Brave new world

Brave new world-Aldous Huxley (1932)

ester bonomini

AUTHOR'S BIOGRAPHY

• Aldous Huxley was born in England (1894).
• he had an eye disease that left him almost blind.
• he was the teacher of Eric Blair, ("George Orwell").

• he used hallucinogenic drugs and had an interest in the occult.
• Huxley died of cancer in 1963.

the style

• his education allowed him to integrate science into his novels.
• detailed, unemotional style, making the technologies seem plausible.
• physical descriptions of characters are rare, reinforcing their lack of personal identity.

• human beings are artificially created.
• the population is sorted in five castes, Alphas and Betas lead the society, Deltas, Gammas and Epsilons do hard labor.

the dystopia

• each individual is conditioned to conform to the moral rules of the World State and to enjoy his predetermined job.
• everybody is conditioned to seek gratification, to be sexually promiscuous, to economic consumption.
• The government promotes the use of a drug called "soma" to keep the population happy and suppress any negative emotions.

plot overview

1. Bernard Marx and his love interest, Lenina Crowne, travel to a “savage reservation,” where Marx’s boss (the Director) lost a female companion some years ago.

1. When the two arrive, They see a woman (Linda) and her son (John), who is the lost family mentioned by the Director.

1. Marx return home and presents Linda and John to the Director, This provokes the Director’s resignation, as procreation between people is a crime.

plot overview

4. Linda is sent to a hospital because of her addiction to “soma,”, but later She'll die. 5. John becomes angrier and angrier with this society, so he runs away to a lighthouse to live in isolation. He is able to evade tourists and reporters for a while, but they find him. 6. The crowd increases and the scene causes an orgy in which John takes part. 7. The next morning he wakes up and, under the effect of soma he'sangry and sad because he submitted to World State society, hangs himself.

setting

set in the future, in the year 2450 A.D. The planet is united politically as the “World State.”

world state

Savage Reservation

• people are raised in labs, they're destined to fill a certain role in society.
• art, love, family are unknown to the population.
• no one is able to experience solitude or loneliness.

• it's in New Mexico.
• technologies of the World State don't exist.
• The “savages” still give birth, get old, believe in gods, endure physical pain and emotional suffering.

main characters

Bernard Marx

• physically smaller and weaker, so he feels alienated in the World State.
• his discontent comes from his frustrated desire to fit into society.

• vaccination worker, She is an object of desire for Marx and John.
• she is attracted to marx and she develops a violent passion for John.

• unable to share Bernard’s disaffection or to comprehend John’s alternate system of values.

Lenina Crowne

main characters

John theSavage

• son of the Director and Linda, he's grown up in the reservation.
• he feels alienated in the village of the Reservation, but also unable to fit into World State society.
• he's attracted to Lenina, but he has a different view of relationships.

• he's a perfect Alpha, but feels that his work is meaningless.
• He and Bernard are friends, they're both discontent but Helmholtz’s criticisms is more philosophical and intellectual than Bernard’s complaints.

Helmholtz Watson

meaningful scenes

...Books and loud noises, flowers and electric shocks. After two hundred repetitions of the same or a similar lesson infants hated books and nature. “They’ll grow up with an hate of books and flowers. They’ll be safe from culture and botany all their lives.” A love of nature keeps no factories busy. It was decided to abolish the love of nature among the lower classes.

1)

meaningful scenes

People glanced at her with startled, horrified eyes. They had never seen a face like hers before. They had never seen a face that was not youthful and taut-skinned, a body that had ceased to be slim and upright. All these moribund sexagenarians had the appearance of childish girls. At fortyfour, Linda seemed, by contrast, a monster of flaccid and distorted senility.

2)

Themes

• The Dangers of Totalitarian Control.
• the incompatibility of happiness and truth.
• the oppression of individual differences.
• The Role of Science, Religion and psychology.

"Old men in the bad old days used to renounce, retire, take to religion, spend their time reading, thinking—thinking"

• Pneumatic: used to describe lenina’s body and chairs. This use underscores that sexuality has been degraded to the level of a commodity.

• "My Ford," "Year of Our Ford," etc.: even casual conversation, habit and religion are been replaced.

• Shakespeare; he represents passion and relationships that the World State is committed to eliminating.

• bottles: as the children grow up in bottles, adults live in a society that limits and suffocates them.

Symbols and motifs

the dystopia today

No time for boredom.

When the citizens aren't working they play complex games or go to see a movie that engage all senses. Nobody has the time to be bored or the idea of experience solitude is taboo.

In our society, most people are always on their phones. We have made it possible to abolish boredom and time for spare thoughts. This is already having measurable effects on our mental health and our brain structure.

the dystopia today

Consumerism

• Consumerism is a significant element in all major economies today. For Huxley, consumerism can also be used to keep us pointlessly chasing after items that we think we need to be happy as a distraction from exploring other pursuits.

• Huxley thought a dictatorship would have to condition people to want to buy new things and throw out last year's products to buy similar but newer ones, but today we make lines at Black Friday or at every new release of iphone.

President Bush’s primary exhortation to the American people after the tragedy was to "go shopping."

the dystopia today

Influence

We have the pressure to conform to society norms and expectations, the influence of social media, where the desire to fit in often overshadow one's unique identity. We suppress our identity consciously or subconsciously, in order to gain approval.

the dystopia today

Escape from reality

• In the novel people use soma to distract from unhappiness, today we use social media, online shopping, binge-watching TV series, providing an escape from reality and a shot of pleasure whenever we want.