Brave New World

Aldous Huxley
Table of contents 1.
2.
AUTHOR’S BIOGRAPHY
CONTEXT
3. SUMMARY
4. THEMES AND SYMBOLS
5. CHARACTERS
6. RELEVANT SCENES
7. SHORT DESCRIPTION OF
MODERNISM
8. HOW DOES MODERNISM
APPLY TO THE NOVEL
9. PARALLEL WITH 1984
 Aldous Huxley
Aldous Huxley, in full Aldous Leonard
Huxley, (born July 26, 1894—died
November 22, 1963) was an English
novelist and critic gifted with an acute and
far-ranging intelligence whose works are
notable for their wit and pessimistic satire. 
Huxley established himself as a major
author with his first two published novels, 
Crome Yellow (1921) and Antic Hay
 (1923); these are witty and malicious
 satires on the pretensions of the English
literary and intellectual coteries of his day.

20XX presentation title 3

 Brave New World
Brave New World (1932) marked a turning point
in Huxley’s career: like his earlier work, it is a
fundamentally satiric novel, but it also vividly
expresses Huxley’s distrust of 20th-century
trends in both politics and technology, a model
for much dystopian science fiction that followed.
The novel presents a nightmarish vision of a
future society in which psychological 
conditioning forms the basis for a scientifically
determined and immutable caste system that, in
turn, obliterates the individual and grants all
control to the World State.

20XX presentation title 4

 Context

After World War I and the

“Brave New World” was American crisis, followed
Malthusian theory of
written between the World by the European crisis,
overpopulation and food
Wars, when technological people turned their attention
shortage
optimism was at its peak. to technology, hoping to
save them

20XX presentation title 5

 Summary
• The book opens with the Director of the Central London
Hatcheries presenting to a group of students the
institution and how it works. In this year, 632 A.F.,
humans don't have parents. Instead, they are mass-
produced in bottles, and ever since they're babies they are
conditioned to be materialistic, to be sexually
promiscuous, and to use a drug called soma to avoid
feeling any kind of unpleasant emotions. These humans,
who are part of a strict hierarchy, are indoctrinated
through hypnotherapy with various propaganda phrases
that are meant to assure collective happiness and peace.

20XX Brave New World 6

 • Bernard Marx, a worker at this centre, stands out from his colleagues by
being notoriously known to not consume soma. This allows him to be
more critical of the system he's in and more aware of his condition,
however, this comes with the price of sadness, dissatisfaction, and the
risk of being deported to Iceland. The only one who likes his peculiarity
is Lenina, who agrees to go on vacation with him to the Savage
Reservation in New Mexico.

20XX presentation title 7

 • Here, Lenina and Bernard remain shocked and disgusted
by the unsanitary conditions the savages live in and by
the violent religious rituals they engage in. They end up
meeting Linda, a civilised woman that was rescued by
the locals, and her son, John, whom she thought how to
read and what are the ways of the world outside the
reservation. It turns out that his father is actually the
Director of the Central London Hatcheries who quits his
job after the two are taken back to the civilised world.
While his mom overdoses on soma, John is taken by
Bernard to meetings with important people. This way,
Bernard's reputation is redeemed and he starts enjoying
his new life.

20XX presentation title 8

 • However, despite the fascination the public has
for him and even the sexual interest Lenina
shows him, John is dissatisfied with his life.
Wanting to live his life by Shakespearian
standards, one night, he refuses to participate to
a dinner party where very important guests
have been invited. This situation causes great
damage to Bernand's social status. After Linda's
death, John becomes enraged and tries to
convince a group of Delta clones to revolt. The
police intervene and John, Bernard and his
friend, Helmholtz, are brought to Mustafa
Mond's office, one of the ten World Controllers.
He and John start debating at length the way the
state is manipulating people and they argue
about art, religion, science, and truth.

20XX presentation title 9

 • John chooses to retreat in solitude and tries to live independent from
society. After he's been filmed in a ritual of purification by self-
flagellation, a bunch of citizens comes to visit and laugh at John
whipping Lenina and himself. The scene ends in an orgy in which the
young man takes part as well. The next day, realizing he can't live
without submitting to the World State society, John commits suicide.

20XX presentation title 10

Themes
•Technology and control
Soma
“And if ever, by some unlucky chance, anything unpleasant should somehow happen, why,
there’s always soma to give you a holiday from the facts. And there’s always soma to
calm your anger, to reconcile you to your enemies, to make you patient and longsuffering. […] Now, you
swallow two or three half-gramme tablets, and there you are. Anybody can be virtuous now. You can carry at
least half your morality about in a bottle. Christianity without tears – that’s what soma is.”

Hypnopaedia -promotes consumption

“Ending is better than mending” “The more stitches, the less riches” “I do love flying, I do love having new
clothes”
-promotes class segregation
“Alpha children wear grey. They work much harder than we do, because they’re so frightfully clever. I’m really
awfully glad I’m a Beta, because I don’t work so hard. And then we are much better than the Gammas and
Deltas. Gammas are stupid. They all wear green, and Delta children wear khaki. Oh no, I don’t want to play with
Delta children. And Epsilons are still worse. They’re too stupid to be able..”

"It isn't only art that's incompatible with happiness; it's also science. Science is dangerous; we have to keep it
most carefully chained and muzzled."

20XX presentation title 11

Themes
• Sexuality and reproduction
“Everybody belongs to everyone else”
“Chastity means passion, chastity means neurasthenia. And passion and neurasthenia mean instability. And
instability means the end of civilisation. You can’t have a lasting civilisation without plenty of pleasant vices.”
“ Yes, and civilization is sterilization. ”
• Happiness vs. truth
“You can't make tragedies without social instability. The world's stable now. People are happy; they get what
they want, and they never want what they can't get. They're well off; they're safe; they're never ill; they're not
afraid of death; they're blissfully ignorant of passion and old age; they're plagued with no mothers or fathers;
they've got no wives, or children, or lovers to feel strongly about; they're so conditioned that they practically
can't help behaving as they ought to behave.”
“It’s curious…to read what people in the time of Our Ford used to write about scientific progress. They
seemed to have imagined that it could be allowed to go on indefinitely, regardless of everything else.
Knowledge was the highest good, truth the supreme value; all the rest was secondary and subordinate. True,
ideas were beginning to change even then. Our Ford himself did a great deal to shift the emphasis from truth
and beauty to comfort and happiness. Mass production demanded the shift.”
“But truth’s a menace, science is a public danger.”

20XX presentation title 12

Symbols
• Shakespeare
John grew up in the Reservation, thus he had The Complete Works of William Shakespeare
to read and learn English. Throughout the novel John cites passages from Romeo and
Juliet, Hamlet, but the most influential is The Tempest.

The name of the novel comes from Miranda’s exclamation:

“ O wonder!
How many goodly creatures are there here!
How beauteous mankind is! O brave new world,
That has such people in’t!”

20XX presentation title 13

Symbols
• Henry Ford
Father figure, deity (“Our Ford” “Fordliness”)

After Christ => After Ford (“The Year of Ford”)

“Ford, we are twelve; oh, make us one,

Like drops within the Social River;
Oh, make us now together run
“…you all remember, I suppose,
As swiftly as thy shining Flivver.
that beautiful and inspired saying
...
of Our Ford's: History is bunk."
Orgy-porgy, Ford and fun,
Kiss the girls and make them One.
Boys at one with girls at peace;
Orgy-porgy gives release.”

20XX presentation title 14

Satire
Utilitarianism –happiness is maximized
“Every one works for every one else. We can’t do
without any one. Even Epsilons are useful. We
couldn’t do without Epsilons. Every one works
for every one else. We can’t do without any one.”

Industrialization- turns humans into machines.

Even humans are mass-produced.

Consumerism
“You can’t consume much if you sit still and
read books.”

Central planning

20XX presentation title 15

 Characters

20XX presentation title 16

 Characters

20XX presentation title 17

 Characters

20XX presentation title 18

 Characters

20XX presentation title 19

 1. Babies being conditioned to hate nature and books
 

In chapter 2, it's presented to the students the process in which the babies are conditioned to
''be safe'' from books and nature by inducing pain through electric shocks. When one of the
students asks why they should hate nature the director says:

Not so very long ago (a century or thereabouts), Gammas, Deltas, even Epsilons, had been
conditioned to like flowers–flowers in particular and wild nature in general. The idea was to
make them want to be going out into the country at every available opportunity, and so compel
them to consume transport.
“And didn’t they consume transport?” asked the student.
“Quite a lot,” the D.H.C. replied. “But nothing else.”
Primroses and landscapes, he pointed out, have one grave defect: they are gratuitous. A love of
nature keeps no factories busy. '
 
Q: In what way does nature make people turn away from excessive
consumerism?

20XX presentation title 20

2. Bernand's transformation

At the beginning we see Bernand as being marginalized because he doesn't fit the physical characteristics of his
social class and also because he refuses to take soma. During his date with Lenina, when he wants to watch the sea in
silence, Bernand says:

“It makes me feel as though …” he hesitated, searching for words with which to express himself, “as though I were
more me, if you see what I mean. More on my own, not so completely a part of something else. Not just a cell in the
social body. Doesn’t it make you feel like that, Lenina?”
But Lenina was crying. “It’s horrible, it’s horrible,” she kept repeating. “And how can you talk like that about not
wanting to be a part of the social body? After all, every one works for every one else. We can’t do without any one.''

However, after he gains recognition from society as John's guide, his initial mindset is forgotten and he starts to
enjoy what this world has to offer him, just like his peers.
 
Q: What do you think this says about the human condition and the way in which society
takes advantage of that? Could you possibly relate this to the way in which our system
works today?
 3. John's revolution and the debate with Mustafa Mond

After John's attempt to start a revolution by making the children free ''whether they want to or not'', he is called to Mustafa
Mond's office where they have a debate about the way in which society works.

Mustafa Mond: People still went on talking about truth and beauty as though they were the sovereign goods. Right up to the time
of the Nine Years’ War. That made them change their tune all right. What’s the point of truth or beauty or knowledge when the
anthrax bombs are popping all around you? That was when science first began to be controlled–after the Nine Years’ War.
People were ready to have even their appetites controlled then. Anything for a quiet life. We’ve gone on controlling ever since. It
hasn’t been very good for truth, of course. But it’s been very good for happiness. One can’t have something for nothing.
Happiness has got to be paid for.
 
John: “But I like the inconveniences.”
“We don’t,” said the Controller. “We prefer to do things comfortably.”
“But I don’t want comfort. I want God, I want poetry, I want real danger, I want freedom, I want goodness. I want sin.”
“In fact,” said Mustapha Mond, “you’re claiming the right to be unhappy.
 
Q: With whom do you agree the most? Would you prefer a life where you have no choice, no personality,
but one that is comfortable, happy, and with no war or a life where you feel the greatest lows but, maybe,
also the greatest highs?
20XX presentation title 22
 4. John's suicide
After he decides to live life away from civilisation, John is caught
during his purification ritual and his life turns into a joke, a source of
entertainment for the ones who came to witness his downfall, fascinated
by the horror of pain. In the end, John commits suicide.
 
But when it came to pan-glandular biscuits and vitaminized beef-
surrogate, he had not been able to resist the shopman’s persuasion.
Looking at the tins now, he bitterly reproached himself for his
weakness. Loathesome civilized stuff! He had made up his mind that he
would never eat it, even if he were starving. “That’ll teach them,” he
thought vindictively. It would also teach him.
 
Q: What do you think the ending of the novel is trying
to say?

20XX presentation title 23

 Modernism
• Modernism is a literary and cultural international movement which
flourished in the first four decades of the 20th century. It reflects a
sense of cultural crisis which was both exciting and disquieting, in that
it opened up a whole new vista of human possibilities at the same time
as putting into question any previously accepted means of grounding
and evaluating new ideas. Modernism is marked by experimentation,
particularly manipulation of form, and by the realization that
knowledge is not absolute.

20XX presentation title 24

Characteristics of modernism
EXPERIMENTATION

INDIVIDUALISM

ABSURDITY

SYMBOLISM FORMALISM
• Fear of technology –
cold, sick, dead
environment
 • Industrialization and the death of
God:
The focus shifted from religion to
technology, having Henry Ford, an
American industrialist, as its key
figure. (Fordism, Fordship, 632
A.F.)

Christianity without tears–that’s

what soma is.

20XX presentation title 27

 • Experimentation – sudden
alteration of narrative plans

20XX presentation title 28

 • Absurdity – having a family is an abomination
• Things being considered in terms of their function – humans are seen
as objects

Everyone belongs to everyone else.

20XX presentation title 29

Brave New World vs. Nineteen Eighty-Four
SIMILARITIES
MAIN DIFFERENCES
Brave New World Nineteen Eighty-Four
-Satire
-People controlled by fear -Anti-totalitarian
-People controlled by
-Limitative in terms of -Censorship
pleasure (soma)
technology -Limited expression of thoughts-exile or
-Accent put on
-Encourages biological torture
technology
reproduction -Technology in order to control population
-Synthetic production -Ruling class-the only one with access to the
of humans -Rationalization
-Intimacy seen as a threat truth, the only one who can see through
-Consumer’s heaven propaganda
-Lack of intimacy seen when the objective is not
reproduction -Propaganda to instill control (hypnopaedia
as a threat or slogans)

20XX presentation title 30

thank you