Brave New World by Aldous Huxley (1932)

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Brave New World by Aldous Huxley (1932)
A satirical piece of fiction, not scientific
prophesy
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"How beauteous mankind is! O brave new world that
has such people in it.-The Tempest

• Having been exiled on an island with her
  fatherMiranda makes this remark when she sees
  other human beings for the first time.
• Ironically these same people had plotted against
  her and her father, and had attempted murder but
  a short while before she sees them for the first
  time.
• But she is so overcome by the wonderment of what
  she is seeing for the first time that she calls
  "good" that which is potentially or actually
  evil.
• Huxley likens those who consider scientific
  advancement an unsullied good to Miranda - both
  are mistaken in their assumptions but blissfully
  happy in their ignorance.

Miranda The Tempest By John William Waterhouse
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Satire

• A piece of literature designed to ridicule the
  subject of the work.
• While satire can be funny, its aim is not to
  amuse, but to arouse contempt.
• Ridicule, irony, exaggeration, and several other
  techniques are almost always present.

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Huxleys ancestry brought down on him a weight
of intellectual authority and a momentum of moral
obligations.

• Born in Surrey, England in 1894 to an illustrious
  family deeply rooted in Englands literary and
  scientific community
• His grandfather was Henry Thomas Huxley who
  helped developed the Theory of Evolution.

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His background conspired to form the perfect
storm of science vs. technology

• His mother was
• the sister of the novelist Mrs. Humphrey and
• the niece of the poet Mathew Arnold
• the granddaughter of Thomas Arnold, a famous
  educator. He was a character in the novel Tom
  Browns Schooldays by Thomas Hughes

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Not Only History, but Experience Informs the
Narrative

• Suffers from an eye illness that almost blinds
  him
• Attended Oxford University and graduated with
  honors
• Could not enlist in WWI due to eye problems
• Dreamed of being a doctor but poor eyesight
  prevented him from realizing his dream
• Poor eyesight also prevented him from entering
  the army during WWI, so he becamewait for it, A
  TEACHER ugh.
• Eyesight made him extremely dependent on his
  first wife

• The family the world in 1925 and 1926.
• His experiences in these places provided material
  to be used in Brave New World (ie. Benito
  Mussolini led an authoritarian government that
  fought against birth control in order to produce
  manpower for the war)
• Mother dies when he is 14 notes in his
  autobiography that her death gave him a sense of
  the transience of happiness.

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And It Can Make You a Little Touched

• Experimented with LSD he took the drug over a
  dozen times in 10 years.
• Legendary rock band The Doors took their name
  from Huxley's "The Doors Of Perception.".
• He allegedly declined a British knighthood in
  1959.
• He died on November 22, 1963, the same day
  President John F. Kennedy was shot to death in
  Dallas, Texas.
• Appears on the cover of The Beatles' "Sgt.
  Pepper's Lonely Hearts Club Band.

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Background of the Novel

• Brave New World (1932), brought Huxley
  international fame.
• Written just before the rise of dictators Adolf
  Hitler and Joseph Stalin, the novel did not
  incorporate the kind of dark and grim vision of
  totalitarianism later found in George Orwell's
  1984, which was published in 1948.
• Huxley later commented on this omission and
  reconsidered the ideas and themes of Brave New
  World in a collection of essays called Brave New
  World Revisited. (1958).
• He wrote other novels, short stories, and
  collections of essays over the years, which were,
  for the most part, popular and critically
  acclaimed. Despite being nearly blind all his
  life, he also wrote screenplays for Hollywood,
  most notably an adaptations of Jane Austen's
  Pride and Prejudice and Charlotte Brontë's Jane
  Eyre

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A World of Transient Happiness

• Huxleys world is a mix of his own scientific and
  literary background, his physical challenges, his
  heartbreaks, and his travels, All these views
  conspire with his prevailing political
  sensibilities and the history of the time to
  produce the strange landscape that is Brave New
  World.

• Actual happiness always looks pretty squalid in
  comparison with the overcompensations for misery.
  And, of course, stability isn't nearly so
  spectacular as instability. And being contented
  has none of the glamor of a good fight against
  misfortune, none of the picturesqueness of a
  struggle with temptation, or a fatal overthrow by
  passion or doubt. Happiness is never grand.

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Brave New World is visually pleasing but is an
unsettling, loveless and even sinister place
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The World of Brave New World

• Society where all aspects of an individual's life
  are determined by the state, beginning with
  conception and conveyor-belt reproduction.
• A government bureau, the Predestinators, decides
  all roles in the hierarchy.
• Children are raised and conditioned by the state
  bureaucracy, not brought up by natural families.
• There are only 10,000 surnames.
• Citizens must not fall in love, marry, or have
  their own kids.
• Controlled by the fear that a future world state
  may rob us of the right to be unhappy.

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Literary Elements

• settings (time) 2540 AD referred to in the
  novel as 632 years AF (After Ford), meaning 632
  years after production of the first Model T car
• narrator Third-person omniscient
• point of view narrated in the third person from
  the point of view of Bernard or John, but also
  from the point of view of Lenina, Helmholtz
  Watson, and Mustapha Mond

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This novel is more applicable today than it was
in 1932. This is a time of

• Propaganda
• Censorship
• Conformity
• genetic engineering
• social conditioning
• mindless entertainment.

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Major Ideas Within the Novels

• Huxley was influenced by the previously
  established caste system in Hinduism, which was
  abolished in 1949.
• Caste systems were created by predestination and
  their function in society.
• The caste system in Brave New World includes 5
  major castes named after Greek letters (ie. Alpha
  to Epsilon)
• There are differences in the members of castes
  (ie. outer appearance, intelligence, livelihood).
• As a result, everyone is happy and stability is
  achieved.

Alphas (?) highest, grey Betas (?)- bottle
green/mulberry Gammas (G)- leaf green Deltas (?)-
khaki Epsilons (?) lowest, black There are also
pluses and minuses with a caste (Alpha plus,
Delta minus) Variations in castes are achieved
through reproductive method (Bokanovsky for lower
castes) and oxygen deprivation.
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Function of the Caste System

• The society in Brave New World seeks to create
  happiness for everyone. Everyone is happy to
  belong to his or her caste. The caste system is
  needed to cover every little part of the
  processes that form the society (ie. work,
  housing, etc.). Everyone works for everyone.

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Bokanovsky Process

• Fertilization process used to create Deltas and
  Epsilons
• Divide fertilized eggs to produce identical twins
• Produces up to 96 embryos, but 72 is the average
• Primary instrument of social stability

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Hypnopaedia

• The greatest moralizing and socializing force of
  all time
• Sleep teaching
• Moral education
• Class conditioning
• The childs mind is these suggestions,and the
  sum of the suggestions is the childs mind

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Soma

• An anti- depressant and somewhat hallucinogenic
  drug used by World State citizens to escape their
  troubles
• Soma really exists and originated in India
• Soma Holidays Half a gramme for a half-holiday

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Orgy Porgy

• A sexual experience used to unify all people.
• NOTE Sex is not the focus, unity is.
• SOLIDARITY SERVICE
• Group of 12 men and women
• Drink strawberry flavored Soma
• Chant to music
• Spiritual experience
• Everyone belongs to everyone

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Historical Allusions in the Novel

• Henry Ford
• who has become a messianic figure to The World
  State. "Our Ford" is used in place of "Our Lord",
  as a credit to popularizing the use of the
  assembly line.

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Historical Allusions in the Novel

• Sigmund Freud
• "Our Freud" is sometimes said in place of "Our
  Ford" due to the link between Freud's
  psychoanalysis and the conditioning of humans,
  and Freud's popularization of the idea that
  sexual activity is essential to human happiness
  and need not be open to procreation. It is also
  strongly implied that citizens of the World State
  believe Freud and Ford to be the same person

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Historical Allusions in the Novel

• H. G. Wells
• "Dr. Wells", British writer and Utopian
  socialist, whose book Men Like Gods was an
  incentive for Brave New World. "All's well that
  ends Wells" wrote Huxley in his letters,
  criticizing Wells for anthropological assumptions
  Huxley found unrealistic.

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Historical Allusion in the Novel

• Ivan Petrovich Pavlov
• whose conditioning techniques are used to train
  infants.
• Thomas Malthus,
• whose name is used to describe the contraceptive
  techniques (Malthusian belt) practiced by women
  of the World State.

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Historical Allusions in the Novel

• William Shakespeare
• whose banned works are quoted throughout the
  novel by John, "the Savage". The plays quoted
  include Macbeth, The Tempest, Romeo and Juliet,
  Hamlet, King Lear, Troilus and Cressida, Measure
  for Measure and Othello. Mustapha Mond also knows
  them because he, as a World Controller, has
  access to a selection of books from throughout
  history, such as a Bible.

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Sources for Character Names and References

• Bernard Marx, from George Bernard Shaw and Karl
  Marx.
• Lenina Crowne, from Vladimir Lenin, the leader
  during the Russian Revolution.
• Fanny Crowne, from Fanny Kaplan, famous for an
  unsuccessful attempt to assassinate Lenin.
  Ironically, in the novel, Lenina and Fanny are
  friends.
• Polly Trotsky, from Leon Trotsky, the Russian
  revolutionary leader.
• Benito Hoover, from Benito Mussolini, dictator of
  Italy and Herbert Hoover, then President of the
  United States.
• Helmholtz Watson, from the German physician and
  physicist Hermann von Helmholtz and the American
  behaviorist John B. Watson.
• Darwin Bonaparte, from Napoleon Bonaparte, the
  leader of the First French Empire, and Charles
  Darwin, author of The Origin of Species.
• Herbert Bakunin, from Herbert Spencer, the
  English philosopher and Social Darwinist, and
  Mikhail Bakunin, a Russian philosopher and
  anarchist.
• Mustapha Mond, from Mustapha Kemal Atatürk,
  founder of Turkey after World War I, who pulled
  his country into modernisation and official
  secularism and Sir Alfred Mond, an industrialist
  and founder of the Imperial Chemical Industries
  conglomerate.

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Sources for Character Names and References

• Primo Mellon, from Miguel Primo de Rivera, prime
  minister and dictator of Spain (19231930), and
  Andrew Mellon, an American banker.
• Sarojini Engels, from Friedrich Engels, co-author
  of The Communist Manifesto along with Karl Marx
  and Sarojini Naidu, an Indian politician.
• Morgana Rothschild, from J P Morgan, US banking
  tycoon, and the Rothschild family, famous for its
  European banking operations.
• Fifi Bradlaugh, from the British political
  activist and atheist Charles Bradlaugh.
• Joanna Diesel, from Rudolf Diesel, the German
  engineer who invented the diesel engine.
• Clara Deterding, from Henri Deterding, one of the
  founders of the Royal Dutch Petroleum Company.
• Tom Kawaguchi, from the Japanese Buddhist monk
  Ekai Kawaguchi, the first recorded Japanese
  traveler to Tibet and Nepal.
• Jean-Jacques Habibullah, from the French
  political philosopher Jean-Jacques Rousseau and
  Habibullah Khan, who served as Emir of
  Afghanistan in the early 20th century.
• Miss Keate, the Eton headmistress, from
  nineteenth-century headmaster John Keate.
• Arch-Community Songster of Canterbury, a parody
  of the Archbishop of Canterbury and the Anglican
  Church's decision in August 1930 to approve
  limited use of contraception.
• Popé, from Popé, the Native American rebel who
  was blamed for the conflict now known as the
  Pueblo Revolt.
• John the Savage, after the term "noble savage"
  originally used in the verse drama The Conquest
  of Granada by John Dryden, and later erroneously
  associated with Rousseau.

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Essential Questions to connect the literature to
todays culture

• Is it better to be free than to be happy?
• Is freedom compatible with happiness?
• Is the collective more important than the
  individual?
• Can children be taught effectively to think in
  only one certain way?
• Can young people be taught so well that they
  never question their teachings later?
• Is stability more important than freedom?
• Can alterations made by advanced science to
  mankind be made permanent at the DNA-level?
• Can mankind be conditioned by science?
• Should the individual be limited/controlled for
  the greater good? If so, how much?

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Do You Agree?

• History is worthless.
• Everyone belongs to everyone else.
• Throwing something away is better than fixing it.
• Everyone needs a mother.
• The elderly are valuable members of society.
• Cleanliness is next to godliness.
• Never put off till tomorrow the fun you can have
  today.
• You have to experience misery to be able to
  experience joy.