Free Essay: Citizenship and Power in Apes and Essence

The Ape and Essence was released in 1948, and its author is Aldous Huxley. It portrays a damaged Los Angeles after an atomic bomb was set off by intelligent apes. However, the apes have been used by the author as imagery to depict the human race's degradation. The Ape and Essence also move forward to an era, a century after the Third World War that was marked by a nuclear tragedy that destroyed the entire human civilization (Daley, 2013). Therefore, a team of explorers from New Zealand, which was a safe zone from the nuclear tragedy went to research on the destruction. Nevertheless, they were not ready for the barbarism they witnessed in that area. For instance, the survivors in this place resorted to beastly and wild ways of surviving within the society such as burning books to cook while living as per the teachings of a supreme ruler, Arch-Vicar. Arch-Vicar emphasized the notion that people did not have power, and hence, they need to be dictated. He also personified Belial worshipping as Satanic and evil. Therefore, as a result, the Ape and Essence have exhibited various themes associated with citizenship and power while focusing on various parameters such as leadership, religion, gender roles, and social classes.

Is your time best spent reading someone else’s essay? Get a 100% original essay FROM A CERTIFIED WRITER!

Order now

The Structure of the Apes and Essence

Ape and Essence has taken a form which is similar to the majority of Aldous Huxley's writings. It entails a blend of social criticism as well as satire hence having the creativity of science fiction. It also has a unique structure which is made up of three main parts whereby one of the parts is realistic, the other one is fictional, whereas the third part is fantastic and the author has loosely associated these parts with one another. The book is made up of two sections, namely Tallis and Ape and Essence. Nonetheless, the story is in the second part of the book with the main characters being Lou Lublin and Bob Briggs and this play is developed such that it is alternating between the storyline and interposed vignettes whereby the baboons are used as a reflection of the modern society. The story begins with Lublin and Briggs talking about an affair on Briggs during the day Gandhi was assassinated in 1948 when a track with movie scripts drives through and a screenplay dubbed Ape and Essence fall at their feet, and it interests them upon reading few pages of it (Everett, Faber & Crockett, 2015). As a result, the two embark on a journey to look for the author, William Taylor who is in Murcia, California but they find out that he died when he visited his remote desert home that is a perfect description of the house where Huxley lived when he wrote this novel. Therefore, when Lublin was denied a meeting with Tallis, he reproduced the texts from Ape and Essence, which become the book's second section.

The screenplay of Ape and Essence is developed in the post-apocalyptic dystopia whereby the whole world was destroyed during World War III through nuclear warfare (Daley, 2013). Therefore, this left it with an old feeling of the Greek drama infused with frequent commentary from the narrator as well as choral interjections. Certainly, as a form of a screenplay, these artistic elements exhibited in Ape and Essence are distributed with informative descriptions of cinematography. Therefore, the main storyline in the entire story entails a botanist named Dr. Alfred Poole. He is on a journey from New Zealand to California with a group of scientists who seek to assess the world which has been ravaged with war after the reduction of radiation levels considering that New Zealand was spared from the nuclear attack hence it did not have any strategic importance (Huxley, 2005). During his expedition, Poole is entangled in a Satan-worshipping society, and in this area, the clergy who is all sweaty and fat eunuchs wear a goatskin and have an upper stratum within the caste system while on the other hand, the commoners stay in a state which is almost in slavery. The books in this society have been burned and used as fuel while any baby who has been born while mutated and deformed due to the nuclear radiation, they are instantly killed. The killing of these children is considered as a sacrifice; hence, these actions are not merely considered as euthanizing (Huxley, 2005). The process involved liquidating the victims, and they are also speared with a knife during the sacrificial mass murder as an honor of Belial, which is the preferred name for Satan in this societal culture.

Additionally, it is worth noting that in these societies, the breeding process is highly regulated and women are required to wear clothing with no emblazoned strategically over the naughty bits. The women in this society were known as vessels and described as "enemy of the race, punished by Belial and calling down punishment on all those who succumb to Belial in her" according to the young girl through the Satanic Science Practitioner (Ortner, 1974). Therefore, with this in mind, it is worth noting that in this society, sex has been sanctioned and it can only take place during a mass orgy while in other respects, it is completely forbidden. During the story, there is the majority of the philosophical dialogue which takes place between Poole and the Arch-Vicar In the course of the infanticide rituals, and it is a long conversation (Adorno & Max, 2002). The experiences Poole goes through are punctuated by the Narrator and the baboon vignettes whereby at a seductive baboon lounge, there is a singer who has sung a line that is constantly repeated and the line "Give me detumescence" has been utilized as the convenient motif. Moreover, the baboons have leashed clones of Einstein hence the need to conduct knowledgeable biological attacks on the rival groups within the baboon species. However, it is worth noting that it is not clear on who are precisely the baboons, but their rivalry with the society which has finished itself from the World War III is evident hence being an implicit social commentary by Huxley in regarding his as well as our world (Babaee & Yahya, 2014). In the end, Poole finds himself at Tallis' grave, and this grave is part of the story although it is geographically misplaced in this book hence showing that he foresaw his demise thus developing an unresolved introductory chapter to a closure.

As much as there is a form of an oddity in this work by Huxley in accordance to the modern literature as well as in the science fiction slot, Ape and Essence have utilized some effective imagery and devastating criticism on the politics in the nuclear age which has ever been discussed (Hall, 2013). For some people, it would be asserted that there is structural peculiarity which would be translated as a major weakness whereas other would challenge this would be a section of what makes it specifically effective considering that it is coloratura and baroque in its dispensation. Therefore, as much as Ape and Essence is not close to smut, some of the featured contents in Ape and Essence can raise eyebrows for many guardians more so for the section of people who are intellectually stunted hence having a possibility of causing a fuss over the storyline (Sutton, 2013). In Ape and Essence , the author has shown that people together with their lives have immense control as well as regulations from different disciplinary systems and as a result, their minds tend to be controlled by the disciplines and in other instance; their bodies can be compelled into submission through discipline (Huxley, 2005). This is evident in the Belial community of Ape and Essence whereby the people are considered to be properties of the State hence making their goals and aspirations to be based on meeting the needs of the State.

Apes and not another Animal

The approach which Huxley used in developing his story, Apes, and Essence was not bound to be strictly biological considering that the nature in which life has exhibited its multiplicity and the intricate nature of the human fugue (Gruber, Zuberbuhler, Clement & Van Schaik, 2015). Huxley preferred to avoid such a narrow strategy when developing Ape and Essence. Therefore, the use of apes in Ape and Essence helped the author to gain more satirical advantage despite the narrow approach the story would take as it proposed that a man who believes is held in other lower forms of life would diminish in the event he mortifies his supposed peers (Smith & Panaitiu, 2015). Moreover, the satirical leverage of allowing Huxley to emphasize on the zoological facto is immense, considering that the use of ape imagery would undermine the notion as well as intellectual pretensions of the majority of his characters (Mendes, Rakoczy & Call, 2008). This has enabled Ape and Essence to have an excellent idea which involves ironies in a progressive disparity among the lofty concepts of the characters that have their base attitude. The use of ape characters in the story has developed an aspect of animal imagery, which has facilitated Huxley to create his loathe with the sexual conduct of the supposedly released moderns.

According to Daley, the origin of man has a little comparison with the apes and Huxley has used this platform to remind the readers about this association (Daley, 2013). Furthermore, the strategy of accentuating the held development of most of the characters has allowed complete imagery in different patterns such as criminals and victims, base animality, as well as childishness. Hence, this can be used to suggest that various characters have created a mess of the evolutionary binds with the reflection that they have never developed (Smith & Panaitiu, 2015). Based on the author's choice and preference, it would be possible that Huxley would be retrieving a hint from the animal kingdom to reflect on people. Therefore, this may be seen as an opportunity not only to satirize humanity but also the disinterest baboons towards their young ones considering in the novel the offspring are perceived with horrifying deformities, and they have to be killed (Gruber, Zuberbuhler, Clement & Van Schaik, 2015).

The use of the animal attribute, specifically, the apes have revealed an arrested development, but that does not disregard the aggressive behavior considering that throughout the Ape and Essence, there are numerous cases of criminal and victim patterns (Mendes, Rakoczy & Call, 2008). For instance, there are various predatory characters which are evidenced in the story, and other characters were turned into victims and preys of their heinous acts throughout the society's struggle for existence after the nuclear apocalypse (Smith, 2007). Based on the storyline and how it has been set up, Huxley wanted to replace the ethical process for the cosmic one, and as a result, it would replace the natural man with an ethical man. It is worth noting that human being was meant to escape from their position from the animal kingdom whereby the dominant aspect was the non-moral evolution and as a result develop a kingdom of Man which was ruled by the principle of moral evolution (Babaee & Yahya, 2014). Therefore, the imagery used by Huxley by implementing the use of animals (apes) served as a significant commentary on the subject of diverse laws which belonged to the society, but its behaviors are typical of the animal kingdom thus the reason he opted to use the apes as some of the characters in his story.