Brave New World
by
Aldous Huxley
Introductory Activities and Notes
Introductory Activities
 Has
belief in the power of science
replaced faith in God?
 What is happiness, and how can it be
found?
 What are some dangers of being
promiscuous?
 Why do people use drugs?
I.A., cont.

What are some pros and cons of genetic
engineering? What about cloning?
 How are people brainwashed today?
 Do you think people are capable of living in
peace? If so, under what conditions?
 Why do people dream?
 How do you define love?
Introductory Topics

Psychological Conditioning-Pavlovian
conditioning
 Sleep teaching
 Genetic engineering
 Test tube babies
 Identity
 Social Stability
 Community
Intro. topics, cont.
 Individual
freedom/happiness
 Passion/painful emotion
 Consumption of material goods
 Mind-altering drugs
 Promiscuity
 Individual differences
 Family in crisis
Intro. topics, cont.
 Death
 Totalitarianism
 Utopia
 Henry
Ford/mass production
 Karl Marx
 Herbert Hoover
 Benito Mussolini
Intro. topics, cont.
 Propaganda
 Overpopulation
 Cloning
BNW facts and themes
 Science
fiction work
 Utopian fiction
 Title is from The Tempest by
Shakespeare, and there are numerous
parallels.
 Science can be used to control people
 Genetic engineering and psychological
conditioning are potentially dangerous
BNW Themes, cont.
 Hardship
increases the depth of life
 Materialism and pleasure vs.
individuality and freedom
 Life without ties is empty
 Escapism is often destructive
Study Guide
Chapters 1-2
 Do
you think anything like the
hatcheries might be happening today?
 How does Bokanovsky’s process work,
and what is it for?
 What is the significance of A.F.?
 How is Huxley’s depiction of the
Director satirical?
1-2, cont.
 What
are some actual scientific
principles presented?
 Explain the class system of BNW
 What social problems have been
eliminated in BNW?
 Explain the motto “Community, Identity,
Stability”
1-2 Cont.

How is Huxley mocking Christianity?
 Who are Henry Foster and Lenina Crowne?
 Why are the Delta children conditioned to
dislike books and nature?
 Why can hypnopaedia be used to inoculate
more beliefs and emotional attitudes but
cannot be used to learn science?
Chapter 3
 What
is meant by “history is bunk”?
 How are the lectures, the conversations,
and the activities related to each other?
 What is the deal with soma?
 Why does so much effort go into
conditioning people to be consumers?
What is Huxley satirizing?
Chapters 4 and 5
 Share
some opinions about Lenina
 How is Bernard different? What are
some things that “trouble” him?
 Is Bernard paranoid, or are people
really watching him?
 Compare/contrast Helmholtz to Bernard
4 and 5, cont.
 What
satire is found in these two
chapters?
 What does pneumatic mean?
Chapter 6
 Think
of the interaction between Lenina
and Bernard at the beginning of the
chapter. What may they represent?
 Is Bernard a coward in this chapter?
 What do you think of the Director’s
treatment of Bernard?
 What can be inferred about the
Director’s story about his “trip”?
6, cont.
 What
is Bernard’s reaction to Iceland?
 What is amusing about the scene with
the Warden of the reservation?
Chapter 7
 Who
do Bernard and Lenina meet on
the Reservation?
 How is Lenina’s reaction to the Rez
satirical?
 What is the effect of Lenina’s reaction to
the child nursing?
 Compare Linda to Lenina
Chapters 8 and 9
 Compare
John and Bernard
 Why does Shakespeare have such a
meaning for John?
 What theories about London and the
other place does John have? What
gave him these ideas?
 When John is alone looking at Lenina
sleeping, what are his thoughts?
Chapters 10 and 11
 “…no
offence is so heinous as
unorthodoxy of behavior. Murder kills
only the individual—and after all, what is
an individual?…We can make a new
one with the greatest of
ease…Unorthodoxy threatens more
than the life of a mere individual; it
strikes at Society itself…”
Chapters 12 and 13
 “Pierced
by every word that was
spoken, the tight balloon of Bernard’s
happy self-confidence was leaking from
a thousand wounds.”—metaphor
 How does John clash with the new
world?
 How is love and romance satirized?
12 & 13, cont.
 What
is the attitude about science that
the government holds?
 What “crimes” have Bernard, John, and
Helmholtz committed?
 Shakespeare as “propaganda
technician”
Chapters 14 and 15
 Explain
John’s behavior after his mother
dies.
 Grief
 Death-conditioning
 Soma
14 & 15, cont.
 Find
quotes in which Huxley satirizes
the following:
 Loss
of knowledge of God
 The human attempt to create a utopian
world.
Chapters 16 and 17
 What
does Mond say is the reason
Othello could not be the same in the
new world?
 What happened in the Cyprus
experiment?
 The conversation between John and
Mustapha Mond covers at least four
areas:
16 &17 cont.
 Their
goal is to arrive at truth through
contradiction
 Question and answer is the strategy
 There is a logical structure
 Each man voices a set of principles
16 and 17, cont.
 When
the controller says: “You can’t
make flivvers without steel—and you
can’t make tragedies without social
instability,” what does he mean?
 Society is based on the iceberg
Chapter 18
What is John’s new home like, and how does
he feel about it?
 How does John handle the taunting that he
endures?
 How does Huxley describe John’s suicide?
 In the Foreword, how does Huxley explain
why the book had to end this way?
 How would Huxley re-write the ending?

Credits
 Andrew
C. Jackson
 MCMLXXXIII