Brave New World

1. Brave New World By Aldous Huxley, 1932

2. Topics for presentations • Presentation 4, Friday, Nov. 1 (Brave New World): Group 7, Group 4, Group 1 (about 15-20 minutes each) • Satire and humor in Brave New World. • Discuss the historical meaning of the character names (Marx, Lenina, Ford, Bernard (Shaw)). Why does Huxley use them? • Most World State members are happy, though people like John, Bernard, and Helmholtz are not. Why? What is wrong with World State society? • Are there things in life more valuable than being happy? Why are they denied in the World State? • Huxley once complained that a society where people were kept under control through material pleasures wasn’t much different from California. Do you think there are cultures now that are too much like the World State? • Factory production (even of people) in the novel. • The role of sex and love in the novel. • Discuss the castes of people in the novel. Are they necessary? Is it true that a society of only high intellectuals would be a disaster? • Is John really more “free” in the savage reservation than the people in the cities? • Is pain really necessary for the possibility of true happiness?

3. Aldous Huxley • 1894-1963 • Suffered from poor vision in his adult life • Grandson of famous Victorian scientist and atheist Thomas Huxley

4. Characters – Do you sympathize with any of them? • Bernard Marx Lenina Crowne John Savage Linda The Director (Thomas) – World Controller Mustapha Mond – Fanny – Henry Foster – Helmholtz Watson

5. MovieAdaptations… are mostlybad…

6. Themes Factory Production of People Is the book in a way the total triumph of capitalism? Even people can be produced to order on an assembly line as a product.

7. Themes Caste System All people are designed to be happy with their situation. Is this so bad?

8. Themes Ford as a Religion All religions have been abolished, but is there still a need people have for something more? The World State replaces the cross of Christ with “T” – referring to the Model T.

9. Themes Sexual Freedom and the Abolishment of the Family Unit Huxley wrote before birth control pills were invented. Is it possible to imagine a culture with no mothers, fathers, or families? If drugs are freely available, how could they be controlled?

10. Themes Psychological Conditioning & Propaganda If a slave is happy, is he/she still a slave? But does it work? How can people still know that ‘mother’ and ‘Shakespeare’ are dirty words?

11. Themes No Philosophy or Art: It expresses useless history and emotions Is pain necessary for happiness? Oh wonder How many goodly creatures are there here!How beauteous mankind is! O brave new world,That has such people in't!The Tempest (V, i)

12. Themes Comparison to 1984 George Orwell’s 1984, written in 1948, depicts a dystopia modeled after Nazism and Soviet communism. Society is ruled by violent force and torture for the benefit of a powerful elite.

13. Themes BNW versus 1984 What does it mean that what we love will ruin us? Is it possible?

14. Themes Satire or prediction? Huxley couldn’t have predicted a post-assembly line future with computers. Does that make his book less valuable?

15. Chapter 1 • A SQUAT grey building of only thirty-four stories. Over the main entrance the words, CENTRAL LONDON HATCHERY AND CONDITIONING CENTRE, and, in a shield, the World State's motto, COMMUNITY, IDENTITY, STABILITY. • What do these lines suggest? What is their tone?

16. Chapter 1 • …the original egg was in a fair way to becoming anything from eight to ninety-six embryos– a prodigious improvement, you will agree, on nature. Identical twins–but not in piddling twos and threes as in the old viviparous days, when an egg would sometimes accidentally divide; actually by dozens, by scores at a time. • But one of the students was fool enough to ask where the advantage lay. • "My good boy!" The Director wheeled sharply round on him. "Can't you see? Can't you see?" He raised a hand; his expression was solemn. "Bokanovsky's Process is one of the major instruments of social stability!" • Solved by standard Gammas, unvarying Deltas, uniform Epsilons. Millions of identical twins. The principle of mass production at last applied to biology

17. Chapter 1 • "The lower the caste," said Mr. Foster, "the shorter the oxygen." The first organ affected was the brain. After that the skeleton. At seventy per cent of normal oxygen you got dwarfs. At less than seventy eyeless monsters. • "Who are no use at all," concluded Mr. Foster. • "But in Epsilons," said Mr. Foster very justly, "we don't need human intelligence." • Didn't need and didn't get it. But though the Epsilon mind was mature at ten, the Epsilon body was not fit to work till eighteen. Long years of superfluous and wasted immaturity. If the physical development could be speeded up till it was as quick, say, as a cow's, what an enormous saving to the Community! • "Enormous!" murmured the students. Mr. Foster's enthusiasm was infectious.

18. Chapter 2 • Turned, the babies at once fell silent, then began to crawl towards those clusters of sleek colours, those shapes so gay and brilliant on the white pages. From the ranks of the crawling babies came little squeals of excitement, gurgles and twitterings of pleasure. • The Director rubbed his hands. Then, "Watch carefully," he said. The Head Nurse, who was standing by a switchboard at the other end of the room, pressed down a little lever. There was a violent explosion. Shriller and ever shriller, a siren shrieked. Alarm bells maddeningly sounded. • "Offer them the flowers and the books again." • The nurses obeyed; but at the approach of the roses, at the mere sight the infants shrank away in horror, the volume of their howling suddenly increased. • "They'll grow up with what the psychologists used to call an 'instinctive' hatred of books and flowers. Reflexes unalterably conditioned. They'll be safe from books and botany all their lives."

19. Chapter 3 • He let out the amazing truth. For a very long period before the time of Our Ford, and even for some generations afterwards, erotic play between children had been regarded as abnormal (there was a roar of laughter); and not only abnormal, actually immoral (no!): and had therefore been rigorously suppressed. • A look of astonished incredulity appeared on the faces of his listeners. Poor little kids not allowed to amuse themselves? They could not believe it. • "Nothing?" • "In most cases, till they were over twenty years old." • "Twenty years old?" echoed the students in a chorus of loud disbelief. "But what happened?" they asked. "What were the results?" • "The results were terrible."

20. Chapter 3 • "You all remember," said the Controller, in his strong deep voice, "you all remember, I suppose, that beautiful and inspired saying of Our Ford's: History is bunk. • He waved his hand; and it was as though, with an invisible feather wisk, he had brushed away a little dust, and the dust was Thebes and Babylon and Greece. Whisk. Whisk–and where was Odysseus, where was Job, where were Jupiter and Gotama and Jesus? Whisk–and those specks of antique dirt called Athens and Rome, Jerusalem and the Middle Kingdom–all were gone. Whisk–the place where Italy had been was empty. Whisk, the cathedrals; whisk, whisk, King Lear and the Thoughts of Pascal. Whisk, Passion; whisk, Requiem; whisk, Symphony; whisk …

21. Chapter 3 • Our Ford–or Our Freud, as, for some inscrutable reason, he chose to call himself whenever he spoke of psychological matters–Our Freud had been the first to reveal the appalling dangers of family life. The world was full of fathers–was therefore full of misery; full of mothers–therefore of every kind of perversion from sadism to chastity. No wonder these poor pre-moderns were mad and wicked and miserable. Their world didn't allow them to take things easily, didn't allow them to be sane, virtuous, happy. What with the prohibitions they were not conditioned to obey, what with the temptations and the lonely remorses, what with all the diseases… Everywhere exclusiveness, a narrow channelling of impulse and energy. • "But every one belongs to every one else," he concluded, citing the hypnopædic proverb. • The students nodded, emphatically agreeing with a statement which upwards of sixty-two thousand repetitions in the dark had made them accept, not merely as true, but as axiomatic, self-evident, utterly indisputable.

22. Chapter 3 • "Fortunate boys!" said the Controller. "No pains have been spared to make your lives emotionally easy–to preserve you, so far as that is possible, from having emotions at all." • "Ford's in his flivver," murmured the D.H.C. "All's well with the world.“ • [A flivver is slang for an inexpensive car.]

23. Chapter 3 • "The Nine Years' War began in A.F. 141.” • "The Nine Years' War, the great Economic Collapse. There was a choice between World Control and destruction. Between stability and …“ • "Every man, woman and child compelled to consume so much a year. In the interests of industry. The sole result … Conscientious objection on an enormous scale. Anything not to consume. Back to nature." • "Eight hundred Simple Lifers were mowed down by machine guns at Golders Green. Then came the famous British Museum Massacre. Two thousand culture fans gassed with dichlorethyl sulphide.” • "In the end," said Mustapha Mond, "the Controllers realized that force was no good. The slower but infinitely surer methods of ectogenesis, neo-Pavlovian conditioning and hypnopædia …"

24. Chapter 3 • "Accompanied by a campaign against the Past; by the closing of museums, the blowing up of historical monuments (luckily most of them had already been destroyed during the Nine Years' War); by the suppression of all books published before A.F. 15O. And a man called Shakespeare. You've never heard of them of course.'‘ • "There was a thing called Christianity. All crosses had their tops cut and became T's. We have the World State now. And Ford's Day celebrations, and Community Sings, and Solidarity Services.“ • "Ford, how I hate them!" Bernard Marx was thinking. • "There was a thing called Heaven; but all the same they used to drink enormous quantities of alcohol." • "Like meat, like so much meat."

25. Chapter 3 • "Idiots, swine!" Bernard Marx was saying to himself, as he walked down the corridor to the lift. • "Now–such is progress–the old men work, the old men have no time, no leisure from pleasure, not a moment to sit down and think–or if ever by some unlucky chance such a crevice of time should yawn, there is always soma, delicious soma…" • "Go away, little girl," shouted the D.H.C. angrily. "Go away, little boy! Can't you see that his fordship's busy? Go and do your erotic play somewhere else." • "Suffer little children," said the Controller.

26. Chapter 4 "Able," was the verdict of his superiors. "Perhaps, (and they would shake their heads, would significantly lower their voices) "a little too able." A mental excess had produced in Helmholtz Watson effects very similar to those which, in Bernard Marx, were the result of a physical defect. Too little bone and brawn had isolated Bernard from his fellow men. That which had made Helmholtz so uncomfortably aware of being himself and all alone was too much ability. What the two men shared was the knowledge that they were individuals. But whereas the physically defective Bernard had suffered all his life from the consciousness of being separate, it was only quite recently that, grown aware of his mental excess, Helmholtz Watson realized that sport, women, communal activities were only, so far as he was concerned, second bests. Really, and at the bottom, he was interested in something else. But in what? In what?

27. Chapter 4 "Able," was the verdict of his superiors. "Perhaps, (and they would shake their heads, would significantly lower their voices) "a little too able." A mental excess had produced in Helmholtz Watson effects very similar to those which, in Bernard Marx, were the result of a physical defect. Too little bone and brawn had isolated Bernard from his fellow men. That which had made Helmholtz so uncomfortably aware of being himself and all alone was too much ability. What the two men shared was the knowledge that they were individuals. But whereas the physically defective Bernard had suffered all his life from the consciousness of being separate, it was only quite recently that, grown aware of his mental excess, Helmholtz Watson realized that sport, women, communal activities were only, so far as he was concerned, second bests. Really, and at the bottom, he was interested in something else. But in what? In what?

28. Chapter 5 "I'm glad I'm not an Epsilon," said Lenina, with conviction. "And if you were an Epsilon," said Henry, "your conditioning would have made you no less thankful that you weren't a Beta or an Alpha." As they flew over the crematorium, the plane shot upwards on the column of hot air rising from the chimneys, only to fall as suddenly when it passed. "What a marvellous switchback!" Lenina laughed delightedly. But Henry's tone was almost, for a moment, melancholy. "Do you know what that was?" he said. "It was some human being finally disappearing. Going up in a squirt of hot gas. It would be curious to know who it was…” He sighed. Then, in a resolutely cheerful voice, "Anyhow," he concluded, "there's one thing we can be certain of; whoever he may have been, he was happy." "Yes, everybody's happy now," echoed Lenina. They had heard the words repeated a hundred and fifty times every night for twelve years.

29. Chapter 6 "Oh, he's coming!" screamed Clara Deterding. "Aie!" and it was as though she were having her throat cut. Feeling that it was time for him to do something, Bernard also jumped up and shouted: "I hear him; He's coming." But it wasn't true. He heard nothing and, for him, nobody was coming. Nobody–in spite of the music, in spite of the mounting excitement. But he waved his arms, he shouted with the best of them; and when the others began to jig and stamp and shuffle, he also jigged and shuffled.

30. Chapter 7 On their way back across the Channel, Bernard insisted on stopping his propeller and hovering within a hundred feet of the waves. "Look," he commanded. "But it's horrible," said Lenina, shrinking back from the window. She was appalled by the rushing emptiness of the night, by the black foam-flecked water heaving beneath them, by the pale face of the moon, so haggard and distracted among the hastening clouds. "Let's turn on the radio. Quick!" She reached for the dialling knob on the dash-board and turned it at random. "… skies are blue inside of you," sang sixteen tremoloing falsettos, "the weather's always …"

31. Chapter 7 “Bernard, you're saying the most awful things." "Don't you wish you were free, Lenina?" "I don't know what you mean. I am free. Free to have the most wonderful time. Everybody's happy nowadays." He laughed, "Yes, 'Everybody's happy nowadays.' We begin giving the children that at five. But wouldn't you like to be free to be happy in some other way, Lenina? In your own way, for example; not in everybody else's way." "I don't know what you mean," she repeated. Then, turning to him, "Oh, do let's go back, Bernard," she besought; "I do so hate it here."

32. Chapter 7 "Two hundred repetitions, twice a week from fourteen to sixteen and a half," was all his comment. The mad bad talk rambled on. "I want to know what passion is," she heard him saying. "I want to feel something strongly." "When the individual feels, the community reels," Lenina pronounced. "Well, why shouldn't it reel a bit?" "Bernard!" But Bernard remained unabashed. "Adults intellectually and during working hours," he went on. "Infants where feeling and desire are concerned. It suddenly struck me the other day," continued Bernard, "that it might be possible to be an adult all the time." "I don't understand." Lenina's tone was firm.