future and used their literary talents to illustrate their fears and create awareness of specific problems. However, unlike the majority of postwar 1950s authors and their tendency to write dystopian works, the social turbulence of that era inspired Aldous Huxley to create a fictional utopian society in hopes of offering humanity a template for a more equitable, peaceful, and sustainable future.

In any work of fiction, creating the proper setting is just as important as developing a meaningful plot. Aldous Huxley’s attempt to create a utopian society during an epoch of such strife required him to set his novel in a place that would establish credibility for his utopian vision. Ultimately, Huxley situated his utopia on a remote tropical island. Island settings for

1 utopias have long been a literary tradition, dating back to when Thomas More published the very first utopian novel, Utopia, in 1516, which established the definition of the word. An island is an ideal location for a utopia for several reasons. Benjamin Moore, the author of the novel Ecliptic, states, “An island setting allows you to set up a pervading sense of dislocation and extremity in the story. To arrive there, and to escape it, your protagonist must face physical and practical obstacles. This not only generates a welcome conflict, activity, and tension in the plot, it also creates a division in characters' identities: the closer they get to the island, the more they are detaching themselves from the ground upon which they have previously established themselves”

(Bell “Why Writers Treasure Islands”). While Moore’s analysis would come long after Huxley wrote Island, Moore’s meditation on the capabilities of what an island offers as a setting are beliefs that Huxley understood himself. However, what made Huxley’s positioning of a utopian society on a remote island in the South Pacific so incredibly bold was because of the horrors that were occurring in South Pacific while Huxley was writing Island.

In the book Bombs Over Bikini: The World’s First Nuclear Disaster, author Jane Doe investigates Operation Crossroads, which was “one of the biggest military operations of its time, with a budget of $1.3 billion” (Goldsmith 19). The purpose of Operation Crossroads was to test new atomic weapons on the Marshall Islands, which was a group of small tropical islands halfway between Hawaiʻi and Australia (Goldsmith 19). From 1946 to 1958, the US military tested sixty-seven nuclear weapons on the Marshall Islands, which would permanently destroy thousands of miles of pristine tropical landscape and show the world what Armageddon would look like if it ever occurred (Abadi 67 “Nuclear Bombs on Tiny Island Nation”). Most significantly, on March 1, 1954, a hydrogen bomb test named Bravo exploded with one thousand times the force of Hiroshima’s bomb, the most powerful nuclear device the United States would

2 ever detonate. “It created a fireball nearly 4 miles (6 km) wide, vaporizing part of Nam. It left a crater in the ocean floor 1 mile (1.6 km) wide. Bravo’s mushroom cloud soared nearly 25 miles

(40 km) high.” (Goldsmith 19). Therefore, while the literary history suggested that a remote tropical island was the perfect setting for an isolated utopia, the horrific events in the Marshall

Islands and elsewhere in the South Pacific made Huxley’s choice of setting seem naïve at best.

However, there is an element of a different concept in Huxley’s vision. According to the

Merriam-Webster Dictionary, the word “utopia” is defined as “a place of ideal perfection especially in laws, government, and social conditions,” “an impractical scheme for social improvement,” and “an imaginary and indefinitely remote place,” (Merriam-Webster) which indicates an implicit bias towards seeing a utopic vision of the world as unrealistic. Even so,

Island offers a non-traditional utopic vision. As Gorman Beauchamp described, “Island distills the most important ideas that had engaged the polymathic Huxley for more than two decades on a capacious variety of subjects, ranging (as utopias are wont to do) from sex to science to education and religion. Here are reprised, for instance, his call for a humanized and ‘appropriate’ technology” (59). It took incredible intelligence, determination, and effort to create chemical weapons, nuclear weapons, and mass communication technologies that came as a result of World

War I and World War II. Nonetheless, it was Huxley’s hope that humanity would begin to see the possibility of using science and technologies for the betterment of all of humanity rather than the few powerful elites.

Aldous Huxley was born in Surrey, England, on July 26, 1894. Raised by an affluent family, he enjoyed the privileges of an upper-class lifestyle with access to some of England’s most prominent educational institutions – Eton and Oxford. Despite his privileged upbringing,

Huxley dedicated his life to bettering the human condition regardless of race, religion, or gender.

According to a letter Huxley wrote in 1962 to Albert Hoffman, the Swiss chemist, best known for creating LSD: “I’ve come to believe that the most overlooked cure for social problems is actually the improvement of the individual citizen, and that cultures are only expressions of the collective consciousness of their people” (Sawyer 181). Huxley’s life mission would be to help improve the lives of the masses and create a more equitable world.

This choice of path was almost not to be. Huxley wanted to follow in the footsteps of his family and work in the sciences and practice medicine for his career. However, after experiencing an illness that left him temporarily blind as a child, preventing his scientific endeavors, Huxley decided to pursue a career as a writer. “One positive and accidental by- product of Aldous’s illness was that the intense pressure to excel and hold up the Huxley record was now let up. He had become free to study and think as he willed. Clearly, his future as a doctor was no longer possible. He would have to find something else do to” (Sawyer 133).

Therefore, Huxley’s temporary loss of vision provided him with a vision in an alternative direction.

During his career, Huxley wrote nine novels, his most influential and famous being Brave

New World (1931), a dystopian novel portraying a future world consumed by the excesses of industrialism, authoritarianism, and oppressive technological innovations. The turning point in

Huxley’s career was in 1954 when he published The Doors of Perception, which chronicled his experience using the psychedelic drug mescaline “that would change forever the culture’s understanding of these drugs” (Pollan 160). His experience with mescaline combined with years of studying Mysticism signaled Huxley’s personal transformation from a cynic to a visionary. In

1962, Huxley finished his last novel, Island, which was not his most popular novel, but it was considered by many as his most important (Sawyer 182). This is in contrast to the earlier years of

Huxley’s life, when he had developed a fatalistic outlook. Huxley: “The current economic and technological structures of the modern world were not only ideologically flawed they were unsustainable because they did not consider the critical ecological issues of population growth, environmental degradation, and the loss of natural resources” (Sawyer 133 – 134). The concentration of power and the rate of change caused by technological advancements during the beginning of the 20th century surpassed what most believed was even possible. Nonetheless, during his travels and studying of various cultures, societies, and indigenous populations, Huxley became more optimistic about human society’s potential for improvement (Sawyer 95).

Consequently, the values, principles, and social structures put forth in Island are emblematic of

Huxley’s research, his personal transformation, and his concomitant hopes for the future of humanity.

After writing The Doors of Perception, Huxley’s rise as a literary star and public figure provided him with the opportunity to meet influential thinkers across numerous disciplines. One of those friendships was with Humphrey Osmond, an English psychiatrist working in

Saskatchewan, Canada, during the 1950s. While Huxley and Osmond had different career fields, what drove each man into their perspective disciplines — writing and psychiatry — was the firm belief in the power of transforming individual lives. They believed that many mental illnesses were caused by the structure of modern society and the oppression of human needs. On June 22,

1958, in a letter to Osmond, Huxley laid out the architecture and design of what he believed to be a utopian society:

“I have been working at my phantasy about a society in which serious efforts are made to realize human potentialities…. The locale of the story is a hypothetical island between Ceylon and Sumatra—independent in spite of colonialism, where the process of turning an old Shivaite-Mayahana-Buddhist society into something combining the best features of the East and West was inaugurated in the eighteen-

forties by a Scottish surgeon (modeled on James Esdaille) who operates on the then Raja under ‘magnetic anesthesia [hypnosis],’ becomes his friend and acts as his collaborator in initiating the necessary changes, which are carried on by successors of the Scotchman and the king, during the succeeding three generations. It is interesting to try and imagine what could be done to create such a place dedicated to eliciting all the latent powers and gifts of individuals, by consciously adopting and combining desirable features from different cultures, Indian, modern Western, Polynesian, Chinese” (Huxley and Smith 850).

Huxley’s utopian vision constituted the unlikely marriage between Western science and technologies, Buddhism, and Eastern philosophy. By combining the positive elements of these two worlds, Huxley hoped that it would encourage people “to realize human potentialities”

(Beauchamp 59) and ostensibly create a more compassionate global community. The idea of human potentialities is based on the belief that human beings have not finished evolving and that there is still tremendous potential for us to grow and develop in a positive manner as a species.

Island received both praise and criticism. According to Huxley’s biographer Dana

Sawyer, “When Island was released Cyril Connolly said it was Huxley’s most important novel since Time Must Have a Stop, published in 1944, and few critics argued with him—but that didn’t mean that they liked it. In fact, most critics did not” (Sawyer, 182). More specifically, these critics believed their disdain was justified because the idea of a utopia had long been considered impossible and erroneous. “Huxley often pointed out how much more difficult it was to write a utopia than a dystopia, as he struggled to balance narration and exposition” (Dunaway

124). However, this is why Huxley begins Island with a quotation from Aristotle that says, “In framing an ideal we must assume what we wish, but should avoid impossibilities. (Huxley,

Island 19)”

Some critics argued that Island was written before its time. This is because, when the book was published in 1962, that was just before the infamous 1960s counterculture anti-war

6 movement achieved its greatest momentum. This can be demonstrated by the fact that in 1968, six years after its first publication, the paperback reprint sold more than a million copies, indicative of how popular the text became amongst the late 1960s counterculture movement

(Izzo “Aldous Huxley’s Island; Sawyer 182). Huxley was not alone in popularity. From 1950 to

1962, a variety of literature had a significant social impact on American society. Many of those books – such as Lord of the Flies by William Golding, On the Road by Jack Kerouac, and Silent

Spring by Rachel Carson – became famous because those stories exposed the fallacy of authoritarian control, of colonial ideology, and of the alleged virtue of technological innovations.

More specifically, when analyzing the central message of each one of these books, one can determine that they are centered around a specific social issue that Huxley provides a solution to in Island. Therefore, Island should not only be analyzed as a utopian novel but also as a prescription for the blight of capitalism, militarism, and technology that were considered during the 1950s to be fatal to the human race.

This thesis will therefore compare the central messages of each of these influential novels, describing the social issue underscored by their respective plots or analysis, and contrast

Huxley’s idea of utopia with the dystopias foreseen by Golding, Kerouac, and Carson. In the next sections, I will compare the themes of authoritarian control, industrialism, and technology, which Huxley offers a remedy for in Island, to similar themes within Lord of the Flies, On the

Road, and Silent Spring. It will conclude that Island’s value should be understood by juxtaposing the ideas, values, and solutions within the text with the salient social concerns of the postwar

1950s era – authoritarian control, industrialism, and technology.

CHAPTER 1: IMPORTANT COMPARATIVE CONTEMPORARY LITERATURE

1954 - 1962

Lord of the Flies (1954)

One of the most well-known dystopian novels of the twentieth century is William

Golding’s Lord of the Flies (1954). The book became so popular that by 1980 books sold in the

United States alone had reached seven million copies (Boyd Man as an Island). After Lord of the

Flies, Golding would write the well-received The Inheritors (1955) and Pincher Martin (1956), whose central message was tangentially related to Lord of the Flies in that they both wrestled with the limitations of humanity. Even so, none of Golding’s works would ever become as successful as Lord of the Flies because Golding was never again able to capture and position fundamental human behavior the way he did in Lord of the Flies (Boyd “Man as an Island”).

Before starting his career as a novelist, Golding had lived a remarkable life. Born in

Cornwall, England, in 1911, Golding received a bachelor's degree in English Literature from

Oxford University, in 1934. Golding then served in the British Royal Navy during World War II.

Afterwards, Golding returned to his career as a schoolmaster teaching English in Wiltshire,

England, where he would eventually write Lord of the Flies. Unlike many popular twentieth century authors, Golding did not achieve literary stardom until after he had already lived half his life at the age of 42 (Boyd “Man as an Island”). More specifically, there is no better way to describe Golding than as a nonconformist. William Boyd of the New York Times wrote in a book review:

What is fascinating about “William Golding” is the portrait that emerges of a man of almost absurdly dramatic contrasts. He fought with commendable bravery at D- Day, yet in life was the most timid arachnophobe. He was married for more than 50 years, yet was probably a repressed homosexual. He was an accomplished classical musician and excellent chess player and an embarrassing, infantile drunk. He loathed and detested the stilted conventions of the British class system (particular scorn was directed at the Bloomsbury group), and yet when already a Nobel laureate and a member of the elite group to whom the queen grants the title Companion of Literature, he still frenetically lobbied his important friends to secure him a knighthood – successfully – and was a proud member of two of London’s stuffiest gentlemen’s clubs. Time and again the impression is of a man in a form of omnipresent torment of one kind or another: sometimes it would be mild and possibly amusing; at other moments, debilitating and damagingly neurotic” (Boyd “Man as an Island”).

Golding’s ability to navigate between various cultures and groups is one of the primary reasons for his insightful analysis of human nature. Power and control brought out the worst in humans, and Golding’s understanding of that is what is responsible for the brilliance of Lord of the Flies.

Lord of the Flies, in many ways, is emblematic of Golding’s personality. An alcoholic, his desire to drink was in part due to his contempt for himself and the world. Golding’s nihilism is largely because of Golding’s experience fighting in World War II. At the beginning of the war,

Golding joined the Royal Navy, where he eventually amassed a distinguished record of service and fought in some of World War Two's most notable battles, including D-Day and the Battle of

Walcheren in 1944. He was the commander “of a rocket-firing landing craft, a vessel designed to deliver a terrifying ‘shock and awe’-style blanket barrage of thousands of small deadly rockets.

(Boyd “Man as an Island”). Golding knew that the rockets being fired under his command were killing innocent civilians, and the despair he felt as a result would stick with him for the rest of his life.

Golding’s experience fighting in World War II was what provided him with the ideological framework for Lord of the Flies. Even so, Golding did not glamorize his days in

9 battle like many soldiers turned authors do; quite the contrary, he despised his time at war.

Furthermore, Golding was, in fact, unapologetic about his disdain for Lord of the Flies as well, confessing to a friend that “he resented the novel because it meant that he owed his reputation to what he thought of as a minor book, a book that made him a classic in his lifetime, which was ‘a joke’, because he hadn’t really earned it” (Boyd “Man as an Island”). Golding felt that all he had done in Lord of the Flies was simply point out the obvious flaws of humanity and that there was nothing sophisticated or special about his analysis. Moreover, Golding believed his work and what it revealed about the reality of human nature were tragic and depressing.

Huxley was seventeen years older than Golding, so Golding grew up idolizing Huxley’s writing style, messaging, and fears of the future. Huxley’s rise to literary stardom began in the post-World War I era with the publication of his first novel, Chrome Yellow (1921), when

Golding was only ten years old. Consequently, Huxley’s writings had a significant and lasting impact on Golding as a person and writer. As scholar James R. Baker notes in an address titled

“Utopias and Anitutopias”:

As the war clouds darkened over Europe he and some of our most notable poets removed themselves to the new world… There Huxley continued to create what we may call antiutopias and utopias with the same gusto, apparently, for both kinds. One antiutopia is certainly a disgusting job and best forgotten… Yet I owe his writings much myself, I’ve had much enjoyment from them – in particular release from a certain starry-eyed optimism which stemmed from the optimistic rationalism of the nineteenth century. The last utopia he attempted which was technically and strictly a utopia and ideal state, Island (1962), is one for which I have considerable liking and respect” (311).

Interestingly, both Golding and Huxley’s most famous works – Lord of the Flies and

Brave New World (1932), respectively – were both texts that each author came to resent. Both are dystopian novels and portray a world that lacks compassion, is governed by authoritarian

10 rule, and exploits the masses for the benefit of the few. Consequently, because of the similarities between both novels, both authors, and the popularity each novel received, there is a variety of literature dedicated to the juxtaposition of the two. One of the main similarities between them is that they both illustrate how the degradation of the individual leads to the collapse of a society.

This is because,“[b]oth novelists recovered to some degree from the trauma of disillusionment with scientific humanism suffered during the war, and both aspired to hope that humanity would somehow evolve beyond the old tragic flaws that assured the rebirth of the devil in every generation” (Baker 311). However, the most poignant revelation that both books share is the horrors of totalitarian rule and its impact on the individual person during the postwar epoch.

“Both novelists concluded that the late war demonstrated a psychological state that could legitimately be termed possession” (Baker 311). This possession, which Huxley and Golding spoke of, was something they observed in others, and both felt themselves. The feeling of being possessed is indicative of the loss of individual autonomy and control that would come to define the 1950s.

In one of his last interviews, with author John Carey, Golding confesses his admiration for Huxley after being asked about four novels that he never ended up finishing.

JC: Huxley was one of the influences on the earlier attempts, wasn’t he?

WG: I took him very neat, you know. I was fascinated by him. And he was, I think superb—but clever; it was cleverness raised to a very high power indeed. Never what Lawrence can sometimes produce—never that mantic, inspired . . . I don’t think Huxley was even inspired; almost too clear-sighted to be inspired” (Baker 311).

Golding’s admiration for Huxley lead to both sharing similar beliefs, values, and ideas.

“Knowledgeable about science and scientists, yet dedicated to literature, intent upon spiritual

11 experience and a search for an acceptable religious faith. Huxley’s skeptical views were an update on H. G. Wells and his rather quaint ‘scientific humanism,’ a faith fading in Huxley’s mind and lost to Golding and many of his generation” (Baker 316). Even so, the important difference between Huxley and Golding is that the latter was never able to rid himself of his hate, disdain, and pessimism towards humanity. This does not mean that Golding did not have an impact on society because he certainly left a mark. In 1983, Golding was awarded the Nobel

Peace Prize for Literature and, in 1988, was made a Knight Bachelor. Furthermore, “Golding,

[was] proclaimed ‘Lord of Campus’ by Time magazine in 1962, was soon found wanting – an antique tragedian, a pessimist, a Christian moralist who would not let us transcend original sin and the disastrous history of the last 50 years” (Baker 311). On the other hand, Huxley’s transformation as an individual cannot only be determined by juxtaposing Brave New World with

Island, but also his involvement in the Human Potential Movement and the founding of the

Esalen Institute. Laura Archera, Huxley’s wife, once said Island was “humanity at its sanest and most admirable” (Izzo “Aldous Huxley’s Island”). What is most important to understand about this is that Huxley’s optimism for humanity’s potential for positive change is what makes Island such an important book to arise from the 1950s. There would be many authors similar to

Golding, who became famous for writing about the horrors of humanity. However, Huxley was the most public figure to suggest a framework to enact positive societal change during that time.

The setting of Lord of the Flies is a remote and deserted island in the South Pacific

Ocean. The purpose of using this vacant, beautiful, tropical island as a setting for a dystopia is to demonstrate that the dark side of human nature can destroy even the most serene environments.

Golding uses his characters’ temperament, gender, and actions to showcase a larger symbolic meaning. In the foreword to a 1962 edition of Lord of the Flies, E. M. Forster describes the three

12 main characters: Ralph, aged a little over twelve, is chosen as leader, thus, “He is Democracy.

And as long as the conch [the symbol of order] remains, there is some semblance of cooperation.

But it gets smashed” (x). Piggy is “stout, asthmatic, shortsighted, underprivileged, and wise. He is the brains of the party” (Golding and Forster x). “He is human spirit, aware that the universe has not been created for his convenience, and doing the best he can. And as long as he survives there is some semblance of intelligence. But he too gets smashed” (Golding and Forester x).

Finally, Jack “loves adventure, excitement, and foraging in groups, order when issued by himself, and though he does not yet know it and shrinks from it the first time, he loves shedding blood. Ralph he rather likes, and the liking is mutual. Piggy he despises and insults. He is

Dictatorship versus Democracy” (Golding and Forester xi).

Ralph, Jack, and Piggy are a part of a group of young boys who were evacuated from their homes during World War II, and while being flown to safety, their plane malfunctions, and they wind up stranded on a remote island. At the beginning of the book, Ralph and Piggy are the first two boys to meet each other, and they establish that there are other children on the island.

However, once Ralph and Piggy realize they are on a remote tropical island with no adults, they go back and forth between happiness and fear; they are happy because they have been freed from the shackles of rules, adults, and society, but they are also scared about if they will be able to survive and exist on this island all by themselves. The boys learn quickly that with freedom comes great responsibility. This is representative of a duality, the idea that there is inherent good and bad in everything, and it was part of Huxley’s writing style that became famously known for.

Eventually, the boys create a social structure and implement rules, but the absence of adult guidance results in the children’s society descending into chaos. This is important because by highlighting the children’s natural tendency towards violence and savagery, Golding is

13 suggesting that humans are innately corrupt.

Ralph’s attempts at organization and structure do not last long, as the boys eventually stop complying with their self-imposed rules and regulations. One moment captures the insanity perfectly: when Jack and his fellow hunters abandon their task of maintaining a signal fire to go hunting. At this point, Jack has become bloodthirsty and obsessed with the authority he has over his fellow hunters and the power that he feels by taking an animal’s life. The purpose of maintaining the signal fire was so that if any ship or plane came across the island, they would see that it is inhabited; one does, and it passes by. Ralph confronts Jack about abandoning his duties, and Jack becomes enraged. However, as Jack realizes that he cannot beat up Ralph, he chooses to beat up the weaker Piggy instead. As Piggy remains the voice of reason, Jack’s obsession with power grows, while Ralph is unsure if he still wants to be the ruler. Jack orders his tribe to raid

Ralph and his allies to steal Piggy’s glasses – his literal source of vision and insight – which Jack considers to be one of the only things standing between him and achieving authoritarian control.

Jack eventually breaks them, robbing both Piggy and effectively the rest of the boys of their clarity of insight. In the end, Ralph and Jack fight each other several times; and, as Ralph tries to evade Jack and his hunting crew, Ralph decides to set the woods on fire.

The similarities between the plot and symbolic use of characters between Island and Lord of the Flies illustrates the intersectionality between the books, the authors, and the implications of the growing authoritarian control that emerged in the early 20th century. Golding’s illustration of a dystopian society, in a similar parable arguing that the natural order of human behavior is innately evil, is representative of the growing fear many had about the future. Moreover, using an island, a plot for a dystopic novel was audacious because of, as mentioned above, the historical association of islands with utopias dating back to the 15th century with More’s Utopia.

Golding’s bold critique of humanity is exactly why the book originally had trouble finding a publisher and also part of the reason why it became such a success.

On the Road (1957)

One of the most impactful and significant pieces of literature from 1950s American society was On the Road by Jack Kerouac. There are a variety of intersecting reasons for the book’s success, but it was primarily due to the rebellious spirit of the text that cemented it as a timeless classic in American history (Shea “Jack Kerouac’s Famous Scroll”). Although On the

Road started as a book, it became much more than that; it became a way of life. Regarding its legacy, Scott Staton wrote in The New Yorker, “The critic Morris Dickstein once said that Jack

Kerouac’s On the Road is more important as a myth or a cultural marker than as a novel” (“Neal

Cassady: American Muse”). The values and experiences of its main characters, Sal Paradise and

Dean Moriarty, provided the ideological framework for the Beatnik Movement, which would forever alter the social landscape of America during the late 1950s and early 1960s.

In 1948, Kerouac defined the term “Beat” to describe how he believed “social conventions were ‘beat, ‘tired’, and ‘worn-out’”(Beat Generation v). Kerouac and many others of his generation began to see the social institutions and American dream of working in corporate America, living in the suburbs, and starting a family as a fallacy. Kerouac and the

Beatnik Movement believed there was much more to life than accumulation, control, and possession. “Kerouac and his experimental fraternity aspired to something else—a kind of freedom. They wanted to soar, to fly, to move through time and space unfettered. They wanted to find spirituality and deliverance among the dispossessed. And they wanted to have a good time, win a few bucks on the horses, have some drinks, and get laid” (Beat Generation vi). The eschewing of modern American society amongst the Beat Generation was representative of a growing belief in American society that the most valuable things in life were not material

16 objects, titles, or wealth accumulation; rather, it is the experience of living life free from control and in harmony with others.

Jack Kerouac was born on March 12, 1922, in Lowell, Massachusetts. From an early age,

“Jack Kerouac began keeping journals as a fourteen-year-old boy, in 1936, and continued to so— somewhat obsessively—until his death, at age forty-seven” (Brinkley Jack Kerouac: On the

Road Again”). Kerouac’s obsessive journaling would translate into becoming a successful scholar and an athlete at Columbia University. After an injury ended his football career, Kerouac would drop out of Columbia University before completing his degree. However, this would prove to be a great decision for him. Kerouac decided to stay in Manhattan, where he would start the Beatnik Movement alongside Allen Ginsberg and William Burroughs.

Prior to On the Road, there had yet to be a novel published in mainstream American society that spoke of such taboo topics as drugs, alcohol, jazz music, and pre-marital sex. Author and editor Malcolm Cowley once wrote in support of the book, “Some of his best episodes would get the book suppressed for obscenity but I think there is a book here that should and must be published” (Shea “Jack Kerouac’s Famous Scroll”). To many Americans, these activities posed a great threat to traditional colonial values of abstinence, capitalism, and marriage that had become interwoven in the fabric of American society. Consequently, because Kerouac’s message was antithetical to these traditional ways of life, he amassed a significant underground following amongst those who felt frustrated by the traditional American way of life. Kerouac would take

On the Road even further; as he was not content with the book being published, he sought to travel the country and read On the Road to audiences.

One of the most important aspects of On the Road is the characters, and how Kerouac uses these characters to expose the flaws of 1950s American society. The main character, who is

17 also the narrator, goes by the name of Sal Paradise, and Sal describes his experiences traveling across America in the late 1940s. He is based off of Jack Kerouac and his experiences traveling across the country. While Sal is the narrator, he makes it clear throughout the book that the person in charge of this journey is a man named Dean Moriarty. Dean is the protagonist and is revered as a counterculture deity that has drunk in every bar, walked the most dangerous back alleys, and pursued every woman he can across America. Sal speaks of Dean in the highest manner and glorifies his beliefs, actions, and lifestyle. “He was simply a youth tremendously excited with life, and though he was a con-man, he was only conning because he wanted so much to live and to get involved with people who would otherwise pay no attention to him.

(Kerouac, On the Road 4)” Dean is based off of one of Jack Kerouac’s best friends, Neil

Cassady.

Neil Cassady grew up in the slums of Denver, Colorado, after being abandoned by his parents at a young age. Consequently, as a child he got in trouble a few times with the law.

Nonetheless, Neil was exceptionally intelligent and personable, which he used to his advantage to pull himself out of poverty while simultaneously living a life underground and outside the realms of conventional America. “Cassady was a complicated soul whose creative energies found release through an immoderate enthusiasm for sex, automobiles, and drugs. His enduring aesthetic legacy was an incorrigibly hedonistic life that his friend Kerouac and sometime lover

Allen Ginsberg transmuted into art. To them, Cassady was a revelation, the consummate hipster- savant” (Staton “Neal Cassady: American Muse”). Therefore, the reason why Cassady, as a person, was such an icon was that he was able to both pull himself out of poverty while not having to conform to a traditional American way of life. Cassady is one of the only members to have transcended the Beatnik Movement and be considered a member of both the Merry

Pranksters and the 1960s Counterculture Movement. Moreover, On the Road is not the only piece of literature that Cassady would be featured in. He was a main character in Tom Wolfe’s

Electric Kool Aid Acid Tests and in a few of Allen Ginsberg’s poems. Most importantly, Cassady represented a new kind of American Dream. “He presented an extreme embodiment of American freedom to close friends who were determined to become writers, and in being thus grafted onto their work, he became an unlikely literary legend” (Staton “Neal Cassady: American Muse”).

Since the Beatnik Movement decided that the American Dream was dead, they needed to create a new American hero that represented their version of the American Dream – and that hero was

Neil Cassady.

The relationship between On the Road and Island is one that, on the surface, would not be made easily, but by critically analyzing the themes within each text, one can determine both of these books share similar ideologies. In many ways, the popularity of On the Road served as a watershed moment in American society as it signaled the growing disdain for materialism, capitalism, and traditional beliefs. More specifically, one of the reasons why On the Road became so popular is because Kerouac made his novel come to life. On the Road was not just a book but it also is responsible for fostering a new social movement. In the documentary Long

Strange Trip, director Amir Bar-Lev explores the impact that On the Road had on The Grateful

Dead. In the documentary, Bar-Lev interviews The Grateful Dead biographer Dennis McNally.

McNally explains that he originally got his job with The Grateful Dead because, “In 1971 The

Grateful Dead put out an album, and on the back, it said: Dead Freaks Unite. Who are you?

Where are you? How are you? Send us your name and address, and we’ll keep you informed”

(“Long Strange Trip”). After reading that, McNally decided, “I had just written a book about

Kerouac, so I sent a copy of the book to Jerry, and it changed my life. Kerouac was Jerry’s great

19 hero. Reading (On The Road) was absolutely an essential part of his growing up” (Amir “Long

Strange Trip”). The book that McNally had sent to Jerry was titled Desolute Angel: A Biography

Jack Kerouac, the Beat Generation, and America. Little did McNally know that The Grateful

Dead would evolve into one of the most prolific bands in American history. One of the main reasons why McNally believes The Grateful Dead was so successful is because “The Grateful

Dead explored freedom” (Amir “Long Strange Trip”). For twenty years, the Grateful Dead would tour the country and embrace the freedom and community that Kerouac romanticized while living on the road.

At the same time, as Kerouac was glorifying his life on the road, Aldous Huxley had begun his own journey on the road, publicly lecturing around the country at various institutions on Human Potentialities. This was out of character for Huxley, as he had always disliked receiving attention or recognition for his ideas. More specifically, Huxley’s lecture tour “At MIT coincided with the famous experiments at Harvard on the psychology of consciousness under

Timothy Leary and Richard Alpert—the beginning of a psychedelic movement about which

Huxley had reservations. Similarly, in 1961 Huxley taught at Berkeley as the disarmament and civil-rights movements swelled” (Dunaway 119–120). Huxley’s involvement with Timothy

Leary, Richard Alpert, and the beginning of the Psychedelic Movement would eventually coincide with The Grateful Dead and The Anti-War Movement of the 1960s. Roger Kimball, author of The Long March: How the Cultural Revolution of the 1960s Changed America, wrote,

“The Beats are crucial to an understanding of America's cultural revolution not least because in their lives, their proclamations, and (for lack of a more accurate term) their 'work' they anticipated so many of the pathologies of the Sixties and Seventies. Their programmatic anti-

Americanism, their avid celebration of drug abuse, their squalid, promiscuous sex lives, their

20 pseudo-spirituality, their attack on rationality and their degradation of intellectual standards, their aggressive narcissism and juvenile political posturing: in all this and more, the Beats were every bit as 'advanced' as any Sixties radical” (The Long March). The confluence of various social movements such as The Beatnik Movement, The Free Speech Movement, Civil Rights

Movement, Environmentalism, Women’s Rights Movement, and Anti-War Movement would have a massive impact on American society during the Vietnam War protests of the late 1960s.

Even so, while Huxley significantly contributed to some of the ideas behind these various social movements, he became increasingly worried about the trajectory of the Psychedelic

Movement and its self-proclaimed leader, Timothy Leary. In a letter to Humphrey Osmond in

February, 1961 Huxley writes, “To forewarn you that a young man called [–], who took LSD with Al and who is now a white-hot enthusiast, is about to visit you on his way back to Toronto.

He wants, he says, to write a book ‘dramatizing’ LSD. I told him that, given the present climate of public opinion, dramatization was about the last thing that shd be attempted. So please cool him off when you see him. (He also naïvely imagines that his book’s royalties will contribute substantially to the treasury of the new organization that is to sponsor LSD work in the West”

(Huxley and Smith 905). This is important to understand because Huxley knew if Leary advertised psychedelics as a panacea that it would result in the death of the Psychedelic

Movement, which happened in 1970 when President Nixon signed the Controlled Substances

Act of 1970. Under the Controlled Substances Act of 1970s, the US Government legally categorized psychedelic drugs as “as drugs with no currently accepted medical use and a high potential for abuse” (DEA Drug Scheduling”). Although, “There had been forty thousand research participants and more than a thousand clinical papers” (Pollan 141)! regarding the use of psychedelic drugs “used to treat a whole host of conditions” (Pollan 141). Consequently, the

21 potential that Huxley saw in the use of psychedelic drugs would remain hidden in history due to the immaturity and short-sightedness of Timothy Leary and others within the Psychedelic

Movement.

Throughout his career, Kerouac published thirteen novels. However, it was On the Road that was the most notable and celebrated of those novels. On the Road has had a lasting effect on

American society as it “continues to sell 100,000 copies a year in the U.S. and Canada alone”

(Shea “Jack Kerouac’s Famous Scroll”). While Kerouac’s belief that the American Dream is a fallacy is not nearly as provocative today as it was in the late 1950s, his disdain for materialism and conformity can still be felt by the lasting legacy of his most successful book, On the Road.

Silent Spring (1962)

Rachel Carson made a significant impact on American society as a scientist, feminist, environmentalist, and author. Her landmark book, Silent Spring (1962), became known as the book that “ignited the environmental movement” (Leonard “Carson Dies of Cancer”). Amongst many accomplishments, Silent Spring ultimately led to the creation of the Environmental

Protection Agency in 1970 and is still, to this day, one of Carson’s most noteworthy contributions to American society.

Rachel Carson was born on May 27, 1907, in Springdale, Pennsylvania. From an early age, Carson’s mother instilled in her an appreciation for nature that would forever alter

America’s understanding of the natural world and pesticides. Carson began her career as an academic, teaching at Johns Hopkins after receiving her master’s degree in Marine Biology from there. After years of teaching, in 1936, Carson took a job with the U.S. Bureau of Fisheries as an aquatic biologist, serving as editor and chief of the Bureau’s publications. During her sixteen years employed there, Carson would publish numerous books, articles, and essays that focused on the natural world.

Her first book, Under the Sea Wind (1941), received positive reviews. The book began as an eponymous article she wrote for the Atlantic in 1937 (Leonard “Carson Dies of Cancer”). She would publish two more books, The Sea Around Us (1951) and The Edge of the Sea (1955), both widely popular and garnering high praise. In fact, The Sea Around Us “moved quickly into the national best-seller lists, where it remained for 86 weeks, 39 of them in first place. By 1962, The

Edge of the Sea was published in 30 languages (Leonard “Carson Dies of Cancer”).” Carson’s success as a writer and rise to literary stardom had begun a decade before she published Silent

Spring, when she realized she could make a more significant and lasting impact on the preservation of the natural world as a writer than a federal employee. In 1952, she left the Bureau to focus on her career as a writer. Given that in the 1950s, women were largely excluded from the workplace, this was an exceptional move, so for Carson to succeed as both a scientist and a writer was indicative of her work ethic, intelligence, and commitment to saving the planet.

Carson had long been concerned about the environment and the impact that humans were having on the natural landscape. In The Sea Around Us and The Edge of the Sea, Carson focused on the living history of the ocean, its inhabitants, its bounty, and what the ocean needs to thrive.

However, in January 1958, a friend named Olga Owens Huckins wrote Carson a letter describing the insidious effects of DDT, whereupon Carson shifted her literary focus to insecticides. Olga wrote, “I have sent in a blistering letter to the Herald, in reply to one in the Herald calling Mrs.

Hunter, John Kieran, Dr. Murphy and Dr. Rush, all ‘hysterics’. R.C. Cabot claims that the DDT used by the State in the mosquito control aerial spraying last summer was harmless. It killed about a dozen of my darling half-time birds, and I claim it’s willful trespassing over private property where such lethal showers were not needed or wanted; and that it is inhumane, stupid, undemocratic and probably unconstitutional” (Olga and Carson “Letter”). Olga’s searing critique of DDT and the subsequent denial of its destructive potential left Carson determined to prove to

America that insecticides were not only dangerous to the environment but also posed a severe threat to the human race.

DDT (dichloro-diphenyl-trichloroethane) was initially created in 1939 by a Swiss chemist named Dr. Paul Herman Muller. Dr. Muller would later be awarded a Nobel Prize in Medicine for DDT in 1948 (EPA “DDT”). After synthesizing the chemicals and trying to determine its best use, it was deployed as an agent to combat malaria, typhus, and other diseases that plagued

24 military service members (EPA “DDT”). Additionally, DDT was then later used to eliminate insects to streamline agriculture production (EPA “DDT”). To some, DDT appeared to be a miracle solution for reducing the undesired effects that insects pose to humans. “Soldiers and sailors by the millions carried cans of DDT powder to protect themselves against bedbugs, lice, and mosquitoes. They came to love the stuff, especially in the tropics. Millions of DDT aerosol bombs were used to spray the interiors of tents, barracks, and mess halls” (EPA “DDT”). Even so, while many American’s embraced DDT as a technological innovation, they also failed to critically examine DDT’s lethality and question its impacts on human beings. More specifically, a significant reason why most people did not believe DDT was harmful to humans was because of the propaganda campaign launched by the insecticide industry to protect their profits.

When Carson wrote Silent Spring, she was highly aware of the fact that by publishing unbiased scientific facts about DDT, she was not just trying to save the environment. Still,

Carson knew that by protecting the environment, she was ostensibly engaging in corporate and political warfare as well. On July 22, 1962, just months before Silent Spring was published, John

Lee reported in the New York Times that, “The $300,000,000 pesticides industry has been highly irritated by a quiet woman author whose previous works on science have been praised for the beauty and precision of the writing” (Lee “Silent Spring is Now Noisy Summer”). After explaining Carson’s background and other literary works, Lee states, “Some agricultural chemicals concerns have set their scientists to analyzing Miss Carson’s work line by line. Other companies are preparing briefs defending the use of their products. Meetings have been held in

Washington and New York. Statements are being drafted, and counter-attacks plotted” (Lee

Silent Spring is Now Noisy Summer). Erroneous statements such as these would only be the beginning of coordinated attacks that Carson would face from the pesticide industry, the media,

25 and from political forces.

Island and Silent Spring are some of the earliest American literary acknowledgments of the of sustainability. While Aldous Huxley did not have any direct influence on Silent Spring, his brother, Julian, a prominent British biologist, wrote the forward for English edition of Silent

Spring. Julian Huxley and Aldous Huxley communicated frequently and would have detailed correspondence about a variety of topics such as theology, science, psychology, and sociology.

More importantly, in January, 1960 while writing Island, Aldous wrote to Julian, “I didn’t bring in the point you mentioned in your letter from New York – that dynamic psychology had to be thought of in the past in terms of supernatural invasion and possession. It is a point I discussed in

The Devils of Loudun, in a context where it was completely relevant” (Huxley and Smith 884).

Therefore, one can determine by reading Aldous’s letter that Julian also had an impact on the ideas and concepts within Island. Julian would have a successful career as an evolutionary biologist. He would later go on to receive the distinguished honor of the first director of the

United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization (UNESCO). While Julian and

Aldous did not always see eye to eye on every issue, the issue the most agreed upon was about the importance of environmental sustainability. After Carson’s death in 1964, Julian Huxley wrote in an obituary column for The New York Times, scorning the use of insecticides “As a result of insecticides and herbicides, we are in the process of losing large numbers of our songbirds and birds of prey, our butterflies and bees. And our prized wild flowers” (“Letters to the Times”). Julian expands his critique of insecticides by stating, “In any case, the unregulated use of pesticides is only one aspect of our unbalanced emphasis on material utility and immediate profitability. This is leading, among other things, to the wholesale pollution of our rivers, lakes and seashores. Sewage has made it unsafe to swim in the Swiss lakes and on many

English beaches: and sewage plus various chemical effluents is destroying many rivers as habitats for fish. Indeed, our boasted affluent society is in danger of becoming an effluent society” (“Letters to the Times”). Julian’s assertion of how material consumption, wealth accumulation, and modern prosperity have threatened human existence is indicative of the central message in both Silent Spring and Island.

Even though Island and Silent Spring are two vastly different books, they both spoke of the importance of sustainability practices, the intersectionality of the natural world and humankind, and the nefarious belief that all technological inventions are inherently good. Guin

Nance, a friend of Huxley’s once said, “[If Huxley had lived longer], I think he would have continued to have been fascinated and continued his thinking about ecological issues about which he was really a forerunner” (Dunaway 157). Huxley is not often known for his appreciation for nature and the importance of sustainable practices because that was overshadowed by his role in the 1960s counterculture and psychedelic drug movement. Even so, there are numerous examples throughout Island which describe Huxley’s emphasis on sustainable practices. “Treat Nature well, and Nature will treat you well. Hurt or destroy Nature, and Nature will soon destroy you” (3332). Huxley began speaking about the importance of the environment as early as 1928 in Point Counterpoint, where he satirically wrote, “Nature is monstrously unjust. There is no substitute for talent. Industry and all the virtues are of no avail”

(127). Huxley’s satirical statement demonstrates that humanity has come to disregard the virtues of the natural world in favor of materialism and wealth accumulation.

Both Carson and Huxley had similar situations with their books, Silent Spring and

Island, in the fact that much of each book’s success came after both of their deaths. Carson died from cancer in 1964, just two years after Silent Spring was published. Six years after Carson’s

27 death, on April 22, 1970, the first-ever celebration of Earth Day occurred. The creation of Earth

Day, a day in which people show their appreciation and gratitude for the natural world, arose out of legislation because of the salient issues that Silent Spring brought to the American public’s attention. Like Carson, the success of Island did not occur until the late 1960s when Island became a staple of the 1960s counterculture and, as previously mentioned, sold more than a million copies in 1968 (Izzo Aldous Huxley’s Island).

Chapter Two: Island – Utopia Lost

In Island, Huxley constructs a utopian society on a remote island named Pala, which he situates somewhere in the South Pacific Ocean. Pala is part of an archipelago that has been home to a utopian society for over one hundred and twenty years. There are a variety of factors that contribute to Huxley’s utopic vision; however, it is primarily due to the Palanese society’s ability to avoid, in the words of a character in Island named Dr. Robert, “Armaments, universal debt and planned obsolescence—those are the three pillars of Western prosperity” (2258). More specifically, the theory and praxis in which Huxley’s characterization of the Palanese have used to structure their society, to counter the temptations of colonial rule, is by liberating the individual from themselves. According to Sawyer, “liberation not only for the individual but through the individual for society” (181). The Palanese way of liberation is a set of philosophical and spiritual practices that results in a bottom-up transformation of society from the individual level to the collective.

For instance, one of the ways the Palanese achieve liberation is through the use of moksha-medicine, which is a hallucinogenic mushroom. The morning after the main character in

Island, Farnaby, witnesses the Palanese children undergo their first moksha-medicine ceremony,

Dr. Robert explains to Farnaby, “A century of research on the moksha-medicine has clearly shown that quite ordinary people are perfectly capable of having visionary or even fully liberating experiences” (2689). Another method of liberation that the Palanese employ is

“maithuna” which translates to “the yoga of love” (Sawyer 111). However, the yoga of love is not simply just sex; it is based on the ancient Indian practice of Tantra. Regarding Tantra, James

Hull, author of Aldous Huxley, A Representative Man describes the yoga of love as “certainly of great importance for the whole community, but its practice is an entirely individual matter. Even if practised only sporadically, it opens up a new dimension in terms of personal relationships; the sexual act, in other words, is seen as belonging to that total awareness, which is enlightenment”

(533).

Furthermore, the integration of maithuna into Palanese society makes the Palanese feel like they have “something that makes them think they’re perfectly happy, and they don’t want anything else” (Huxley, Island 2078). Even so, while the moksha-medicine and maithuna are paramount to achieving liberation, it is not the primary method of liberation. Huxley describes the use of the moksha-medicine as “a banquet”, and that “you can’t have banquets every day.

They’re too rich and they last too long” (Huxley, Island 2888). Also, maithuna’s other shortcoming is that it is an act that requires two people, so it is not possible to do by oneself.

This is why Huxley, in terms of solo activity, positions meditation as the ultimate form of liberation. Meditation is an exercise that one can do without the aid of any person or substance, and has been practiced for thousands of years by a variety of cultures (Tran “History of Yoga”).

Huxley’s knowledge of Hinduism taught him that through the practice and continued use of meditation, individuals could gain better control over their emotions, desires, and actions.

Practicing meditation or yoga was a radical idea in the 1950s, as America was a nation that prided itself on traditional Christian values. However, during the 1950s, the societal landscape changed, and people began exploring non-traditional ideas. “Flower children seeking higher consciousness turned to Eastern mysticism and yoga, planting fertile soil for the growth of yoga in modern America, which has increased exponentially since the Summer of Love” (Tran

“History of Yoga”). Yoga and meditation had only been recently brought to America: “In 1920,

30 the influential guru Paramahansa Yogananda founded the Self-Realization Fellowship in Los

Angeles to disseminate the meditation techniques of Kriya yoga. His bestselling

1946 Autobiography of a Yogi continues to inspire Westerners seeking knowledge of yoga philosophy and Eastern spirituality” (Tran “History of Yoga”). Thus, liberation, whether it be through the moksha-medicine, maithuna, or meditation, is one of the founding principles of

Huxley’s utopic vision.

Pala’s utopian dynamic, particularly in terms of how it was undermined, is further illustrated through the characters and environs Huxley creates in Island. The book’s main character, William Farnaby, is a cynical journalist employed by an oil mogul named Lord Joseph

Alydehyde. The name Alydehyde is meant to characterize the nefarious nature of the chemical compound formaldehyde, primarily used in “tanning, preserving, and embalming and as a germicide, fungicide, and insecticide for plants and vegetables, but its largest application is in the production of certain polymeric materials” (March and Brown “Use of Aldehydes”). It serves to provide an image that Lord Alydehyde is an authoritative, unnatural, and malevolent person. At the behest of Lord Alydehyde, Farnaby arrives at Rendang-Lobo, a recently militarized and industrialized island that is adjacent to Pala in the island chain. Farnaby’s point of contact in

Rendang-Lobo is a man named Colonel Dipa, commander of the military forces occupying

Rendang-Lobo, as well as a quasi-business professional with close ties to Lord Alydehyde and a prominent oil company – Standard of California. This is significant because, as Huxley was writing Island during the 1950s, the world’s largest oil companies began aggressively expanding into emerging new markets. According to The History of Global Oil Production, “Since the mid to late 1950s, oil has become the most important resource available to mankind. In this decade, oil production had just exceeded 500 million tons for the first time giving the annual increase in

31 oil production at around about 7%” (“History of Global Oil Production”). Thus, the contemporary booming oil economy during the time when Huxley wrote Island is prominently reflected in Huxley’s vision of utopia undermined.

Upon arrival, Colonel Dipa takes Farnaby on a tour of Rendang-Lobo, where the latter observes their militarization, commercialization, and technological innovations. As Huxley writes, “On the flat between Rendang-Lobo and the oil fields, the speedometer had twice touched a hundred and ten; and worse, much worse, was to follow on the mountain road from the oil fields to the copper mines” (Huxley, Island 281). The purpose of Colonel Dipa showing Farnaby around Rendang-Lobo is to reaffirm the idea that the lack of industrialism in Pala is indicative of its inhabitants’ and their society’s inferiority. This last reminder of the material world is to remind Farnaby that it is his job to convince the Palanese to change their ways without attempting to understand their culture, beliefs, or way of life. Furthermore, this is representative of the dominant narrative during the 1950s era that anyone or any group that challenges traditional norms is inherently flawed.

The purpose of the character William Farnaby is to represent the possibility of change for society and the world. Farnaby’s journey from a miserable-capitalist-unfaithful-broken man to a sympathetic-compassionate-peaceful man was emblematic of what Huxley believed was possible for all individuals if the dismantling of the pillars of Western society – “armaments, universal debt and planned obsolescence”– were to occur (Huxley, Island 2258). Huxley began developing the framework for William Farnaby in his novel Time Must Have a Stop under the name

Sebastian Barnack. In describing the character of Barnack and Farnaby, James Hull writes, “A deep sense of guilt of common to both of them. To some extent they show us how their creator feelings about himself” (“Representative Man” 523). This shared guilt is due to all the personal

32 and spiritual sacrifices one has to make when living in a capitalist society. More specifically, much of Farnaby’s guilt comes from his infidelity for his ex-wife, Molly. The reason why

Farnaby was unfaithful to Molly was because he had was taught to treat women as impersonal commodities rather than human beings deserving of love, compassion, and respect. After

Molly’s passing, Farnaby realizes that he should have been grateful for Molly rather than hoping he could find someone else. Therefore, as a character, Farnaby illustrates the ability for individual and societal change.

Other thematic elements contribute to Farnaby’s awakening. After reviving from an

“intentional shipwreck” on Pala after leaving Rendang-Lobo, Farnaby hears the word

“attention,” and it comes from an indigenous mynah bird (Huxley, Island 31). The word

“attention” is a reference to ideological beliefs from Eastern Mysticism, Hinduism, and

Buddhism. The intent behind Huxley’s use of the mynah birds is to provoke the reader to live in the present moment. In terms of story, the mynah birds had actually been taught to utter

“attention” to reinforce the utopian ideals of theory and praxis to the Palanese, as a reminder that conscious control of the mind, community, and compassion is the prerequisite for happiness, rather than control, consumption, and innovation. “Attention is the first and last word in Palanese society; it is also literally the first and last word in Huxley’s last novel. (Sawyer 181)” This is representative of the practices of ancient Taoism, Hinduism, and Buddhism – all which Huxley believed to be the most ethical of religious practices because of their religious beliefs towards

“upward transcendence” (Sawyer 115). Since the 1940s, Huxley determined that much of our societal beliefs produced “downward transcendence” which he defined as “When we turn a means into an end we create a negative, unproductive transcendence of our self. When people make having a good time, working a job, acquiring wealth, or forwarding nationalism as ends in

33 themselves, they transcend, on some level, their individuality. But, he argued, without working for a higher, more moral purpose, their efforts result in vulgarity” (Sawyer 114-115). Therefore, the mynah birds are an element of social engineering geared towards achieving upward transcendence, being present in the moment, and consequently true happiness.

Eventually, two Palanese children find Farnaby washed up on the beach and guide him to a village, where he receives medical attention and psychological first aid from two characters named Mary Sarojini and Dr. Robert MacPhail. The purpose behind the characters of Sarojini and Dr. Robert is that they represent the perfect blend of Western science and Eastern

Mysticism, i.e., the education of both Western sciences, medicines, and chemistry while simultaneously possessing the spiritual knowledge of community, compassion, and love of the land. This mixture of Western science and Eastern religion is paramount to Huxley’s utopic vision.

Most importantly, Farnaby recognizes a familiar face in the village, a young man named

Murugan, whom Farnaby had met five days earlier in Rendang-Lobo. Murugan is a young

Palanese boy who, after a series of difficult events during his childhood, has become bitter and nihilistic. Murugan is representative of Western military dominance and capitalism, and he wants to overthrow the Palanese way of life in exchange for the power, wealth, and privileges that authoritarian governments offer for the select few. For Huxley, Murugan’s rejection of Palanese ideals is indicative of a broken, greedy, and self-obsessed individual that are byproducts of colonial belief and capitalist rule.

Farnaby realizes that Murugan’s visit to Rendang-Lobo should be kept secret: “Young

Murugan evidently had his reasons for not wanting it to be known that he had been in Rendang”

(Huxley, Island 271). This is because after Farnaby begins to understand the Palanese way of

34 life, their values, and practices, it becomes obvious that Murugan’s visit to Rendang-Lobo is done in secret. Additionally, Farnaby remembers how cozy and inseparable Murugan and

Colonel Dipa had been when he saw them in Rendang-Lobo. Farnaby begins the ponder the genesis of the relationship between Murugan and Colonel Dipa. “Was it merely hero-worship, merely a schoolboy’s admiration for the strong man who had carried out a successful revolution, liquidated the opposition and installed himself as a dictator? Or were other feelings involved”

(273). Huxley’s depiction of the relationship between Murugan and Colonel Dipa is emblematic of what happens in a society where homosexuality is repressed. Colonel Dipa and Murugan’s desire to conquer the world in the name of greed and lust for power is ultimately a symptom of psychological pain. Furthermore, Colonel Dipa and Murugan’s relationship demonstrates how, when society restricts one’s sexual freedom, it manifests in violent ways such as monomania and military conquest. Huxley thus suggests that, had they both been liberated from their own inner pain, and had their psychological needs been met, they would have had no desire for military conquest, industrialism, or technological innovations.

To convince his readers of the liberating potential behind the Palanese way of life,

Huxley focuses on Farnaby’s growth and understanding throughout the novel. After Farnaby’s initial introduction to the leaders of the Palanese community, he begins his journey of self- discovery and spiritual healing. In the beginning stages, Farnaby’s cynical outlook on life causes him to be dismissive of Palanese ways. Farnaby explains his cynicism in a conversation with Dr.

Robert, when he describes his career as a journalist as being “paid to travel about the world and report on the current horrors” (25). Huxley’s positioning of Farnaby as a journalist is important to note, because if the Palanese way of life can change Farnaby, then it will work on even the most jaded and cynical of people. Even so, because Farnaby’s task is to infiltrate and understand

35 the Palanese, he remains curious and inquisitive, and begins to see sense in their modus operandi.

Complementing this, at one-point Dr. Robert gives Farnaby a book titled, “The Old Raja’s

‘Notes on What’s What, and on What Might be Reasonable to Do About What’s What.’”

However, to Farnaby’s dismay, the book does not give information about Pala in terms of history but rather in terms of Pala’s “underlying principles” (502). One of the Palaneses’ underlying principles is the critique and examination of social, religious, and cultural beliefs, providing the

Palanese with the ability to “liberated from his bondage to the ego” (269). Furthermore, the process of liberation causes one to question their “beliefs” while simultaneously maintaining

“faith:”

“Belief is the systematic taking of unanalysed words much too seriously. Paul’s words, Mohammed’s words, Marx’s words, Hitler’s words—people take them too seriously, and what happens? What happens is the senseless ambivalence of history—sadism versus duty, or (incomparably worse) sadism as duty; devotion counterbalanced by organized paranoia; sisters of charity selflessly tending the victims of their own church’s inquisitors and crusaders” (532).

The critical examination of historical belief systems that have caused societies, religions, and cultures to engage in inhumane practices continuously are part and parcel of Huxley’s condemnation of capitalism, consumerism, and technology. Huxley reminds his readers that our assumptions of military conquest and capitalism being for the betterment of humanity is naïve and misguided. The remedy which Huxley proposes in “The Old Raja’s Notes” is to correct our misguided belief systems by developing faith: “Faith is the empirically justified confidence in our capacity to know who, in fact we are, to forget the belief-intoxicated Manichee in Good

Being. Give us this day our daily Faith, but deliver us, dear God, from belief” (528). The importance of surrendering one’s beliefs and choosing to live by a set of values exemplifies

Huxley’s hope for eliminating harmful prejudices, stereotypes, and misinformation. Far too often, individual beliefs are misguided truths that are passed on through societies, institutions, and families without proper examination. To live without belief and only by a set of values facilitates liberation and freedom within a society.

After exchanging initial pleasantries, Farnaby and Murugan converse about their admiration for Colonel Dipa, life in Rendang-Lobo, and the future of Pala. In regards to why the

Palanese do not want Murugan meeting with Colonel Dipa, Farnaby asks, “Do they think that he might convert you to a belief in military dictatorship” (565)? Murugan responds, “The reason why I’m not supposed to see Colonel Dipa is that he’s the head of a state and I’m the head of a state. When we meet, it’s international politics” (574). Taken by surprise, Farnaby mutters, “My goodness! I ought to be calling you Your Majesty. Or at least Sir” (574). Murugan quickly replies, “You’ll have to call me that at the end of next week. After my birthday, I shall be eighteen. That’s when the Raja of Pala comes to age” (574). This interaction between Farnaby and Murugan is especially important to understand for a variety of reasons. For starters, Farnaby has started to accept the nontraditional values, practices, and experiences of Palanese society.

Moreover, because of Farnaby’s growing admiration for the Palanese, he ostensibly is having second thoughts about his initial agreement with Lord Alydehyde and Colonel Dipa to help facilitate the overthrow of Pala. This conversation between Farnaby and Murugan illuminates the reality that regardless of Farnaby’s actions, Pala is in danger of losing its sovereignty to externally imposed forces of greed.

Murugan then begins explaining his detailed plan to militarize, industrialize, and modernize Pala. After hearing Murugan’s plan, Farnaby asks, “So you’ll strengthen Pala’s army”

(640). Murugan responds with, “Strengthen it? No – I’ll create it. Pala doesn’t have an army.

Absolutely nothing. They’re all pacifists” (641). The problem with pacificism is that it is impossible to maintain in a militarized world predicated upon mass exploitation, mass consumption, and control over the masses. The message that Huxley is trying to portray here is that Murugan’s unmet psychological needs are responsible for his admiration for colonialism.

Murugan has been consumed by beliefs of power, wealth accumulation, and technological progress, which will result in downward transcendence and possibly the end of Pala as a utopia.

Farnaby continues reading “The Old Raja’s Notes” and comes across a passage that strikes a chord in him. “Me as I think I am and me as I am in fact—sorrow, in other words, and the ending of sorrow. One third, more or less, of all the sorrow that the person I think I am is unavoidable” (1269). The meaning behind the Old Raja’s meditation is that no society, not even a utopia, can eliminate all forms of unhappiness. To live is to suffer, and the Palanese have come to embrace and accept this concept. The Old Raja’s words, however, suggest that two-thirds of human suffering is self-imposed. Therefore, the Old Raja’s statement about suffering suggests that by eliminating a society’s dependence on capitalism, materialism, and technology, it would also eliminate two-thirds of human suffering by preventing downward transcendence.

An important interaction that Farnaby has during his journey of self-discovery and transcendence from pain is with Susila MacPhail, Dr. Roberts’ daughter-in-law. Farnaby and

Susila immediately begin forming a bond after hearing about each other’s dysfunctional parents and traumatic childhoods. Even so, despite their similar hardships, Susila has turned out remarkably better than Farnaby. Huxley writes how this transcendence is due to the Palanese’s

“Mutual Adoption Clubs” or MACs. The MACs operate as a combination of communalism and modern social services, social working, and child care programs. Susila describes the process as follows:

“Hybridization of microcultures — that’s what our sociologists call the process. It’s as beneficial, on its own level, as the hybridization of different strains of maize or chickens. Healthier relationships in more responsible groups, wider sympathies and deeper understandings. And the sympathies and understanding are for everyone in the MAC from babies to centenarians” (1269).

Susila and Farnaby continue conversing, and he opens up about the guilt, shame, and trauma he feels from his abusive childhood and cheating on his wife. At the same time, Susila is dealing with the recent death of her husband yet appears remarkably optimistic and content. With the help of Susila, Farnaby realizes that the shortcomings of his parents are ultimately a result of the societal structure he lived in. For all of Farnaby’s life, he has been trying to forget the past rather than talk about it, accept it, and learn from it. Susila, being the liberated individual, tells Farnaby,

“It isn’t a matter of forgetting. What one has to learn is how to remember and yet be free of the past. How to be there with the dead and yet still be here, on the spot, with the living” (Huxley,

Island 1613). The conversation between Farnaby and Susila is representative of Huxley’s belief regarding the importance of compassion. The concept of the MAC is entirely dependent upon people showing selflessness, love, and compassion for one another, as opposed to being motivated by an economic incentive. In a similar vein, in the novel Time Must Have a Stop

(1944), Huxley illustrates his theory and praxis pertaining to love, “There isn’t any formula or method. You learn to love by loving – by paying attention and doing what one thereby discovers has to be done” (47). This mindset is reflected in Island by the Palanese design of the MACs, whose function is to bring out the innate human desire to receive love and the ability to give love. The last part of Huxley’s statement in Time Must Have a Stop suggests that, by paying attention to the present moment, one will discover that to give and receive love is essential.

After talking to Susila, Farnaby makes his way to the Experimental Station for an appointment with Dr. Robert, but decides to take a short cut, finding what he thinks is a vacant laboratory, and sees Murugan surreptitiously reading a Sears, Roebuck & Co. catalog. After they discuss the various products and the possibilities of consumerism in Pala, Farnaby asks, “You ought to import a million of these catalogues and distribute them—gratis, of course, like

40 contraceptives—to all your subjects” (273) Murugan, realizing Farnaby’s naivete, unhappily murmurs, “It wouldn’t work” (273). Farnaby, both surprised and shocked, asks, “Can you guess why” (273)? Murugan admits, “It’s just stupid and disgusting. No progress, only sex, sex, sex.

And of course that beastly dope” (2087).

Huxley’s disdain for consumerism, industrialism, and technology can be traced back to his essay Boundaries of Utopia (1930). In the essay, Huxley critiques the ideas of justice, liberty, and freedom as he proclaims, “Every right, as we have seen, is something which we have at other people’s expense. The machine is the only ‘other person’ at whose expense we can have things with a good conscience and also the only ‘other person’ who becomes steadily more and more efficient.(Huxley Boundaries of Utopia)” Therefore, Huxley’s critique of both Murugan’s desire for mass consumerism and of traditional beliefs of justice, liberty, and freedom indicates that the sole purpose of technology should be to liberate and serve the needs of humanity.

Prior to visiting the Experimental Station, it appears to Farnaby that the Palanese had dismissed all industrialism and Western technologies. The Experimental Station was designed by a man named Ranga. Ranga explains that, when Pala was being designed by its two founders, Dr.

Andrew and the Old Raja, they envisioned the following:

“In Pala, at least, there should always be bread. Hence their decision to set up the Experimental Station. Rothamsted-in-the-Tropics was a great success. In a few years we had new strains of rice and maize and millet and bread-fruit. We had better breeds of cattle and chickens. Better ways of cultivating and composting and in the fifties, we built the first superphosphate factory east of Berlin” (Huxley, Island 1229).

Furthermore, the Palanese also use the Experimental Station to study “soil science and plant breeding” (Huxley, Island 264) in addition to growing a variety of healthy and natural food for their community. Also, the Experimental Station allows the Palanese to grow food in a manner in

41 which is beneficial for nature and themselves. The positioning of the Experimental Station not only as one of the most sophisticated inventions ever created but also as an example of technology that was designed to serve humanity equitably while preserving and enhancing nature is what Huxley believed the goal of technology should be. In 1946, when Huxley published

Science, Liberty, and Peace, he began the book by a quotation from Leo Tolstoy: “If the arrangement of society is bad (as ours is), and a small number of people have power over the majority and oppress it, every victory over Nature will inevitably serve only to increase that power and that oppression” (Sawyer 131). Huxley not only believed that Tolstoy’s statement was true then but also believed that since then, “Applied science had mainly contributed to the

‘centralization of power in the hands of a small ruling majority” (Sawyer 132). Therefore, the destruction of nature at the expense of the technological process is dually problematic in

Huxley’s view.

Moreover, Huxley thought that “The current economic and technological structures of the modern world were not only ideologically flawed, they were unsustainable because they did not consider the critical ecological issues of population growth, environmental degradation, and loss of natural resources. ‘Industrialism is the systematic exploitation of wasting assets. In all too many cases, the thing we call progress is merely an acceleration in the rate of that exploitation’”

(Sawyer 134). Rather than use technology to exploit nature like in the case of mining or fracking, humanity should strive to integrate technology in a synergistic way with natural resources, as seen in Pala’s Experimental Station.

This is where Huxley’s vision of Utopia becomes a self-contained system of awareness: the use of hallucinogens. Farnaby’s final step in embracing the Palanese way of life is taking the moksha-medicine. Farnaby first heard about the drug shortly after his arrival, but it was not until

42 he witnesses how and why the Palanese incorporate it into their society that he begins to believe in its transformative potential. The moksha-medicine is a psychedelic mushroom grown in the

Experimental Station. Unlike most drugs, it is not harmful, addictive, or used for escapism.

Rather, its purpose is to facilitate enlightenment and understanding: “the reality-revealer, the truth-and-beauty pill” (2096). Moreover, the Palanese use it to “catch a glimpse of the world as it looks to someone who has been liberated from his bondage to the ego” (2105).

Dr. Robert and Viyaja take Farnaby to the initiation that all Palanese children undergo as a rite of passage from childhood to adolescence. They travel high up in the mountains, past the

High-Altitude Experimental Station to an old Shiva temple “where the pilgrims used to come every spring and autumn equinox” (2457) and there the initiation takes place. Farnaby witnesses the children helping each other climb an incredibly dangerous and steep cliff face. Afterward, the children head for the service in the temple where they are given their first dose. Sitting next to

Dr. Robert, Farnaby witnesses “the ending of sorrow, ceasing to be what you ignorantly think you are and becoming what you are in fact” (2654). Farnaby, now convinced of the drug’s therapeutic value, realizes that “all that the moksha-medicine can do is to give you a succession of beatific glimpses, an hour or two, every now and then, of enlightening and liberating grace”

(2661). Even though the Palanese do not exactly understand how the moksha-medicine works, the important fact is “their response is the full-blown mystical experience” (2119). This mystical experience allows the Palanese to experience “inexpressible joy” (2122) that they would not be able to feel otherwise, and this further contributes to Pala’s utopian element.

One of the most fascinating components of Palanese society is the technological inventions of Deep Freeze and Artificial Insemination and their subsequent use in Palanese society. The reason why this idea is so polarizing is because of the intersection between

43 reproductive rights, technology, and religion in Western society. Deep Freeze is the process by which the Palanese freeze genetically modified semen for the purpose of Artificial Insemination, impregnating women with genetically altered semen without involving sexual intercourse. The day after witnessing the Palanese passage into adulthood, Farnaby is invited by Vijaya to visit his partner Shanta and their infant child. Farnaby tries his best to hide his lack of interest in the child; in fact, Farnaby had always been “Thankful for those repeated miscarriages which had frustrated all Molly’s hopes and longings for a child” (2927). After feeling initially startled,

Farnaby asks, “Who’s he going to look like – you or Vijaya” (Huxley, Island 2927)? Shanta responds with, “He certainly won’t look like Vijaya” (2927). She continues to explain, “Four years ago, we produced a pair of twins who are the living image of Vijaya. This time we thought it would be fun to have a complete change. We decided to enrich the family with an entirely new physique and temperament” (2927). Furthermore, Shanta explains, “Deep Freeze and Artificial

Insemination. We developed the techniques of AI about twenty years before you did. But of course, we couldn’t do much with it until we had electric power and reliable refrigerators. We got those in the late twenties. Since when we’ve been using AI in a big way. So you see, my baby might grow up to be a painter— that is, if that kind of talent is inherited. And even if it isn’t he’ll be a lot more endomorphic and viscerotonic than his brothers or either of his parents.

Which is going to be very interesting and educative of everybody concerned” (2939). Taken back by this staggering information and use of modern science, Farnaby asks, “Do many people go in for this kind of thing” (2939)? Shanta responds, “More and more. In fact I’d say that practically all the couples who decide to have a third child now go in for AI. So do quite a lot of those who mean to stop at number two. Take my family, for example. There’s been some diabetes among my father’s people; so they thought it best—he and my mother—to have both

44 their children by AI” (2939). The use of Deep Freeze and AI in Palanese society is a humanity- oriented approach to overpopulation, disease prevention, and eugenics. By eliminating the possibilities of disease and resource depletion, Deep Freeze and Artificial Insemination liberate the Palanese and contribute to its utopian dynamic. Additionally, the use of Deep Freeze and

Artificial Insemination bodes well with Dr. Robert’s assertion that the Palanese “have always chosen to adapt our economy and technology to human beings—not our human beings to somebody else’s economy and technology” (2170).

Deep Freeze and Artificial Insemination are technological practices that the Palanese use to preserve nature rather than exploit nature. During the postwar 1950s era, much of the global community became increasingly concerned about overpopulation, and many feared that human beings were going to populate the world until it was no longer inhabitable. (Barsocchini “Critical

Masses”). Consequently, technological innovations such as Deep Freeze and Artificial

Insemination offered humane solutions to these growing concerns. In fact, fears of overpopulation were exactly why the eugenics movement gained so much traction around the world beginning in the early 1900s (Barsocchini “Critical Masses”). “In the 1950s, ‘the population explosion’ became a household term. Demographers in the early 1960s continued to diagnose it, warn of its existential urgency, and recommend (or signal) solutions” (Barsocchini

24). However, it is important to understand that much of these fears were the result of racism masquerading behind counterfeit science. By positioning Deep Freeze and Artificial

Insemination as an ethical solution to overpopulation, disease, and eugenics, Huxley illustrates that the ethical use of technology is to liberate humanity.

Throughout the text, Huxley leaves forewarnings regarding the final fate of Pala. This is important because it reveals that Pala’s utopian society, despite its perfection, will always be

45 vulnerable as long as the ideas of authoritarian control, militarism, and greed are present. Each time Farnaby makes advancements in understanding the Palanese way of life, he is reminded of the treachery of what originally brought him to Pala in the first place. The morning after the initiation ceremony, Farnaby receives a call from a character named Rani in Dr. Robert’s bungalow. Rani informs Farnaby that within the last few days, “representatives of no less than three Major Oil Companies, European and American, have flown into Rendang-Lobo. My informant tells me that they’re already working on the four or five Key Figures in the

Administration who might, at some future date, be influential in deciding who is to get the concession for Pala” (2715). At the beginning of Farnaby’s journey, he would have been ecstatic about this news, as it signaled that his work in Pala would be over and that he would be rewarded with “A year of freedom just for helping Joe Aldehyde to get his hand on Pala” (886). However,

Farnaby only tersely responds with, “Nefarious” (2717). This is significant because it demonstrates that Farnaby has aligned himself with the Palanese and is no longer interested in the economic rewards that Lord Aldehyde had initially promised him. Even so, while Farnaby’s conversation with Rani proves that he has become a believer in the Palanese way of life, that will not save Pala from Lord Aldehyde, Colonel Dipa, and Murugan.

Farnaby’s moksha-medicine experience begins later on. The time Farnaby has spent learning the ways of the Palanese, confessing his past transgressions, and witnessing the initiation experience has primed him for a spiritual awakening through the moksha-medicine.

Farnaby describes his experience as “luminous bliss” (Island 4172). and “not only bliss, it was also understanding. Understanding of everything, but without knowledge of anything” (Island

4147). Even so, while Farnaby’s experience accompanies intense feelings of pleasure – it also brings him feelings of discontent and horror. The moksha-medicine reminds Farnaby of the

46 selfish, unfair, and inhumane things he has done in the past. Regardless, “Even within those flickering memories was the firmament of bliss and peace and understanding. There might be a few bats in the sunset sky; but the fact remained that the dreadful miracle of creation has been reversed” (Island 4160). Most importantly, Farnaby returns from his moksha-medicine experience with a greater understanding of his past, the world, and who, in fact, William Asquith

Farnaby is.

This is how Huxley’s utopic vision of Pala comes to an end: The morning after Farnaby’s moksha-medicine experience, the Palanese awaken to the sound of Colonel Dipa’s Army invading Pala. Shortly before the invasion, Susila had proclaimed, “Our enemy is oil in general.

Whether we’re exploited by South-East Asia Petroleum or Standard of California makes no difference” (Island 4132). Susila’s statement reveals the central message of Island that a utopian society is possible, but only if that society is founded upon the principle of liberation. By liberating the individual from himself, from authoritarian control, from industrialism, and from only using selective technologies, then from the masses, these individuals will transform their society. This transformation will not only require a great deal of diligence (which is why paying

“attention” to the “here and now” is imperative), but also because of its fragility (Island 1771).

This is why during Colonel Dipa’s invasion of Pala, one of the last dialogues is when Susila mutters to Farnaby, “the work of a hundred years destroyed in a single night” (Island 4520). This represents the irony of the fragility of Pala, because the things that make it utopic – pacificism, love, and freedom – are ultimately what makes it susceptible to destruction by their antonyms.

CONCLUSION

The 1950s postwar era in American society was a time of incredible social, political, economic, technological, and environmental change. Many of these events during the 1950s would have a lasting impact on Americans, whether it be through the development of the

Hydrogen bomb, the Civil Rights Act of 1957, or the creation of the color Television, to name a few. Even so, while the 1950s postwar era did experience numerous positive social, economic, and political changes, the horror that arose out of that epoch has long overshadowed the positive aspects.

Of the innovations that arose out of the 1950s postwar era, it was the technological progress that had the most transformative impact on generations to come. Many of the technological developments during that era provided the necessary foundation for the creation of cell phones, the internet, and social media that have come to define American society some fifty years later. However, because Americans did not have a tiny screen to aimless stare at all day while they were walking, driving, or supposed to be working, many of them read books for leisure, entertainment, and education.

The 1950s post-war era was a time of remarkable literature that had a profound effect on how American’s viewed themselves, their country and influenced what they believed it meant to live a meaningful life. Additionally, a great deal of literature was also produced that instilled a great deal of fear, panic, and shame into many Americans because of a few influential books that exposed the troubling ways of modern society. While there were a variety of impactful books that revealed these horrors, it was books such as Lord of The Flies, On the Road, and Silent

Spring that are most commonly remembered for the shock and awe they produced amongst

American consumers. More specifically, each one of those books’ authors – William Golding,

Jack Kerouac, and Rachel Carson – was successful because of their ability to illuminate a specific tragedy. Initially, the revelations that Golding, Kerouac, and Carson put forth in their work gave them a reputation as heroes amongst the general public for their intellect, bravery, and commitment to bettering society. However, while their illumination of authoritarian behavior, traditional American values, and harmful technologies were incredibly beneficial, they did not provide a framework or detailed set of plans to remedy these situations as Aldous Huxley did in

Island.

Amongst scholarly critics, Island received mixed reviews. In the article Brave New World versus Island – Utopian and Dystopian Views on Psychopharmacology author M.H.N Schermer juxtaposes the use of psychopharmacology in Brave New World and Island to extrapolates the significance of drug use in both novels and examines the underlying dystopic and utopic messages in each book. The purpose of Schermer’s work was to determine, “What can we learn from Huxley’s novels about psychopharmacology, and how does this relate to the discussion in the ethical and philosophical literature on this subject” (119)? Schermer concludes his investigation by stating, “Since the dystopian view trends to dominate the debate, a view like that in Island will probably be quickly rejected as ‘utopian’ in the sense of being unrealistic, overly optimistic, or simply naïve” (125). Schermer’s position of drug use in Brave New World being more accurate and ostensibly more accepted by society than the drug use in Island is both accurate and revealing.

I believe that American society has more closely resembled society in Brave New World than Island over the last hundred years, and that is why Brave New World as a novel has always been more popular than Island. Furthermore, the reason why Schermer’s assertion is revealing is

49 that the dystopic use of the drug soma in Brave New World is closer to our society's perception of drug use than the enlightening and liberating perspective of the moksha-medicine in Island demonstrates a few critical issues. One, it shows that the general public’s view of psychopharmacology – the benefits, the problems, and the overall potential of pharmacological intervention is misunderstood and that there is only a small group of people who understand psychopharmacology. Second, Schermer’s analysis reveals to me that modern American society is closer to a dystopian society than a utopic society. Lastly, Schermer’s statement exposes the nihilistic perspective that contemporary American society has instilled in its citizens. The fact that the prevailing view that drug use only results in treachery, addiction, and blight that it is indicative of how close-minded and nihilistic modern society has become. In my opinion, the despair and hopelessness that has been sewn into the fabric of American society make

American’s more receptive to dystopic ideas than utopic ones.

Even those who praised Island still believed that the biggest weakness of the book is that it seemed unfathomable to make suggest that any society could be so peaceful, sophisticated, and compassionate. Even so, “Despite the critical failures of Island, it nonetheless went into many printings. A ‘bible’ among many in the counterculture of the 1960s, it is still in print today”

(Sawyer 182). Moreover, Island’s loyal following was not unwarranted either as many of the themes within the book mirrored the beliefs of the 1960s Anti War Movement. In Aldous

Huxley: A Study of the Major Novels author Peter Bowering proclaims, “On a thematic level

Island is a fittingly a work of reconciliation the forbidden island is itself a symbol of resolution of opposites inhabited by a kind of ideal Eurasian race who speak both Sanskrit and English, it was conceived in it modern guise by that strangely assorted pair, the Scottish doctors and the

Palanese king, who joint ambition ‘To make the best of all the world’s has turned Pala into a

50 summum bonum of cultures, Oriental and European, ancient and modern’” (184). Bowering’s statement suggests that the unrealistic nature of Island, a society of mixed ethnicities, ideologies, and beliefs is also what makes it so alluring. Therefore, the improbable situation that Huxley creates in Island works as a double-edged sword. The far-fetched society that Huxley devises is its greatest asset and its worst enemy.

One of the most exciting and insightful critiques of Island came from Alex MacDonald.

In the article Choosing Utopia: A Existential Reading of Aldous Huxley’s Island* author Alex

MacDonald investigates the merits of Island within the utopian novel genre. More specifically,

MacDonald examines the ending of Island, which is one of the most critiqued aspects of

Huxley’s utopia. MacDonald’s paper further explores the meaning behind Pala being overrun and Palanese society being destroyed. MacDonald writes, “The ending suggests not that utopia is impossible but that we have to keep choosing it, over and over again, and something like Pala, or something different from but just as utopian as Pala, can happen again. Out future is not deterministically programmed but depends to some considerable extent upon to choices we make today” (111). I agree with MacDonald that the purpose behind the ending of Island was not to project the idea that Huxley’s utopian vision was impossible. MacDonald’s assertion is symbolic of the belief that a utopia is as real as we choose to make it. Moreover, the purpose of Pala being overrun by Colonel Dipa and his military force was to show that the utopian vision that Huxley creates in Island is more about cultivating the proper mindset than the creation of a new society.

Consequently, this is why MacDonald concludes, “I prefer to think that utopias are possible.

Like Pala, they may not last. And like Pala, they may be partial, but they are none the less real.

One reason I prefer to take this view is because I believe the evidence is all around us, precisely in the way that Susila suggests Pala as evidence that utopia is possible” (111). Thus, adopting

51 the values, practices, and customs that Huxley provides in Island is not a decision one makes once, it’s a decision one makes daily, and that can go on forever or vanish in a moment’s notice.

Island is a profoundly important text that is critical for understanding the strife of the postwar era and also for understanding the potential of humanity. During the time that Aldous

Huxley was writing Island, he was also working on the Human Potential Movement and the development of the Esalen Institute. In 1962, the same year the Island was published, “On a stunning stretch of land bordering the Pacific Ocean in Big Sur, California, two Stanford graduates named Michael Murphy and Dick Price founded a small retreat and workshop center called The Esalen Institute” (Ollivier “Esalen”). The purpose of the Esalen Insitute was to explore “Various holistic approaches to wellness and personal transformation that involved the body, mind, and spirit” (Ollivier “Esalen”) without the oversight of a governmental, educational, or religious authority. Furthermore, the purpose of Esalen would allow intellectuals from different backgrounds the freedom to teach or take part in various lectures that could hopefully lead to both social and personal transformation. Huxley had always wanted to create his own educational institution. In 1946 Huxley had begun working with an Indian philosopher named

Krishnamurti and together, they hypothesized an educational system that, “Considered the whole human being, not just intellect. Their goal was for a curriculum that would teach students values beyond the status quo—as Huxley was always lamenting that the current educational system was

‘the state’s most effective instrument of universal regimentation’” (Sawyer 143). Huxley’s ability to see through the blight, horrors, and hardships of the postwar 1950s era and envision a positive future for humanity is why Island is such an incredibly powerful fictional tale. David

Stannard, a renowned American Studies Professor, once said, “Good fiction can tell a story that the truth sometimes cannot” (Stannard 2017). Thus, through his fictional work, Huxley was able

52 to expose and remedy the horrors of 1950s American society in Island in a way that he could not have by merely focusing on actual people, places, and events. Moreover, Huxley did not only reveal one problem such as Golding, Kerouac, or Carson – he created a blueprint that provided solutions for all the issues they individually exposed and more.

In sum, the critical examination of authoritarian control within Island is representative of the growing fear of authoritarianism in William Golding’s Lord of the Flies, which he illuminates by positing innate human behavior as lawless and violent. Next, the Palanese’s decision to forgo industrialism and profit for the betterment of their society is typical of the belief in Jack Kerouac’s On the Road that the traditional American Dream is no longer desirable.

Finally, Island’s use of selective technologies and Western science to serve humanity is allegorical to Rachel Carson’s examination of DDT in Silent Spring, which portrays it as an insidious technological innovation that values industry and economic growth over human safety and environmental protection.

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