BRAVE NEW WORLD
BY ALDOUS HUXLEY
Critical analysis of Huxley’s dystopian novel
BRAVE NEW WORLD
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Characters: Bernard Marx, Helmholtz Watson, Lenina Crowne,
Fanny Crowne, Henry Foster, The Director, Mustapha Mond,
John (the Savage), Linda
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Conflict: humanity vs. technology; individual vs. society;
happiness vs. truth
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Symbolism: Henry Ford (the World State’s God because he
developed mass production and assembly lines); Shakespeare
(represents art, creativity, love, passion, and beauty all
rejected by the World State).
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Themes: Individualism vs. collectivism; future totalitarian
societies; science and technology as a way to control people;
the cost of happiness.
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BRAVE NEW WORLD
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Written in early 1930, published in 1932, set in year 632 AF.
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The world was reacting to World War I, fascism and the Soviet
empire, the “roaring 20’s” in Europe and America, the
industrial revolution, and the crash of the stock market in 1929.
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Is Brave New World a blueprint for a Utopian society?
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No. Huxley was writing a satirical piece of fiction, not scientific
prophecy.
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Satire = the use of humor, irony, exaggeration, or ridicule to expose and
criticize people, particularly in the context of political and social issues.
Dystopia = An imagined state or society in which there is great suffering or
injustice, typically one that is totalitarian or post-apocalyptic.
World-state = a state or society comprising the whole world ruled by a
centralize power.
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BRAVE NEW WORLD
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Essential Question: if it is technically feasible (possible), what is
wrong with using technology, medicine, psychology, and
genetic engineering to remove mental and physical pain and
hardship to develop a more comfortable, universally happy
society for EVERYONE?
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What are some examples of technology being used to control the
population of the civilized World State?
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How has medicine and psychology been used to form a Utopian race of
humans?
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How has genetic engineering played a role in creating a caste (social
stratification) system within the World State?
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BRAVE NEW WORLD
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An exaggeration?
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Sadly, no. Brave New World serves as a false symbol for
anyone preaching the concept of universal happiness.
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The Brave New World is an unsettling, loveless, and even sinister
place, a world-state. Huxley described it as a “nightmare”.
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The comparison he is making is between the fascist,
communist government of the Soviet Union and the capitalist,
Fordist society of America and Western Europe.
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Huxley suggested that the price of universal happiness will be
the sacrifice of the most important pillars of our culture:
"motherhood", "home", "family", "freedom", even "love".
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BRAVE NEW WORLD
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In the world-state, happiness derives from consuming massproduced goods and sports:
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Obstacle golf
Promiscuous sex
Soma, the perfect pleasure-drug
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A regimen of soma doesn't deliver anything sublime or lifeenriching experiences. The drug heightens suggestibility,
leaving its users vulnerable to propaganda. Soma is a narcotic
that raises "a quite impenetrable wall between the actual
universe and their minds.“
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Drugs like soma allow people to use their imaginations to turn
themselves into who they want to be, who they choose to be,
and through suggestion and genetic engineering, people are
free to choose to be happy and obedient (chapter 14).
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BRAVE NEW WORLD
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The Brave New World is a "Fordist" utopia based on production
and consumption.
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The production and consumption of manufactured goods is
integrated with a life-style of drugs-and-sex. Inhabitants are
given no time for spiritual contemplation. Solitude is
discouraged. Society is purposely kept occupied and focused
on working for yet more consumption (soma, sex, jobs, society,
media).
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Is there a correlation between wealth and happiness?
Is consuming media willingly the same as brainwashing?
Does technology make it easier to proliferate a homogenous (consisting
of the same parts) society?
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BRAVE NEW WORLD
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The Brave New World is a benevolent (well meaning, kind)
dictatorship: a static, efficient, totalitarian welfare-state. There
is no war, poverty, or crime.
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Society is stratified by genetically-predestined caste (a rigid
social system limited to persons of the same rank). Intellectually
superior Alphas are the top-dogs followed by Betas; purposely
brain-damaged Gammas, Deltas, and Epsilons toil away at the
bottom of the system as the “workers” of society.
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Alphas and Betas are produced, engineered in ideal growth
conditions like one would grow a prize flower; Gammas,
Deltas, and worst of all Epsilons are purposefully deprived of all
the needed elements for growth from egg to embryo to baby.
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BRAVE NEW WORLD
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Knowledge of the past is banned by the World Controllers to
prevent individual comparisons.
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The Controllers fear historical awareness would stir
dissatisfaction with the "utopian" present.
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The Savage Reservation is the symbolic history of humanity.
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There is no depth of feeling, no proliferation of ideas, and no
artistic creativity. Individuality is suppressed. Intellectual
excitement and discovery have been abolished. Its inhabitants
are laboratory-grown clones, bottled and standardized from
the hatchery. They are conditioned and indoctrinated, and
even brainwashed in their sleep.
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BRAVE NEW WORLD
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The Brave New World is often taken as a pessimistic warning of the
dangers of runaway science and technology.
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Scientific progress, however, was apparently frozen with the advent
of a world-state. Ironically, Huxley offers a warning of what happens
when scientific inquiry is suppressed.
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The prospect of universal happiness symbolizes the fear of everyday
boredom. The world-state comes across as a stagnant civilization. Its
inhabitants are too contented living in their rut to extricate
themselves and progress to higher things.
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Superficially, Brave New World is a technocratic society. Yet the free
flow of ideas and criticism central to science is absent.
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The Brave New World re-enforces conformity in innumerable
different ways. It feeds the popular misconception that a life-time of
happiness will be boring, even when the biochemical conditions of
boredom have been removed genetically from people.
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BRAVE NEW WORLD
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In the Brave New World, children are raised and conditioned by the
state bureaucracy, not brought up by natural families.
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There are only ten thousand surnames. Value has been stripped
away from the person as an individual human being; respect
belongs only to society as a whole.
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Citizens must not fall in love, marry, or have their own kids. This would
seduce their allegiance away from the community as a whole by
providing a rival focus of affection. The individual's loyalty is owed to
the state alone.
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One of our deepest fears about the prospect of tampering with our
natural (DNA-driven) biological endowment is that we will ourselves
be controlled and manipulated by others.
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Huxley plays on these anxieties to devastating effect. He sows the
fear that a future world-state may rob us of the right to be unhappy.
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BRAVE NEW WORLD
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John “the Savage” represents all the qualities of humanity that
society is trying to eliminate entirely and John defends the right
to suffer illness, pain, and fear against the arguments of the
indulgent Controller. John claims the right to be unhappy.
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What is the price for happiness?
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Freedom and individuality?
Consumerism and pleasure?
Experience and reality?
Is happiness determined by genetics and background?
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Wealth and social standing?
Health and family?
Intelligence and enlightenment?
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BRAVE NEW WORLD
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In the end, we are to question Darwin’s theory of evolution. It
states that all life is related and has descended from a
common ancestor.
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Darwin's general theory presumes the development of life and
stresses a purely naturalistic (undirected, no God or factory)
"descent with modification". Complex creatures evolve from
more simplistic ancestors naturally over time.
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Contrast this idea with the Brave New World’s genetically
engineered society where Alphas and Epsilons are created to
serve a role in society for the betterment of all.
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Does our society (Western Europe and America) today
function more like an evolutionary process (Darwin) or a static
utopian state (Huxley)? What does our society want to be?
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BRAVE NEW WORLD
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Again, if it is technically feasible, what is wrong with using
technology, medicine, psychology, and genetic engineering
to remove mental and physical pain and hardship to develop
a more comfortable, universally happy society for EVERYONE?
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Is John “the Savage” right in his insistence of remaining human
(imperfect but real)? Or is Mustapha Mond right in his decision
to preserve a perfect form of happiness (idealism?)
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When is a Utopian view of the world really a dystopia for the
people who live in it? Are we there today?
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BRAVE NEW WORLD
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Writing Task #1: Entertainment as a Form of Control
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Core Question: Have we become a trivial culture preoccupied
with entertainment? For this writing topic, we return to where
we started with the quotations from Neil Postman’s book,
Amusing Ourselves to Death… (read the excerpt)
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After reading Brave New World, do you think that Postman was
right? Is a constant barrage of entertainment making us
passive and self-centered? Are we being controlled and
conditioned by pleasure as effectively as we would be by a
secret police armed with guns and nightsticks? In other words,
how similar is our world to the World State depicted in Brave
New World? And what is the trend? Are we becoming, as
Postman suggests, more like the Brave New World or less?
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BRAVE NEW WORLD
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Some advice on how to respond to this prompt:
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Have completed your Evidence Log from Brave New World.
Finish reading Brave New World, the novel.
Have a list of the characters and what they represented.
Understand and identify 2-3 reoccurring thematic ideas from the novel,
you will see these in your Evidence Log if you did it right.
Read and annotate “Are we living in Brave New World’s nightmare
future?” by J. Dacre, and “Amusing ourselves to death with Donald
Trump” by C. Teare.
Incorporate evidence for your claims (topics) from ALL 3 SOURCES.
Analyze and annotate the prompt (understand what it is asking).
Organize your ideas; form a thesis or main claim; use your Evidence Log
and LitCharts to help you identify that claim.
Sketch an outline from your brainstorming.
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BRAVE NEW WORLD
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Assignment instructions:
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Write a first draft, timed essay in class (Module 3, Assignment 7)
Peer-edit that assignment (Module 3, Assignment 8)
Revise and submit a final draft (Module 3, Assignment 9)
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The week you return from Thanksgiving break, you will write,
edit, and revise the final draft of this essay IN CLASS.
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Final draft must be submitted to Google Class folder and in
paper copy to me. We will go to the library to print.
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You can refer to outside sources but you should not offer them
as evidence (you cannot use them as evidence).
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This is a major essay, it will take you time.
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NO PLAGIARISING. You will get a “0” and fail the class.
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BRAVE NEW WORLD
Introduction (topic, prompt, thesis, transition)
Body 1
Body 2
Body 3
•Topic:
•Evidence:
•Commentary:
•Evidence:
•Commentary:
•Comparison:
•Transition:
•Topic:
•Evidence:
•Commentary:
•Evidence:
•Commentary:
•Comparison:
•Transition:
•Topic:
•Evidence:
•Commentary:
•Evidence:
•Commentary:
•Comparison:
•Transition:
Conclusion (review prompt, evidence, move forward)
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BRAVE NEW WORLD
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Let’s get started … (sample introduction)
Americans today are largely controlled by the media; it has become “our culture”. Evidence of the
influence media has on American citizens can be found everywhere: just this week the Independent’s
website published an article that details President Donald Trump’s satisfaction in hearing that Fox News’
ratings have soared recently, doubling the numbers of its competitors. He claims the reason for the high
number of viewers is their “fair” coverage of his presidency. The influence the President of the United
States has on Americans cannot be understated and is even felt beyond our borders. Around the world,
the U.S. President commands the attention of governments, citizens, and media alike. The media parrots
sources of power (politics, entertainment, business), and in many ways citizens of planet Earth (especially
Americans) are preoccupied, passive, and self-centered. Modern, civilized people are distracted by
technology, entertainment, and society, and are slowly falling in line with the society of Aldous Huxley’s
Brave New World. Sadly, it seems like people are sacrificing reality for happiness and comfort.
Inconvenient questions arise: Why is Trump’s claim of popularity consumed by the public like culturally
significant news? How do media outlets like the Independent affect the public happiness? And finally,
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how does the American society today compare to Huxley’s Brave New World?