Brave New Writer
Distinguished, rich, privileged,
famous scientific and literary
family.
 Grandfather Thomas Huxley was a
biologist who favored Darwinism
and lectured on it. Coined the
word “agnostic” (a person who
holds that the existence of the
ultimate cause, as God, and the
essential nature of things are
unknown and unknowable, or that
human knowledge is limited to
experience) and made important
evolution discoveries about
jellyfish.
 Father Leonard Huxley was a
biographer, editor, and poet.
Well-known as theorist about
education.
 Mother Julia Arnold was the niece
of poet Matthew Arnold, who
lamented the loss of religion in the
world.
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When Huxley was 14 his
mother died of cancer and
when he was 20 his
brother committed suicide.
Huxley suffered from an
eye disease at 16 and
became for a period of
about 18 months totally
blind.
Special glasses and one eye
recovered; also learned
Braille.
Unable to pursue his
chosen career as a
doctor/scientist - or fight in
World War.
Became a writer.
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Lived in Italy for most of his
adult life.
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Hated conformity and
denounced orthodox attitudes.
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Dramatized intellectual debate
in fiction.
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Discussed philosophical and
social topics in a volume of
essays.
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Critical of Western civilization in
the 1930s.
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Brave New World (1932),
satirical account of an
inhumane society controlled by
technology.
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Huxley's distress at what spiritual
bankruptcy of the modern world
led him toward mysticism.
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Moved to southern California in
1937 hoping it would help his
eyesight.
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Had surgery; did improve his sight.
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Became a Hindu and a vegetarian.
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Experimented with the
hallucinogenic drug, mescaline.
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Became a hippie guru.
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Remembered as a moral
philosopher who used fiction as a
vehicle for philosophical ideas.
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Written in 1931
when people
longed for a
newer, simpler,
more secure
world following
stock market
crash and
drought in
America.
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SATIRE:
Uses ridicule, humor, and
wit to criticize and
provoke change in human
nature and institutions.
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Formal satire speaks
directly to the reader or to
a character in the work.
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Horatian satire ridicules
gently.
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Juvenalian satire derides
its subjects harshly and
bitterly.
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Utopia term coined by
Thomas More in 1516, this
word means “nowhere.”
More’s utopia presented
a plan for the ideal
republic.
Anti-Utopia Novel a
novel that presents the
idea of a “perfect world”
as an impossibility. Ex:
1984 and Brave New
World
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Novel of Ideas a novel
in which the ideas the
characters represent
are more important
than the characters
themselves.
Characters with
opposing views are
included, with the
novel providing the
setting for the conflict
of these ideas.
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State control over
new and powerful
medical, biological,
and psychological
technologies.
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Difference between
science and
technology: science
searches for truth;
technology applies,
and often exploits,
science.
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Excesses and
shallowness of
contemporary culture
Modern class structure
Individuality versus
mass mentality
Happiness versus
complacency
Social conditioning
Belongingness
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Eric Blair, Huxley’s
student, went on to write
1984 under the penname,
George Orwell.
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Huxley wrote a series of
essays about Brave New
World called Brave New
World Revisited in 1960s.
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Huxley said he wished
he’d written a more
open-ended conclusion to
Brave New World in
which John finds a middle
path between extremes.
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Brave New World opens in the year 2495
at the Central London Hatchery and
Conditioning Centre, a research facility
and factory that mass-produces and
then socially-conditions test-tube
babies. Such a factory is a fitting place
to begin the story of mass-produced
characters in a techno-futurist dystopia,
a world society gone mad for pleasure,
order, and conformity. The date is A.F.
632, A.F. — After Ford — being a
notation based on the birth year (1863)
of Henry Ford, the famous automobile
manufacturer and assembly line
innovator who is worshipped as a god in
Huxley's fictional society.
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Five genetic castes or classes inhabit this
futurist dystopia. In descending order
they are named for the first five letters of
the Greek alphabet: Alphas, Betas,
Gammas, Deltas, and Epsilons.
While upper castes are bred for
intellectual and managerial occupations,
the lower castes, bred with less
intelligence, perform manual labor.
All individuals are conditioned by electric
shock and hypnopaedia (sleep
conditioning) to reject or desire what the
State dictates. For example, infants are
taught to hate flowers and books, but
encouraged to seek out sex,
entertainment, and new products.
Most importantly, they are conditioned
to be happiest with their own caste and
to be glad they are not a member of any
other group.
"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 these suggestions. But
all these suggestions are our suggestions...
Suggestions from the State."
- Aldous Huxley, Brave New World, Ch. 2