Brave New World (Literary Analysis)
Brave New World (Literary Analysis)
Brave New World (Literary Analysis)
BICOL UNIVERSITY
Polangui Campus
First Semester
Brave New World was written between World War I and World War II, the height of
an era of technological optimism in the West. Huxley picked up on such optimism
and created the dystopian world of his novel so as to criticize it. Much of the anxiety
that drives Brave New World can be traced to a widespread belief in technology as a
futuristic remedy for problems caused by disease and war. Unlike his fellow citizens,
Huxley felt that such a reliance was naive, and he decided to challenge these ideas by
imagining them taken to their extremes. Huxley’s life was surrounded by science,
something that likely helped him to produce the science-heavy Brave New World.
His grandfather (Thomas Henry Huxley) was a prominent biologist and an early
advocate of Darwin’s theory of evolution, and his brothers also became scientists.
Aldous too had hoped to pursue a career in the sciences, but a disease left him
partially blind as an adolescent and thus unable to continue on his scientific path.
The clearest literary influence on Brave New World can be intuited from the title,
which comes from a line in William Shakespeare’s The Tempest, a play preoccupied
with what it means to build a new society. John is himself an echo of the play’s
character Caliban, who is described as a “savage.” Huxley also signals the Bard of
Avon’s influence through John’s education on the reservation, where the curriculum
consists primarily of the works of Shakespeare. Some critics considered Brave New
World to be, ultimately, a futuristic parody of The Tempest.
II. Authorship (Life and Works of the Writer): The Author and His Milieu
Aldous Huxley, in full Aldous Leonard Huxley, (born July 26, 1894, Godalming,
Surrey, England—died November 22, 1963, Los Angeles, California, U.S.), English
novelist and critic gifted with an acute and far-ranging intelligence whose works are
notable for their wit and pessimistic satire. He remains best known for
one novel, Brave New World (1932), a model for much dystopian science fiction that
followed.
Aldous Huxley was a grandson of the prominent biologist Thomas Henry
Huxley and was the third child of the biographer and man of letters Leonard Huxley;
his brothers included physiologist Andrew Fielding Huxley and biologist Julian
Huxley. He was educated at Eton, during which time he became partially blind
because of keratitis. He retained enough eyesight to read with difficulty, and he
graduated from Balliol College, Oxford, in 1916. He published his first book in 1916
and worked on the periodical Athenaeum from 1919 to 1921. Thereafter he devoted
himself largely to his own writing and spent much of his time in Italy until the late
1930s, when he settled in California.
Huxley established himself as a major author with his first two published
novels, Crome Yellow (1921) and Antic Hay (1923); these are witty
and malicious satires on the pretensions of the English literary
and intellectual coteries of his day. Those Barren Leaves (1925) and Point Counter
Point (1928) are works in a similar vein.
III. Characters/Characterization
John
- The son of the Director and Linda, John is the only major character to have
grown up outside of the World State. The consummate outsider, he has spent
his life alienated from his village on the New Mexico Savage Reservation,
and he finds himself similarly unable to fit in to World State society. His
entire worldview is based on his knowledge of Shakespeare’s plays, which
he can quote with great facility.
Bernard Marx
- An Alpha male who fails to fit in because of his inferior physical stature. He
holds unorthodox beliefs about sexual relationships, sports, and community
events. His insecurity about his size and status makes him discontented with
the World State. Bernard’s surname recalls Karl Marx, the nineteenth-
century German author best known for writing Capital, a monumental
critique of capitalist society. Unlike his famous namesake, Bernard’s
discontent stems from his frustrated desire to fit into his own society, rather
than from a systematic or philosophical criticism of it. When threatened,
Bernard can be petty and cruel.
Helmholtz Watson
Lenina Crowne
- A vaccination worker at the Central London Hatchery and Conditioning
Centre. She is an object of desire for a number of major and minor
characters, including Bernard Marx and John. Her behavior is sometimes
intriguingly unorthodox, which makes her attractive to the reader. For
example, she defies her culture’s conventions by dating one man exclusively
for several months, she is attracted to Bernard—the misfit—and she develops
a violent passion for John the Savage. Ultimately, her values are those of a
conventional World State citizen: her primary means of relating to other
people is through sex, and she is unable to share Bernard’s disaffection or to
comprehend John’s alternate system of values.
Mustapha Mond
- The Resident World Controller of Western Europe, one of only ten World
Controllers. He was once an ambitious, young scientist performing illicit
research. When his work was discovered, he was given the choice of going
into exile or training to become a World Controller. He chose to give up
science, and now he censors scientific discoveries and exiles people for
unorthodox beliefs. He also keeps a collection of forbidden literature in his
safe, including Shakespeare and religious writings. The name Mond means
“world,” and Mond is indeed the most powerful character in the world of this
novel.
Fanny Crowne
- Lenina Crowne’s friend (they have the same last name because only about
ten thousand last names are in use in the World State). Fanny’s role is mainly
to voice the conventional values of her caste and society. Specifically, she
warns Lenina that she should have more men in her life because it looks bad
to concentrate on one man for too long.
Henry Foster
Linda
- John’s mother, and a Beta. While visiting the New Mexico Savage
Reservation, she became pregnant with the Director’s son. During a storm,
she got lost, suffered a head injury and was left behind. A group of Indians
found her and brought her to their village. Linda could not get an abortion on
the Reservation, and she was too ashamed to return to the World State with a
baby. Her World State–conditioned promiscuity makes her a social outcast.
She is desperate to return to the World State and to soma.
The Director
The Arch-Community-Songster
- The Arch-Community-Songster is the secular, shallow equivalent of an
archbishop in the World State society.
Popé
- Popé was Linda’s lover on the New Mexico Savage Reservation. He gave
Linda a copy of The Complete Works of Shakespeare.
The Warden
- The Warden is the talkative chief administrator for the New Mexico Savage
Reservation. He is an Alpha.
IV. Synopsis
The novel opens in the year 632 A.F. (which means After Ford, the god of the New
World). All of civilization has been destroyed by a great war. Then there is another
war, the Nine Years War, which ushers in the era of Ford, ensuring stability through
dictatorship. The society depicted in the novel is based on a rigid caste system. The
higher of the five castes enjoy superior tasks, while the lower ones perform menial
roles. Ten Controllers hold all the power in this new world and peace is maintained
by conditioning infant minds and by soothing adults with the tranquilizer, soma. The
population is further controlled through scientific methods; marriage is forbidden,
and children are not born but produced in an embryo factory.
When the novel begins, some students are being given a guided tour through the
London Hatcheries. Henry Foster and Lenina Crowne, two employees of this center,
have been dating each other a little too often, going against state rules. Lenina's
friend Fanny warns her against such promiscuity. As a result, Lenina decides to date
Bernard Marx, who is very intelligent but not quite like the others of his caste.
Lenina and Bernard decide to go on a vacation to a Savage Reservation in New
Mexico, where people considered unworthy of Utopia are confined. On the
reservation, the inhabitants live in an almost primitive manner. Before Bernard
leaves for his vacation, he is warned by Tomakin, the Director of Hatcheries, about
his non-conformist ways and threatened with exile to Iceland.
Lenina and Bernard accidentally meet Linda and her son, John the Savage, on the
Reservation. Bernard learns from John that long ago Linda had come to the
Reservation with Tomakin, who had abandoned her there. Discovering herself to be
carrying Tomakin's child, she knew that she could not return to Utopia; therefore,
she stayed on the Reservation and raised John. Hearing this story, Bernard goes to
the Controller and gains his permission to take John and his mother back to Utopia.
When Bernard presents the pair to Tomakin, the Director is shattered and resigns
from his position at the Hatcheries, having become an object of ridicule. Bernard no
longer has to worry about being exiled to Iceland.
While living in the custody of Bernard, John becomes the object of everyone's
curiosity and amusement. Bernard at first revels in the attention that he receives
because of the Savage. Things, however, do not go smoothly. John soon grows
repulsed by the ways of the New World and becomes unhappy. Despite his mood,
Lenina finds herself terribly attracted to John and tries to seduce him. John, however,
fights his physical attraction for her and resists her advances.
When his mother dies, John goes crazy. He then tries to convert the Utopians to his
way of thinking. Rebellion results and must be quelled. Bernard and Helmholtz
Watson are blamed for the rebellion. When the two of them are taken to Mustapha
Mond, along with John, Bernard and Helmholtz are exiled. John is retained for
further experimentation. He resists and tries to flee into solitude, but the citizens of
Utopia continue to hound him. In a fit of misery and depression, John commits
suicide.
- Brave New World raises the terrifying prospect that advances in the sciences
of biology and psychology could be transformed by a totalitarian
government into technologies that will change the way that human beings
think and act. Once this happens, the novel suggests, the totalitarian
government will cease to allow the pursuit of actual science, and the truth
that science reveals will be restricted and controlled.
- If someone were given the choice between getting what they wanted and not
getting what they wanted, they'd probably choose the first option every time.
This satisfaction of desire, the person would believe, would make them
happy. In order to maintain its stability, the World State in Brave New
World ensures that all its citizens get exactly what they want all the time.
Individualism
Summary
The novel opens in the Central London Hatching and Conditioning Centre, where the
Director of the Hatchery and one of his assistants, Henry Foster, are giving a tour to
a group of boys. The boys learn about the Bokanovsky and Podsnap Processes that
allow the Hatchery to produce thousands of nearly identical human embryos. During
the gestation period the embryos travel in bottles along a conveyor belt through a
factorylike building, and are conditioned to belong to one of five castes: Alpha, Beta,
Gamma, Delta, or Epsilon. The Alpha embryos are destined to become the leaders
and thinkers of the World State. Each of the succeeding castes is conditioned to be
slightly less physically and intellectually impressive. The Epsilons, stunted and
menial labor. Lenina Crowne, an employee at the factory, describes to the boys how
The Director then leads the boys to the Nursery, where they observe a group of Delta
infants being reprogrammed to dislike books and flowers. The Director explains that
this conditioning helps to make Deltas docile and eager consumers. He then tells the
boys about the “hypnopaedic” (sleep-teaching) methods used to teach children the
morals of the World State. In a room where older children are napping, a whispering
Outside, the Director shows the boys hundreds of naked children engaged in sexual
play and games like “Centrifugal Bumble-puppy.” Mustapha Mond, one of the ten
World Controllers, introduces himself to the boys and begins to explain the history
of the World State, focusing on the State’s successful efforts to remove strong
emotions, desires, and human relationships from society. Meanwhile, inside the
Hatchery, Lenina chats in the bathroom with Fanny Crowne about her relationship
with Henry Foster. Fanny chides Lenina for going out with Henry almost exclusively
for four months, and Lenina admits she is attracted to the strange, somewhat funny-
looking Bernard Marx. In another part of the Hatchery, Bernard is enraged when he
“having” Lenina.
After work, Lenina tells Bernard that she would be happy to accompany him on the
trip to the Savage Reservation in New Mexico to which he had invited her. Bernard,
Watson. He and Helmholtz discuss their dissatisfaction with the World State.
Bernard is primarily disgruntled because he is too small and weak for his caste;
Helmholtz is unhappy because he is too intelligent for his job writing hypnopaedic
phrases. In the next few days, Bernard asks his superior, the Director, for permission
to visit the Reservation. The Director launches into a story about a visit to the
Reservation he had made with a woman twenty years earlier. During a storm, he tells
Bernard, the woman was lost and never recovered. Finally, he gives Bernard the
permit, and Bernard and Lenina depart for the Reservation, where they get another
permit from the Warden. Before heading into the Reservation, Bernard calls
Helmholtz and learns that the Director has grown weary of what he sees as Bernard’s
difficult and unsocial behavior and is planning to exile Bernard to Iceland when he
returns. Bernard is angry and distraught, but decides to head into the Reservation
anyway.
On the Reservation, Lenina and Bernard are shocked to see its aged and ill residents;
no one in the World State has visible signs of aging. They witness a religious ritual
in which a young man is whipped, and find it abhorrent. After the ritual they meet
John, a fair-skinned young man who is isolated from the rest of the village. John tells
Bernard about his childhood as the son of a woman named Linda who was rescued
by the villagers some twenty years ago. Bernard realizes that Linda is almost
certainly the woman mentioned by the Director. Talking to John, he learns that Linda
was ostracized because of her willingness to sleep with all the men in the village, and
that as a result John was raised in isolation from the rest of the village. John explains
given to Linda by one of her lovers, Popé. John tells Bernard that he is eager to see
the “Other Place”—the “brave new world” that his mother has told him so much
about. Bernard invites him to return to the World State with him. John agrees but
While Lenina, disgusted with the Reservation, takes enough soma to knock her out
for eighteen hours, Bernard flies to Santa Fe where he calls Mustapha Mond and
receives permission to bring John and Linda back to the World State. Meanwhile,
John breaks into the house where Lenina is lying intoxicated and unconscious, and
barely suppresses his desire to touch her. Bernard, Lenina, John, and Linda fly to the
World State, where the Director is waiting to exile Bernard in front of his Alpha
coworkers. But Bernard turns the tables by introducing John and Linda. The shame
John becomes a hit with London society because of his strange life led on the
Reservation. But while touring the factories and schools of the World State, John
becomes increasingly disturbed by the society that he sees. His sexual attraction to
Lenina remains, but he desires more than simple lust, and he finds himself terribly
confused. In the process, he also confuses Lenina, who wonders why John does not
wish to have sex with her. As the discoverer and guardian of the “Savage,” Bernard
also becomes popular. He quickly takes advantage of his new status, sleeping with
many women and hosting dinner parties with important guests, most of whom dislike
Bernard but are willing to placate him if it means they get to meet John. One night
John refuses to meet the guests, including the Arch-Community Songster, and
After Bernard introduces them, John and Helmholtz quickly take to each other. John
reads Helmholtz parts of Romeo and Juliet, but Helmholtz cannot keep himself from
laughing at a serious passage about love, marriage, and parents—ideas that are
Fueled by his strange behavior, Lenina becomes obsessed with John, refusing
Henry’s invitation to see a feely. She takes soma and visits John at Bernard’s
apartment, where she hopes to seduce him. But John responds to her advances with
curses, blows, and lines from Shakespeare. She retreats to the bathroom while he
fields a phone call in which he learns that Linda, who has been on permanent soma-
holiday since her return, is about to die. At the Hospital for the Dying he watches her
die while a group of lower-caste boys receiving their “death conditioning” wonder
why she is so unattractive. The boys are simply curious, but John becomes enraged.
After Linda dies, John meets a group of Delta clones who are receiving their soma
ration. He tries to convince them to revolt, throwing the soma out the window, and a
riot results. Bernard and Helmholtz, hearing of the riot, rush to the scene and come to
John’s aid. After the riot is calmed by police with soma vapor, John, Helmholtz, and
John and Mond debate the value of the World State’s policies, John arguing that they
dehumanize the residents of the World State and Mond arguing that stability and
happiness are more important than humanity. Mond explains that social stability has
required the sacrifice of art, science, and religion. John protests that, without these
things, human life is not worth living. Bernard reacts wildly when Mond says that he
and Helmholtz will be exiled to distant islands, and he is carried from the room.
Helmholtz accepts the exile readily, thinking it will give him a chance to write, and
soon follows Bernard out of the room. John and Mond continue their conversation.
They discuss religion and the use of soma to control negative emotions and social
harmony.
John bids Helmholtz and Bernard good-bye. Refused the option of following them to
and attempts to purify himself by self-flagellation. Curious World State citizens soon
catch him in the act, and reporters descend on the lighthouse to film news reports and
a feely. After the feely, hordes of people descend on the lighthouse and demand that
John whip himself. Lenina comes and approaches John with her arms open. John
reacts by brandishing his whip and screaming “Kill it! Kill it!” The intensity of the
scene causes an orgy in which John takes part. The next morning he wakes up and,
overcome with anger and sadness at his submission to World State society, hangs
himself.
Conflict
The conflict of the novel is developed on the eve of Lenina and Bernard’s trip, when
the Director tells Bernard about his own visit to the Reservation, raising further
questions about how successful the society really is at creating an ideal existence. The
Director describes being separated from the woman he was with, hurting himself, and
having a painful and arduous trip back to the Reservation. The physical and emotional
difficulty of the experience make it one of his most significant memories, and he
admits that he still dreams about it. This recollection introduces the idea that pain is
necessary for meaning, and also foreshadows John and Linda’s relationship to the
Director. At the Reservation, John and Lenina witness several scenes directly
contrasting the two ideas of civilization presented by the novel: the Native American-
like civilization of the Reservation, and the futuristic civilization of World State.
Unlike in World State, residents of the Reservation grow old, have disease, hunger,
and treat each other with cruelty. At the same time, they create art, experience love
VI. Philosophy: (National and religious values, cultural beliefs and concepts generated)
The reception of Brave New World at its publication was primarily negative. Many
were offended by the nature of Huxley’s future, and very few understood the novel’s
philosophical implications. Many schools and libraries all over the world banned the
novel, and even today it remains on lists of censored books. Parents and teachers
argue that the novel’s themes of promiscuity, self-harm, and overall negativity are
not suitable for children. Others, however, are still influenced by the novel’s take
on dystopia, which forces the reader to ponder: In a perfect world with no poverty,
sickness, or sadness, what is society missing? This question and the answers
provided by Huxley in Brave New World are, perhaps, the reason the novel continues
to resonate.
In the novel “Brave New World,“ a utopian society lives in a world where any kind
of religion as we know it (even Christian and Islamic) was abolished by a World
State Government. Religious rituals and values have been exchanged, and God
reveals himself in absence, “as though he weren't there at all “ (Huxley, Brave New
World). Thanks to the ten World Controllers, not even one of the normal inhabitants
of the 'utopia' knows about God or any religion of the past. The question now is
whether Mustafa Mond was right in saying:
“God isn't compatible with machinery and scientific medicine and universal
happiness.”
Brave New World is our idea of heaven: genetic manipulation, sexual liberation, the
war against aging, the leisure society” (132). Michel, a molecular biologist, agrees,
arguing that both Huxleys1 believed totally in the kind of society depicted in Brave
New World (1932) and that it was only after the Nazi experiment “poisoned the well”
of the eugenics argument, and after Julian became the director-general of unesco,
that Aldous rewrote his own literary past, claiming that his novel had been a dystopia
all along.
- This metaphor illustrates how citizens of the World State are enclosed and
distant from each other. They lack the ability to develop meaningful
relationships and are completely controlled by society.
Huxley also utilizes numerous similes throughout the story. Huxley writes that the
Brentford Television Corporation’s factory was "like a small town." At the end of a
daily shift, Huxley writes that the Gamma girls and the Semi-Morons swarmed
around the entrances to the tram-cars "like ants."
VIII. Bibliography
https://www.britannica.com/topic/Brave-New-World
https://www.britannica.com/biography/Aldous-Huxley
https://www.sparknotes.com/lit/bravenew/characters
https://www.litcharts.com/lit/brave-new-world/themes
http://thebestnotes.com/booknotes/brave_new_world_huxley/brave_new_world_study_guide
https://www.enotes.com/homework-help/what-are-some-literary-devices-used-in-the-book-
1892110
Prepared by:
Catherine S. Boarao
BSEd 3 English