Title: Brave New World by Aldous Huxley
1Brave New Worldby Aldous Huxley
- A satirical piece of fiction, not scientific
prophecy
2Satire
- 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.
3- Brave New World is an unsettling, loveless and
even sinister place
4What does this mean?
- Reading Brave New World elicits the same
disturbing feelings in the reader which the
society it depicts has vanquished.
5- Huxley exploits anxieties about Soviet Communism
and American capitalism. - The price of universal happiness will be the
sacrifice of honored shibboleths of our culture
motherhood, home, family, freedom, even
love.
6- Mustapha Mond, Resident Controller of Western
Europe, governs a 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.
7- Brave New World, then, is centered around control
and manipulation
- He instills the fear that a future world state
may rob us of the right to be unhappy.
8- time and place written 1931, England
- date of first publication 1932
- settings (place) England, Savage Reservation in
New Mexico
9- settings (time) 2540 AD referred to in the
novel as 632 years AF (After Ford), meaning 632
years after the 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
10- Happiness derives from consuming mass-produced
goods, sports such as Obstacle Golf and
Centrifugal Bumble-puppy, promiscuous sex, the
feelies, and most famously of all, a supposedly
perfect pleasure-drug, soma.
11Soma
- People resort to soma when they feel depressed,
angry or have negative thoughts. - They take it because their lives, like society
itself, are empty of spirituality or higher
meaning. - Soma keeps the population comfortable with their
lot.
12- Soma is a very one-dimensional euphoriant. It
gives rise to only a shallow and intellectually
uninteresting well-being.
It provides a mindless imbecile happiness -- an
escapism which makes people comfortable with
their lack of freedom.
13- Huxley seeks to warn the reader against
scientific utopianism (impracticable
perfectionism)
14- Creative and destructive impulses have been
purged. The capacity for spirituality has been
extinguished.
15- Life is nice - but somehow a bit flat. In the
words of the Resident Controller of Western
Europe "No pains have been spared to make your
lives emotionally easy - to preserve you, as far
as that is possible, from having emotions at all."
16- Life-long emotional well-being is not genetically
pre-programmed. It isn't even assured from birth
by the soma. - For example, babies are traumatized with electric
shock conditioning.
17- Toddlers from the lower orders are terrorized
with loud noises. This sort of aversion-therapy
serves to condition them against liking books. -
We are told the inhabitants of the Brave New
World are happy. Yet they experience unpleasant
thoughts, feelings and emotions.
18- The Brave New World is a totalitarian
welfare-state. - There is no war, poverty or crime.
- Society is genetically predestined by caste.
Alphas, the most intellectual, are the top-dogs.
Gammas, Deltas and Epsilons toil away at the
bottom. The lower orders are necessary because
Alphas, even when they take soma, could never be
happy doing menial jobs.
19- BNW is set in the year 632 AF (After Ford). Its
biotechnology is highly advanced.
- Yet the society itself has no historical dynamic
History is bunk. In this utopia, knowledge of
the past is banned by the Controllers.
20- The Brave New World is not an exciting place to
live in. - It is geared to the consumption of mass-produced
goods Ending is better than mending. - Society is shaped by a single political ideology.
The motto of the world state is Community,
Identity, Stability.
21- There is no depth of feeling, no growth of ideas,
and no artistic creativity. - Individuality is suppressed. Intellectual
discovery has been abolished.
- Clones, the BNW inhabitants, are laboratory-grown
and bottled from the hatchery. - They are conditioned and brainwashed, even in
their sleep. They are never educated to prize
thinking for themselves.
22- This novel is more applicable today than it was
in 1932. This is a time of
propaganda, censorship, conformity, genetic
engineering, social conditioning, and mindless
entertainment.
- This was what Huxley saw in our future. His book
is a warning.
23Essential 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?
24- 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?
25- Universal happiness keeps the
wheels steadily turning truth and beauty cant.
Aldous Huxley
26Now lets get into the text!