Individuation in Aldous Huxley's Brave New Word and Island: Jungian and Post-Jungian Perspectives

Abstract

Aldous Huxley´s novels Brave New Word (1932) and Island (1962) share utopian/dystopian tradition, depicting imaginary societies and solutions for the basic problems of the human existence, with Brave New Word showing a catastrophic view of a society of the future and Island an optimistic one. Both novels present a marked concern for the way the social organisation affects the indiviual and his quest for self-realisation. This point allows us to analyse them using C.C Jung´s theory of archetypes and examine how far the novels ilustrate the process of individuation. This process, accoridng to Jung, conducts us towards becoming whole individuals, and eache of its steps is associated with a certain archetype that presents specific characteristics. The archetypes of indiviuation are the persona, the shadow, the wise old man and wise old woman, and the self, and since it is the ego that deals with the problems these archetypes raised, it has been included in the analysis as well. The investigation compares the features of these archetypes with certain elements in the novels, notably characterisation, plot, and setting, and shows that there are similarities as well as discrepancies. According to classical Jungian tehory, is possible to establish thar Island showd a better illustration of a person's journey towards indifviduation than Brave New Word. Post-Jungian theorists have revised some of Jung's concepts, giving a different view of the archetypes and of the process of individuation itself, and in this case, Island seems to be closer to these new formulations than Brave New Word. Individuation, ins this case, does not refer to an ain to be achived at end of your life, but to a series of meaningful experiences throughout life. Finally, it is also possible to establish a connection between the way the process of individuation is show in the two novels and the social context in which they were written .