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Blair Ruffing
Ms. Merani
Modernism
2 May 2014
Honorbound
Misconceptions of Humanity: An Analysis of The Tempest and Brave New World
In The Tempest by William Shakespeare, the characters have contradictory views of the
meaning of humanity. In the case of Caliban, Prospero’s servant, some of the characters believe
that the knowledge they have given him has lifted him from his formerly brutish status while
others see him as inherently brutish. Caliban has his devilish nature forced upon him; therefore,
he is stripped of his humanity and is forced to live a life of constant alienation and detestation.
Through the exile of her father, Miranda is forced to live a life of complete isolation where she is
unexposed to other humans and cannot truly reach her full potential. In Brave New World,
Aldous Huxley enforces disgust toward the future society largely through constant reference to
our own society. The World State turns into something intolerable largely because one sees in it
perversions of our most cherished ideals and institutions; the utopian society’s proverbs are
refutations of our own. If an individual in the World State rebels against the standard
psychological, sociological, sexual, or biological ideas that have been instilled in them since they
were created, one is alienated. The theme of devaluing an individual’s humanity as a result of
differentiating values or misconceptions appears in both The Tempest and Brave New World
through alienation and contradictory views of humanity.
Certain environments can either accept or neglect the human dignity of an individual; the
people that influence one’s personal consciousness can alter the way an individual feels about
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their place in society. Caliban lives in a position of complete isolation, emphasized not only by
being the sole inhabitant of the island, which is itself isolated and surrounded by water, but by
his acknowledgement through Prospero and Miranda that he is entirely alien, if not monstrous:
“A most poor, credulous monster!” (Shakespeare 2: 2: 152). Such a position creates an image of
complete alienation on a personal, social, and political level for Caliban, and he is forced to learn
that “while physical alienation can be solved by reintegrating oneself with familiar society,
personal alienation cannot be reconciled but merely accepted” (Angel). Furthermore, “the
quandary of Huxley’s message in Brave New World is that only the alienated individual, or at
least the person aware of being alienated, can achieve true human consciousness, if not
happiness” (McQuail). John Savage is a true outsider and embodies the alienation caused by
