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Brave New World is a dystopian novel by Aldous Huxley, first published in 1932. Set in London in 2540 (or AF 632), the novel anticipates developments in reproductive technology, biological engineering, and sleep-learning that combine to change society.
The world it describes could also be a utopia, albeit an ironic one: humanity is carefree, healthy and technologically advanced. Warfare and poverty have been eliminated and everyone is permanently happy. The irony is that all of these things have been achieved by eliminating many things from which people currently derive happiness—family, cultural diversity, art, literature, science, religion, and philosophy. It is also a hedonistic society, deriving pleasure from promiscuous sex and drug use, especially the use of ''soma'', a powerful stimulant taken to escape pain and bad memories through hallucinatory fantasies.
Brave New World is Huxley's most famous novel. The ironic title comes from Miranda's speech in Shakespeare's The Tempest, Act V, Scene I: "O wonder! How many goodly creatures are there here! How beautious mankind is! O brave new world That has such people in't!"
Aldous Huxley wrote Brave New World in 1932 while he was living in France and England (a British writer, he moved to California in 1937). By this time, Huxley had already established himself as a writer and social satirist. He was a contributor to Vanity Fair and Vogue magazines, had published a collection of his poetry entitled The Burning Wheel in 1916 and published four successful satirical novels; Crome Yellow in 1921, Antic Hay in 1923, Those Barren Leaves in 1925 and Point Counter Point in 1928. Brave New World was Huxley's fifth novel and first attempt at a utopian novel.
Brave New World was inspired by the H.G. Wells utopian novel Men Like Gods. Wells's optimist vision of the future gave Huxley the idea to begin writing a parody of the novel, which became Brave New World. Contrary to the most popular optimist utopian novels of the time, Huxley sought to provide a frightening vision of the future. Huxley referred to Brave New World as a "negative utopia", somewhat influenced by Wells's own The Sleeper Awakes and the works of D.H. Lawrence. Yevgeny Zamyatin's novel We, completed ten years before in 1921, has been suggested as an influence but Huxley stated that he had not known of the book at the time.[1]
Huxley visited the newly-opened and technologically-advanced Brunner and Mond plant at ICI, Billingham and gives a fine and detailed account of the processes he saw. The introduction to the most recent print of Brave New World states that Huxley was inspired to write the classic novel by this Billingham visit.
Although the novel is set in the future, it contains contemporary issues of the early 20th century. The Industrial Revolution was bringing about massive changes to the world. Mass production had made cars, telephones and radios relatively cheap and widely available throughout the developed world. The Russian Revolution of 1917 and the first World War (1914–1918) were resonating throughout the world.
Huxley was able to use the setting and characters from his futurist fantasy to express widely held opinions, particularly the fear of losing individual identity in the fast-paced world of the future. The event that gave Brave New World much of its character was an early trip to the United States. Not only was Huxley outraged by the culture of youth, commercial cheeriness and inward-looking nature of many of the people,[1] he also found a book by Henry Ford on the boat to America. There was a fear of Americanisation in Europe, so to see America firsthand, as well as read the ideas and plans of one of its foremost citizens, spurred Huxley on to write Brave New World with America in mind. The "feelies" are his response to the movies, and the sex-hormone chewing gum is parody of the ubiquitous chewing gum (which is something of a symbol of America especially at that time), as well as the music that they listen to: American jazz, as well as the fact that the people all live in tall buildings. In an article in the May 4, 1935 issue of Illustrated London News, G. K. Chesterton explained what Huxley was revolting against. (The "Age of Utopias" was a time, mostly before World War I, inspired by what H. G. Wells and George Bernard Shaw were writing about socialism and a World State.)
Listed in order of appearance-
These are fictional and factual characters who died before the events in this book, but are of note in the novel.
The novel begins in London in the "year of our Ford 632" (AD 2540 in the Gregorian Calendar). The planet is united as The World State under a peaceful world government established in the aftermath of an apocalyptic global war in the 21st century; a government which has eliminated war, poverty, crime and unhappiness by creating a homogeneous high-tech society across Earth, based on the industrial principles of Henry Ford. Fordism forms the bedrock of the new society, gaining a quasi-religious status and forming the backbone of political and economic ideologies. Society is rigidly divided into five classes — Alpha, Beta, Gamma, Delta, and Epsilon which can be sub-divided even further into categories such as plus, minus and moron. All members of society are trained to be good consumers to keep the economy strong. All citizens are expected to be involved socially; spending time alone is discouraged and sexual promiscuity is norm. Recreational drug use has become a pillar of society and all citizens regularly swallow tablets of soma, a narcotic-tranquilizer that makes users mindlessly happy. A significant aspect of the society is the mechanisation of reproduction. Citizens of the World State do not reproduce naturally; people are taught to view natural reproduction as a primitive act. Instead, all children are created from embryos grown in factories: production of embryos is planned according to the economic capacity of society. For the embryo, the womb is replaced by an artificial life support mechanism referred to as a bottle. Significantly, each individual's destiny is determined long before he or she is "decanted".
Huxley reveals the world through the eyes of the protagonists, Lenina Crowne and Bernard Marx (their names allude to Soviet leader Vladimir Lenin and theorizer of communism Karl Marx). Lenina, a member of the Beta caste is a laboratory worker in the Central London Hatchery and Conditioning Centre. She is a personification of the new society, happy and "pneumatic" (a compliment in this new society, referring to sexual performance), conformist in her behaviour, fulfilling her function in society, and largely incapable of free thought. Government indoctrination is the source of her worldview. Bernard, an Alpha-Plus psychologist serves as antithesis to her. Despite being a member of the upper caste of alphas, Bernard is intellectually gifted but physically smaller than is typical for an Alpha. This has caused him to be unhappy with his life and to dislike society. In part this can be attributed to the fact that, as shown explicitly in one instance and explained in others, a person's size is directly proportional to his or her caste (e.g. an Alpha should be taller than a Beta); thus, having a smaller stature implies that one belongs to a lower caste. As a result, Bernard Marx feels deeply insecure and is something of a joke to members of his own caste and others for his odd physical appearance and rejection of social norms, such as community events and the taking of soma.
The first half of the novel describes life in the World State and the personalities of Lenina and Bernard. It also introduces the character of Helmholtz Watson, an Alpha-Plus lecturer at the College of Emotional Engineering (Department of Writing). While Bernard's physical defects had isolated him from society, Helmholtz is isolated by his mental and physical excess. This isolation brings Bernard and Helmholtz together and they remain friends throughout the story. Bernard's unacceptable behaviour lands him in trouble with his boss, the Director of Hatcheries and Conditioning. But Bernard secures his permission to visit the Savage reservation in New Mexico where he takes Lenina on a date.
The second part of the novel begins with the visit to the Savage Reservation in New Mexico, where they see Malpais, an ancient society that has been fenced off and ignored by The World State. Malpais may have its origins from the Spanish words mal (bad) and país (country). In the reservation they encounter Linda, a woman from The World State who, through an accident, came to live as a savage in Malpais, having given birth to a son named John, the novel's protagonist. While Lenina is disgusted by the dirty, neglected and viviparous society of Malpais, Bernard is fascinated by it and by John, who grew up with the life of the Zuni Native American tribe and a religion that is a blend of Zuni and Christian beliefs. However, he is also influenced by his mother's education (she taught him to read) and by his discovery of the works of William Shakespeare, unknown in The World State. Like Bernard, John is an outcast in his society and is eager to see the world outside of Malpais. Bernard agrees to take Linda and John back to London, where he manipulates society's fascination with them to boost his social position.
The culture shock which results when the "savage" is brought into the society of the "Brave New World", as he initially calls it, provides a vehicle for Huxley to contrast the values of The World State society with ours and point out the Brave New World society's flaws. The moral point of the book revolves around opposing problems. The first is that in order to ensure continuous and universal happiness, society has to be manipulated, freedom of choice and expression curtailed and intellectual pursuits and emotional expression inhibited. Citizens are happy but John the Savage considers this happiness to be artificial and "soulless".
During this time in the story, the Director of the Hatchery and Conditioning Centre, who is angry at Bernard for his apparent unorthodoxy of behavior according to the standards of the World State, wastes no time in verbally denouncing Bernard for his lifestyle choices in front of all of the higher-caste workers at the Centre. This powerful and riveting speech may be interpreted as Huxley's metaphor for the mindset of totalitarian dictatorships, who have no tolerance for anyone whose actions "threaten Society itself". However, as soon as the Director finishes his tirade, Bernard defends himself by presenting the Director with his seemingly-forgotten lover and unknown son, a.k.a. Linda and John, in front of the entire Centre, who see the Director's newly unveiled past as so wildly inappropriate and disgusting that it is comical. This tremendous amount of pressure forces the Director to immediately resign afterwards, as he had been exposed as a hypocrite.
Meanwhile, John, who has fallen in love with Lenina, is appalled by the World State and Lenina's promiscuity. While in London, John meets and quickly becomes friends with Helmholtz Watson. They meet often to discuss writing, especially that of Shakespeare, Watson's noncomprehension of which helps put the Fordist society's failings into relief. When his mother Linda dies, John is unable to understand society's reaction to death and reacts violently by attempting to "free" a group of Delta caste menial staff members at the hospital by throwing their daily soma ration out the window. The result is a near riot, to which Bernard and Helmholtz arrive in an attempt to rescue John. Unfortunately the police arrive at the melée and after subduing the crowd with vaporized soma and hypnotic music, they quickly take all three into State custody.
Bernard, Helmholtz and John are brought before Mustapha Mond, the Resident World Controller for Western Europe, as a result of the incident at the hospital. The heated argument that begins between Mustapha and John leads to the decision that John will not be set free because Mustapha considers him an experiment. Bernard and Helmholtz in a twist of fate are sent to live in Iceland and the Falkland Islands respectively, one of several island colonies reserved for exiled citizens of the World State, where Helmholtz can become a serious writer and Bernard can live his life in peace. Mond reveals that exile to the islands, a frequent threat and dread to prevent unorthodox thinking, is where more freethinkers are put, rather than engage in the type of repression in George Orwell's Nineteen Eighty-Four, another dystopian text. Similarly, Mond is introduced in this section reading a paper that shows a more comprehensive understanding of certain matters of science than is healthy for a caste system, so Mond censors it—but no action is taken against the author.
In the final chapters, John, the sole remaining main character, attempts to isolate himself from society on the outskirts of London; however, he is unable to live without lusting for Lenina and constantly punishes himself physically and mentally for these thoughts. This causes him to be harassed by sightseers who are intrigued by the extremely (to them) unusual behaviour. At the very end of the novel, John attacks Lenina as she joins the crowd of onlookers and succumbs to an orgy of drugs and sex. In the morning John, horrified by what he has done to Lenina and disgusted by himself, commits suicide in grief.
The World State is built around the principles of Henry Ford, who has become a Messianic figure worshipped by society. The word Lord has been replaced with the similar-sounding Ford. The assembly line process is present in many aspects of life and the symbol "T" has replaced the Christian cross, a reflection of the Model T. Ford's famous phrase "History is bunk" has become The World State's approach to the past.
From birth, members of every class are indoctrinated, by recorded voices repeating slogans while they sleep (called "hypnopædia" in the book) to believe that their own class is best for them. Any residual unhappiness is resolved by an antidepressant and somewhat hallucinogenic drug called soma.
Contrary to what modern readers would expect, the biological techniques used to control the populace in Brave New World do not include genetic engineering. Huxley wrote the book in the 1920s, thirty years before Watson and Crick discovered the structure of DNA. However Mendel's work with inheritance patterns in peas had been discovered in 1900 and the eugenics movement, based on Darwinian selection, was well established. Huxley's family included a number of prominent biologists including Thomas Huxley, half brother and Nobel Laureate Andrew Huxley, and brother Julian Huxley who was a biologist and involved in the eugenics movement. In light of this, the fact that Huxley emphasizes conditioning over breeding is notable. As the science writer Matt Ridley put it, Brave New World describes an "environmental not a genetic hell." Human embryos and fetuses are conditioned via a carefully designed regimen of chemical (such as exposure to hormones and toxins), thermal (exposure to intense heat or cold, as one's future career would dictate) and other environmental stimuli, although there is an element of selective breeding as well.
Social Critic Neil Postman contrasts the worlds of 1984 and Brave New World in the foreword of his 1986 book Amusing Ourselves to Death. He writes:
What Orwell feared were those who would ban books. What Huxley feared was that there would be no reason to ban a book, for there would be no one who wanted to read one. Orwell feared those who would deprive us of information. Huxley feared those who would give us so much that we would be reduced to passivity and egoism. Orwell feared that the truth would be concealed from us. Huxley feared the truth would be drowned in a sea of irrelevance. Orwell feared we would become a captive culture. Huxley feared we would become a trivial culture, preoccupied with some equivalent of the feelies, the orgy porgy, and the centrifugal bumblepuppy. As Huxley remarked in Brave New World Revisited, the civil libertarians and rationalists who are ever on the alert to oppose tyranny "failed to take into account man's almost infinite appetite for distractions." In 1984, Huxley added, people are controlled by inflicting pain. In Brave New World, they are controlled by inflicting pleasure. In short, Orwell feared that what we hate will ruin us. Huxley feared that what we love will ruin us.
Journalist Christopher Hitchens, who has himself published multiple articles on Huxley and a full-length book on Orwell, notes the difference between the two texts in the introduction to his 1999 article "Why Americans Are Not Taught History":
We dwell in a present-tense culture that somehow, significantly, decided to employ the telling expression "You're history" as a choice reprobation or insult, and thus elected to speak forgotten volumes about itself. By that standard, the forbidding dystopia of George Orwell's Nineteen Eighty-Four already belongs, both as a text and as a date, with Ur and Mycenae, while the hedonist nihilism of Huxley still beckons towards a painless, amusement-sodden, and stress-free consensus. Orwell's was a house of horrors. He seemed to strain credulity because he posited a regime that would go to any lengths to own and possess history, to rewrite and construct it, and to inculcate it by means of coercion. Whereas Huxley… rightly foresaw that any such regime could break but could not bend. In 1988, four years after 1984, the Soviet Union scrapped its official history curriculum and announced that a newly authorized version was somewhere in the works. This was the precise moment when the regime conceded its own extinction. For true blissed-out and vacant servitude, though, you need an otherwise sophisticated society where no serious history is taught.[4]
Brave New World Revisited (Harper & Row, 1958, 1965), written by Huxley almost thirty years after Brave New World, was a non-fiction work in which Huxley considered whether the world had moved towards or away from his vision of the future from the 1930s. He believed when he wrote the original novel that it was a reasonable guess as to where the world might go in the future but in Brave New World Revisited he concluded that the world was becoming much more like Brave New World much faster than he thought.
Huxley analysed the causes of this, such as overpopulation as well as all the means by which populations can be controlled. He was particularly interested in the effects of drugs and subliminal suggestion. Brave New World Revisited is different in tone due to Huxley's evolving thought and his conversion to Vedanta between the two books.
The cultural influence of Brave New World has been extensive and most modern dystopic fiction owes at least something to the influence of the novel. An incomplete list of secondary references can be found in the related article.
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