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ALDOUS HUXLEY: Brave New World

THE AUTHOR

Aldous Huxley was born in 1894, the third son of Leonard
Huxley and the grandson of Thomas Henry Huxley (an important
disciole of Darwin). His mother, who died when Aldous was
fourteen, was the niece of niece of Matthew Arnold (a
Victorian poet); the philosopher Sir Julian Huxley was his
brother.
In 1916 Aldous Huxley took a first in English

at Balliol

College, Oxford, despite a condition of near-blindness

which

had developed while he was at Eton. In 1919 he married Maria
Nys, a Belgian and joined "The Athanaeum". His first book of
verse had been published in 1916 and two more followed. Then,
in 1920, "Limbo", a collec-tion of short stories, was
published. A year later, his first novel "Crome Yellow"
appeared and his reputation was firmly established.
In the 1930s he moved from Italy to Sanary

(near Toulon)

where he wrote "Brave New World". Believing that the climate
would help his eyesight, he left for California, where he
became convinced of the value of mystical experience

and

described the effects of his experiments in "The Doors of
Perception" and "Heaven and Hell".
One year after his wife's death in 1955, he married Laura
Archera, a concert violonist who had become a practising
psychotherapist. They continued to live in California, where
Huxley died on 22 November 1963.

THE MAIN CHARACTERS

(a.)

Bernard Marx - a highly intelligent but introverted and ugly

Alpha plus scientist. The popular theory is that too much
alcohol was accidentally put into his blood-surrogate when he
was a fetus.

(b.)

Lenina Crowne - a typical alpha girl - very pretty,

superficial and promiscous-, who works in the London Hatchery
and Conditioning Center.

(c.)

Fanny Crowne - Lenina's colleague, friend and confidante, a

very sensible girl

(d.)

Henry Foster - an enthusiastic scientist who Lenina has an

affair with.

(e.)

The DHC - the pomopus Director of the Hatchery and

Conditioning Centre in London.

(f.)

Mustapha Mond - formerly a physicist, now one of the ten

World Controllers

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(g.)

John - a young "savage" discovered in an Indian reservation

who quotes Shakespeare all the time.

(h.)

Linda - John's mother, a sloppy and ugly middle-aged

woman,brought to the reservation years ago by the DHC

(i.)

Helmholtz Watson - an alpha writer and Emotional Engineer

and friend of Bernard and John

OUTLINE OF CONTENTS

In 632 A.F. (after Ford) proudly the Director of the „Central
London Hatchery and Conditioning Centre” shows the plant to a
group of young students. As the he explains, there cannot be
room for individual differences, if the goals of society -
COMMUNITY, IDENTITY AND STABILITY - shall be achieved.
From the fetal phase on, people are pushed into their
predestined places in a ridigly hierarchic society that ranges
from Alpha Plus, the highly intelligent leaders, to Epsilon
Minus, ape-like gnomes who do the

dirty work.

In the hatchery, men and women are massproduced by artificial
insemination and chemically conditioned, while in the
Conditioning Centre, the babies are taught to keep their
places in society and to repress their individualistic
instincts.
But with Bernard Marx, a brilliant but shy and embittered
scientist something is wrong. Instead of being as handsome and
extroverted like all the other Alphas, he is small and ugly.
Because he is so special, he attracts the attention of Lenina.
Because of his high position, Bernard has access to one of the
few reservations left where people still live as savages.
Lenina accepts his offer to visit one of them with him.
Having arrived in New Mexico, Lenina is at first horrified
because of the absence of all comforts of the
hypercivilization in Europe.

Worst of all, she has forgotten

her supply of SOMA, a tranquillizer that has taken the place
of alcohol and drugs.
They meet John and his mother Linda, who was brought here by
the DHC. Having grown up in the Brave New World, she could not
get along with life in the reservation.
John who has taught himself with the help of old Shakespeare
books immediately

falls in love with Lenina,

but because of

his strict morality he fails to do something about it.
Bernard takes John and his mother back to England to conduct
an experiment with them and to get even with the DHC, who
dislikes him and wants him to exile. Because of the fact that
he has a son, he is exiled himself.
John becomes a great social success

while his mother must be

kept happy with overdoses of soma which she later dies of.
The Savage is terrified with the hedonism of cicvilized
society and wants to return to the stricter, more meaningful
morality of the primitive live. As Bernard wants to show him

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the Arch-Community-Songster of Canterbury (a religious
leader), he refuses and Bernard is again in disgrace.
Guilt-ridden after his mother's death, John tries to destroy
the soma ration doled out to Delta hospital workers

and wants

them to realize how it destroys them. He is almost killed
before a police squad quells the riot with water pistols that
shoot tranquillizers. Mustapha Mond exiles Bernard and
Helmholtz and has a long philosophical argument with John who
remains unconvinced and becomes a hermit in a lighthouse. A
sensation-seeking crowd descends on him and wants to make his
eccentric behaviour (he ocasionally whips himself when he
thinks of Lenina) a spectacle. Enraged, John kills Lenina with
the whip and commits suicide.

THE MAIN THEMES

A "perfect" world

Like in Orwell's 1984, the system is very strict, but the big
difference is that people don't
have to be punished and kept under surveillance all the time,
they are conditioned to be
happy with what they are so that the danger of a revolution by
the lower classes is not given
though there is such a tight system of class society.
*) There is no overpopulation and no unemployment because the
quantity of the decanted babies is adapted to the number of
free jobs.
*) There are no diseases (everybody is automatically
vaccinated against different illnesses so that epidemics have
no chance to break out) and no fear of dying: children are
conditioned not to fear it (like John sees it after his
mother's death).
*) There is no depression and tristesse: if somebody does not
feel good, he or she simply takes a small dose of soma. People
of the Brave New World are unable to face pain and grief.
*) There are many facilities for leisure such as obstacle
golf, Escalator squash and feelies(movies one can feel) to
keep people from thinking too much.

Malcontents in the Brave New World

Bernard Marx
Through a little mistake during his pre-natal phase (probably
too much alcohol was put in his blood-surrogate), he is an
outsider. Being an alpha, he is supposed to be outgoing, tall
and handsome, but instead, he looks like a dwarf and is
introverted and shy with women. Because of this, he is scorned
by women and bullied by the other alphas.

John, the "Savage"
His thinking about life in the reservation is ambiguous:

Born

to civilized parents, but grown up between savages, he is part
a primitive and part an intelligent (he taught himself with

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the help of Shakespeare) being. He who believes in God is
shocked about the loose morality and about the strange rituals
they do instead of praying. Such individual passions as love
and belief have given way to promiscuity and communal spirit.
He cannot get along with his love for Lenina and punishes
himself with living as a hermit and whipping himself each time
he has to think of her. As this attracts attention and a
sensation-seeking crowd decsends on him, he finds no other way
out than suicide.

Both

of those outsiders are

victims

of accidents: neither

the alcohol in Bernards blood-surrogate

nor John's birth

through a real mother was intentional. They do not fit into
society anymore and fail: Bernard exiles to the Falkland
Islands and John commits suicide.
It is impossible for individuals to find a satifactory life:
neither in the sterile and loveless Europe nor the dirty and
bestial life of the Indians in New Mexico.

QUOTES FROM THE BOOK

(a)

"And that", put in the director sententiously, "that is the

secret of happiness and virtue - liking what you've got to do.
All conditioning aims at that: making people like their
unescapable social destiny.' (p.31)

(b)

"Till at last the child's mind IS these suggestions, and the

sum of the suggestions IS the child's mind. And not the
child's mind only. The adult's mind too - all his life long.
The mind that judges and desires and decides - made up of
those suggestions. But all these suggestions are OUR
suggestions! Suggestions from the State."(p.43)

(c)

„...And I was so ashamed. Just think of it: me, a Beta -

having a baby: put yourself in my place." (p.126)

(d)

"Soma may make you lose a few years in time" the doctor went

on. "But think of the enourmous, immeasurable durations it can
give you out of time. Every soma holiday is a bit of what our
ancestors used to call eternity."

(p.157)

(e)

"Not until...Listen, Lenina; in Malpais people get married."

"Get what?" The irritation had begun to creep back into her
voice. What was he talking about now?"For always. They make a
promise to live together for always." "What a horrible idea!"
Lenina was genuinely shocked.

(p.191)

(f)

"Oh, look, look!" They spoke in low, scared voices.

"Whatever is the matter with her? Why is she so fat?" They had
never seen a face like hers before - had never seen a face
that was not youthful and taut-skinned, a body that had
ceased to be slim and upright.(p.201)

(g)

"Don't you want to be free and men? Don't you even

understand what manhood and freedom are?" (...) "I'll make you
free whether you want or not." And pushing a window that
looked on to the inner court of the hospital, he began to
throw the little pill-boxes of soma tablets in handfuls out
into the area.

(p.212)

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(h)

From a safe distance and still rubbing his buttocks,

"Benighted fool!" shouted the man from THE FORDIAN SCIENCE
MONITOR, why don't you take soma?" The other retreated a few
steps, then turned round again. "Evil's an unreality if you
take a couple of grammes." "Get away!" The Savage shook his
fist. (p.247)

PERSONAL OPINION

I was very fascinated by Huxley's idea of the future though it
is very shocking because it sounds so likely to come true in a
much closer future. I think that the feelings of the various
characters are shown in a brilliant way.