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s2 {font-kerning: none; background-color: #ffffff} span. Apple-tab-span {white-space: pre} As humans, we possess an intrinsic instinct for social interaction and relationships. We are social beings, and the ability to interact with others is among our most basic necessities. As mammals, being part of a community is essential. Belonging to a group can be the difference in survival versus death. Being ostracized is one of the most devastating experiences humans can endure because of the absence of our most fundamental need to be recognized and accepted. A human’s need to belong is so profound that it can endure psychological effects immediately.
Ostracism can create a bad mood or other forms of physiological arousal. If it goes on, it can cause low self-esteem, feelings of helplessness, self-imposed isolation, and suicidal thoughts. When people treat you as if you don’t exist or you are unimportant, the message received is loud and clear, “ You do not matter.” In today’s society people are commonly ostracized for being different, even in the slightest ways. It has become a common trend to embrace our uniqueness, yet when someone actually does, they might get punished for it. Still today there are labels for every single person.
Whether it is jock, prep, burn out, nerd, geek, or even queer, these labels can sometimes hurt. Just because a person doesn’t fit into another person’s idea of how they should be, that shouldn’t give them the right to stamp a label on their forehead and decide how they will be treated. There is an obvious line between what is seen as ‘ cool’ or common and what is deemed weird or unorthodox.
It makes it even worse when people feel the need to hide their true selves to conform to the rest of society. When we force people to make a decision between being different (themselves) and being accepted, we continue to promote uniformity and conformity. In Brave New World, people who are different from the normal standard are ostracized and isolated from society because of their individuality.
The World State in Brave New World is structured and ordered, the government attempts to control everything. One character that endures this isolation is Bernard Marx. Marx feels out of place because his is physically different than other Alpha Pluses. A popular rumor among his peers is that someone put alcohol in his blood surrogate, stunting his growth. He has the intelligence of an Alpha Plus caste member but the physical stature of a lower caste member. As a resuly, he is seen as abnormal by his peers.
Being ostracized, Marx separates himself from the rest of the World Sate and prefers to be alone or with his only friend, Helmholtz Watson. Bernard develops a negative view of the World State and the people in it. He continuously criticizes society and its values, he even thinks himself superior because he thinks freely and is not conformed to the conditioning he was subject to as a child. However, when Marx brings back John the Savage from the reservation, he is accepted for the first time by his peers. His essential need to belong is finally fulfilled and Marx is consumed by the feeling. He wants to hold on to it forever and, “ the process completely reconciled him to a world which, up until then, he had found very unsatisfactory” (Huxley, 157). Marx, for the first time in his life is treated as an important person.
This newfound feeling of belonging makes him realize how he never wants to feel alone and ostracized again. Marx ends up turning against his friends when they must meet with Mustapha Mond. He is terrified that he might be associated with rebels or “ labelled as the friend of a man who said he didn’t like civilization” (Huxley, 218). Marx ends up with a choice to make, be sent to an island with others who have failed to conform to society, and were therefore ostracized, or stay in the World State and try to be normal. When Marx begs to not be banished to an island, he decides conformity over individuality because he’d rather behave as a property conditioned Alpha Plus than the unique individual that he is. Having his individuality suppressed, Bernard will suffer even more trying to be someone he is not. Fortunately, later Bernard accepts the advice of his friend Helmholtz and decides to be sent away.
However, it is unfortunate that to really be happy, Marx and others had to be isolated from the rest of society. In the World State and in today’s society ostracism is a prominent issue, we drive people to act certain ways if they want to fit in, limiting their ability to express themselves unless they want to be separated from the rest of their peers.