Aldous Huxley Brave New World

General points. Below I give a series of terms that will most certainly be used in relation to BNW, as well as a few general pointers to formal and thematic aspects of the novel, which I want you to bear in mind as you read, and which are supplemented by more speci ic questions in the sections that follow (for practical purposes, I divide the novel into four parts). (For some more general ideas, see the quotations at the end of this guide.)

Huxleys early novels showed a skeptical attitude about the older generations, but also about the younger one and the course of historical progress, as well as a sense of social crisis and cultural decline; novels of social history, with characters that become social symbols; his protagonists are normally of the younger generation, self-consciously modern, sexually agressive and intellectually rebellious; portraits of exaggeratedly abnormal characters, extravagantly distorted; emphasis on ideas (scienti ic, artistic, philosophical, religious, political); heroes are lost amid con licting ideas, embodied by (misguidedly) con ident apologists.

Terms utopia & dystopia primitivism satire novel of ideas roman clef

Characterization most character traits tend to underline the antiheroic and caricaturesque nature of the protagonists their shortcomings, their contradictions, their imbalance and also their predictability; focus on Bernard, John and Lenina, Helmholtz, Mond and Linda; additional secondary characters will help to identify the normal types of behaviour in each of the novels two worlds.

Imagery contrasts between: Technique irony the grotesque lecture form allusion debate of ideas montage counterpoint Themes Names H.G. Wells Sigmund Freud Henry Ford D.H. Lawrence domination of nature by means of science and technology (what justi ication is offered for it; what repercussions this has; how this contributes to progresss); depersonalization of human beings (by means of direct methods but also subtler ways of de ining what is socially acceptable) forms of control of the individual (scienti ic, intellectual, educational, moral, religious, political; both collectively and individually); sexuality and love (inadequacy of many attitudes towards interpersonal and familial relationships) time and history (manipulation of the experience of time and of the sense of individual and collective evolution); manipulation of language (the relationship between things and words is corrupted, becomes imprecise, and contributes to the control of the individual). the natural and the technological; the human and the mechanical; the human and the animal (or animal-like); the serious and the trivial; the genuine and the arti icial; the physical and the mental.

Section 1: Chapters i-iii

Speci ic points, section by section

Introduction to the story The genesis of the World Slate Politics Education Psychology 1. Make sure that you can explain the following terms and concepts from this part of the book: castes; Bokanovsky process; decanting; engineering; conditioning; Orgy Porgy; phosphorous revovery; pneumatic; surrogate.

control of the experience of time is the irst step in the control of the individual mind. 5. Comment on the import of the slogans and the set phrases that appear repeatedly in the characters speech (and that are also echoed ironically in the narrators parts). 6. Collect signi icant quotations that you can relate to the outline of themes and techniques; suggestions: opposition between nature and technology; depersonalization of the individual; hedonism and escapism; allusion (reference contained in the characters names); montage.

2. Through the characters of the DHC and Mond the text explains the nature of the world we are entering. To have one character lecture on the features of his world is a convention of utopian iction and the novel of ideas in general Huxleys peculiar method, however, adds a satirical twist to the DHC and Monds lecture it is easy to see that this presentation is simultaneously being undermined so as to make us see the reality of the BNW society: How do the DHC and Mond basically describe the World State? What is their attitude towards the state of things in it? How does the text undermine their pride? Consider the following: (1) the lecturer admitting to more than he would like, or his words revealing his contradictions; (2) the narrator echoing a characters language, or adding comments of his own about the character speaking, or his audience, or the other inhabitants; Since one of the assumptions in the lecturers (and the World States) version of history is that the past has been wiped out, another way in which we begin to see the insubstantiality of this society is that things that should have been eliminated still remain which ones?

Section 2: Chapters iv-vi The individuals discontent 1. Consider the characterization of Bernard Marx, particularly the following aspects: his outsiderness; his non-standard behaviour; the reasons for his aloofness; the split in his relationship to others; his ambivalent attraction to Lenina.

2. Discuss the signi icance of the helicopter trip episode. 3. Refer to the outline again; suggestions: abundant images of animalization in the description of the characters and their habits; interest in technology; parody of a religious ceremony; alteration of the characters experience and sense of time and age.

3. When Mond speaks of history, he actually doesnt simply formulate his version in terms of history and politics - what does he add? 4. Find where the text makes clear that History, time and the life of the individual are interrelated, and that consequently

Section 3: Chapters vii-xiii The primitive counterpoint The importance of being human The neurotic anti-hero 1. Consider the ways in which the text draws parallels between London and the Reservation. 2. Discuss the parallels between Bernard and John; think for example if the traits listed for Bernard above can be applied to John. 3. Discuss the signi icance of these concepts for the Savage: God; death; time; art (literature). Lenina; Helmholtz; Mond.

Section 4: Chapters xiv-xviii Debate of ideas: happiness vs. humanity Humanity and its shortcomings 1. Consider what concepts the Savage and Mond discuss in chapters 16 17. Consider also what attitudes they manifest in their defense of those concepts. 2. After his disastrous London experience, the Savage chooses exile and self-denial as his preferred alternative to depersonalization and less-than-human happiness. Do you ind his choice to be justi iable and sane? 3. What triggers off the Savages inal selfdestruction? What is ironic about this? 4. The Savage is offered only two alternatives an insane life in Utopia, or the life of a primitive in an Indian village. [...] If I were now to rewrite the book, I would offer the Savage a third alternative. Between the utopian and the primitive horns of this dilemma would lie the possibility of sanity. This remark is from the 1946 Foreword that Huxley added to the novel in later editions. Discuss the pertinence of what he says in it. Read the Foreword for the nature of the third alternative. Is it also suggested in the text of the novel? 5. Comment on what you take to be: the purpose behind Huxleys satire: the twofold attack on contemporary versions of utopia; the limits of that satire; is the insane dilemma inescapable? is there any possibility of compromise? is there anything which is good in itself and can be considered desirable about each horn of the dilemma?

4. Contrast the following characters to the Savage:

J. Brooke [1972 (1954)]

Reference

Aldous Huxley If Huxley had written nothing after 1925, it is probable that he would be remembered today merely as a brilliant and somewhat eccentric minor writer [...]. Judged by [his] early works, his subsequent development was astonishing: not only was he one of the most proli ic of living English writers [...]; he was also one of the most versatile. Novels, poetry, drama, travel-books, short stories, biography, essays there is almost no literary form which he did not, at one time or another, attempt. His writings, moreover, cover an enormous range not only of form but of subject-matter: apart from his purely creative work, he wrote learnedly and perceptively of painting, music, science, philosphy, religion, and a dozen other topics. Yet, considering the breadth of his interests and the magnitude of his output, his work, examined as a whole, has a surprising homogeneity; nor, despite the temptations which could beset a successful author, did he ever seriously compromise with his intellectual integrity. Though a best-seller, he remains, paradoxically, an essentially unpopular writer. His development falls roughly into three phases. The earlier stories and novels were mainly satirical and [...] largely concerned with the debunking of accepted ideas and standards. Like T. S. Eliot, James Joyce, Wyndham Lewis, and others of his own or a slightly earlier generation, he was profoundly affected by the progressive breakdown of nineteenth-century ideals which had culminated in the First World War; and his predicament is re lected in these early volumes, in which the surface gaiety serves only to emphasize his underlying pessimism. Religion, conventional morality, romantic love all are subjected to a cynical and relentless mockery. [...] Only in the realm of pure Art (it is implied) can one hope, perhaps, to discover some kind of

established order to set against the prevailing anarchy. Yet the in de sicle doctrine of art for arts sake could never have proved inally satisfying to a man of Huxleys lively and speculative intelligence; and there is soon apparent a growing preoccupation not only with the more advanced theories of modern science, but also with psychology, ethics and philosophy. This second phase may be said to have begun with the publication of Proper Studies (1927), the irst of his books to be explicitly serious in intention. Thenceforward, though he continued to write novels and short stories, he assumed a more responsible role that of the teacher, the professional philosopher and can no longer be regarded as primarily a novelist, whose chief purpose is to entertain. During the 1930s one notes an increasing interest in politics and, more particularly, in the contemporary cult of paci ism; at the same time, he has begun to turn his attention to the Eastern mystics, and the third and inal stage in his development can already be inferred from the works of this period. Though by temperament a sceptic, Huxley always, one imagines, recognized within himself the need for some kind of religious approach to the universe; moreover, throughout his career as a writer, he showed a recumbent interest in the phenomena of mysticism. Others among his contemporaries, though sharing his initial scepticism, since became converted to one form or another of the Christian faith; Huxley, with greater intellectual honesty, refused to abandon his empirical attitude in such matters, and his approach to his later philosophical position has been cautious in the extreme. His prolonged study of the mystics has convinced him that the mystical experience itself the individuals direct union with the Godhead is an objective fact which can be experimentally veri ied; and his last works are almost all concerned, directly or indirectly, with an attempt to synthesize the existing evidence into a

comprehensive system, to which he gave the name of the Perennial Philosophy. One can say, then, that Huxley progressed from a purely aesthetic, through a politico-ethical, to a predominantly religious point of view. This, of course, is a drastic simpli ication: in reality, his development was far more complex for, [...] most of the beliefs which he embraced in his maturity are latent in his earliest published works.

J. Meckier (1969) Aldous Huxley: Satire and Structure What Huxleys anti-utopian remarks in the late 1920s boil down to, then, is a hatred of the utopian speculations he was reading, or had read by 1930. Most of these, taking the clue from H. G. Wells, and ultimately from Bacons New Atlantis (1627), were scienti ic. Those who foresee a utopian future, Huxley wrote, invoke not the god from the machine, but the machine itself. [...] Thus although in one sense Huxleys novels and non- iction prose prior to 1932 seemed to indicate that he would never stoop to utopian themes, in another they made Brave New World inevitable. One of the chief reasons why Huxley wrote the novel, it is tempting to conclude, was to discredit, if not discourage, the sort of utopian writing he was familiar with. The urge to write a literary satire on existing works went hand in hand with the desire to challenge, by means of correcting, less optimistic visions of his own, the picture of the future that science was enthusiatically offering. [...] Even the anti-utopian non- iction prose [...], however, is hardly free of moments when Huxley is possibly not ridiculing scienti ic utopias, when he seems, instead, intrigued

by their possibility - an attitude which often makes the reader suspect that Brave New World is not the total satire some critics claim. The question of eugenic reform always had a fascination for Huxley. He entertains it in Music at Night as a means of raising the critical point beyond which increases in prosperity, leisure, and education now give diminishing returns. He even speaks, with apparent tolerance, of a new caste system based on differences in native ability and of an educational process that supplies an individual with just so much instruction as his position calls for. He worries, in Praper Studies,about the threat to the worlds IQ that the more rapidly reproducing inferior classes constitute. And when, in an essay [...], he predicts that society will learn to breed babies in bottles, or talks, albeit somewhat critically, of theatres wherein egalitarians will enjoy talkies, tasties, smellies, and feelies, he almost seems to become Scogan. Huxley is even more eloquent than Scogan on the possibilities of a holidayinducing drug when he writes that: If we could sniff or swallow something that would, for ive or six hours each day, abolish our solitude as individuals, .. earth would become paradise. What Scogan meant was an escape hatch, but what Huxley wants is a means of breaking down the individuals isolation within his own ego. The difference between the two positions, however, is not so clear as to make pointing it out unnecessary. The drug called soma in Brave New World is not inherently unsatisfactory, but rather is an inadequate surrogate for something Huxley would accept in a more proper form.

Unlike Island in fact, unlike most utopian literature in English Literature with the exception of 1984 Brave New World, and Ape and Essence to a lesser degree, do not have the almost inevitable breaking point where most of the novelty vanishes to be replaced by a tedious essay. [...] Although it is preoccupied with the perennial utopian concerns (centralization versus decentralization, reform of the family, experiments in breeding and in education), Brave New World escapes many of the traditional weaknessses of utopian writings. So too with Ape and Essence, even if it cannot match the former for its extravagant sense of humour and occasionally hyperbolic style. Both works contain a suficiently interesting plot to keep them in motion after the novelty of their respective milieus begins to fade. What Brave New World actually involves is a doubling of the device by which initial strangeness is usually secured. Throughout the opening chapters, it is the reader who plays the part of Morriss Mr Guest or Bellamys Mr West. It is the reader who, like Swifts Gulliver, has landed in a strange world. After ten chapters, the device is used all over again as the Savage from a New Mexican reservation lands in London. The reader must then compare his own reactions to the new world with Johns. In addition, the introduction of a second visitor or stranger, the reader being the irst, provides Huxley with the opportunity of using the Wellsian scienti ic future, represented by London, and the Lawrencian primitive past, as personi ied by the Savage, to discredit each other.