In both the novels, Brave New World and Solzhenitsyn’s The Gulag, they depict a totalitarian world. This being said, neither book has a happy ending. In Brave New World, the main character John decides to hang himself when he realizes that he gave into the totalitarian and controlling society he did not want to be a part of. The whole novel of The Gulag is not a happy book and the Soviet Regime used many inhumane disciplines and behaviors on people. In addition, both novels also explore the idea of “the permanent lie”. The Brave New World is a society that was formed around lies and control and in The Gulag the Soviet Regime used tactics of fear and torture. It is also possible to see that this idea of “the permanent lie” exists in our society today, even though we claim to be a Democracy.
There has come to an agreement that a totalitarian society can be defined as a society that uses any means necessary to achieve what they believe is an ideal society. This usually means pain and suffering. In The Gulag Archipelago this holds true. The Soviet Regime uses fear and torture on their “prisoners” to be able to obtain the ideal people that they want. Solzhenitsyn says that the Soviet Union society was built on the foundation of “the permanent lie”. He defines this as “the permanent lie becomes the only safe form of existence” (646). The people in charge believe that what they are doing is the only way to obtain their goal and the people suffering believe that this is the only way to live. They have hope in the end goal that will never come.
In Huxley’s Brave New World, the World State has rid of any other form of society and life besides the one they are creating. This is “the permanent lie”. Everyone being manipulated is under the impression that the only way to live is through a manufactured society with emotions. They believe that this is what true freedom is like, which the reader knows is not true. Huxley writes, “Our civilization has chosen machinery and medicine and happiness. That’s why I have to keep these books locked up in the safe. They’re smut” (Huxley, 159). They are feeding the idea that this is what the people want, but they do not know any better. They say this is what they want because those are the ideas that the World State is telling them to believe. There is no freedom here.
The “permanent lie” can be seen in many aspects of our society as well. We have learned that our government has extreme control over social media. They also have control over the information that we, the public, receive and in a sense what we believe. For many this has become normalized or something they do not even realize. So much of our society is controlled and censored by the government.
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