Bibliographic Information
Huxley, Aldous. Brave New World. New York: Harper & Bros., 1946. Print.
Aldous Huxley was born in Godalming, England in 1894 and died in Los Angeles in 1963. He lived during the post-modernist era.
Key Question
“...COMMUNITY, IDENTITY, STABILITY” (Huxley 1).
Throughout the plot of the novel, these three words hang on a sign over the Central London Hatchery and Conditioning Centre, which compromises the slogan for the society.
The slogan for London’s society is extremely similar to the slogan of its counterpart 1984 due to fear of authoritarianism.
“...you all remember, I suppose, that beautiful and inspired sayings of Our Ford’s: History is bunk” (Huxley 34).
Quoted by Mustapha Mond, instructs his citizens to
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“You’ve got to choose between happiness and what people used to call high art. We’ve sacrificed the higher art” (Huxley 226).
Mustapha Mond responds to John Savage’s protest, saying that John has a point, but that in this society, happiness is the greater good and great literature can only come from unhappiness.
Most pieces of work in the real world come from emotional experiences and they are not always of happiness.
Title
Aldous Huxley’s repeated phrase and title “Brave New World” represents the climax of an unprincipled society in which technological advances changes the lives of many.
Setting
This novel took place in futuristic London after World War I where people were set out to find a new utopian society.
Theme
A commodified society is harmful to human creativity.
Throughout the novel, the “utopian” society changes human behavior so that individuals seek to consume items and services. This modification means that any individual that makes the goods or services purchased will be able to stay employed so that the society’s economy remains stable. However, reliance upon commodification stops any attempt at original
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Aldous Huxley argues that certain structures in our modern society work like drugs, just like working in this dystopian society. He often argues that the use of advertising specifically targeted toward a group of people for the way that it hypnotizes individuals into buying a specific product.
“Lenina was still sobbing. ‘Too awful,’ she kept repeating, and all Bernard’s consolations were in vain. ‘Too awful! That blood!’ She shuddered. ‘Oh, I wish I had my soma” (Huxley 116).
Human impulse can both stabilize and destabilize a society.
In Brave New World, authorities encourage individuals to sleep with as many people possible as often as possible. In previous generations, marriage controlled these sexual impulses but when people tried to confine them, such institutions unraveled. By abolishing marriage and encouraging these sexual behaviors, the leaders of the new world have gotten rid of the inherent dangers.
“‘But every one belongs to every one else,’ he concluded, citing the hypnopædic proverb” (Huxley 40).
Character
John the
He uses rhetorical irony in one situation in particular. He makes light of conception and giving birth that is usually a gift that is presented to parents through human contact. He uses his language to provoke an emotional response to the insensitivity of the process of conceiving and giving birth to children in the new world. He uses satirical language to degrade parenting and the relationships formed between mother, father and child. The citizens at age four are presented the opportunity to be sexually active which creates a sex driven society. “The world was full of fathers – was therefore full of misery; full of mothers – therefore of every kind of perversion from sadism to chastity; full of brothers, sisters, uncles, aunts – full of madness and suicide.”(41), this brainwashed and engrained the ideas of family members being toxic to one another. Lastly, Huxley uses allusions to historical figures to portray characters and different technologies. Due to Henry Ford being the creator of the assembly line and the assembly line being the main tool for the production of the thousands of embryos, Ford becomes the new worshiped god. The phrases presented around God are altered around Ford in the new world. For example “Our Ford” (41) and even altering the years A.D. (Anno Domini) to A.F. (After Ford). All the characters names and technologies are linked to famous historical
Brave New World by Aldous Huxley depicts a future world that has mechanized and removed all sense of life to being human. In this world, people work for the common good of the community and are conditioned to dislike what, today, we would consider common and healthy relationships with people and environments. The story follows a man, John, not born into the culture and his struggle with the unfamiliarity with the “Brave New World”. Published in 1932, Brave New World often leaves roots back to the world Aldous was in when he was writing the novel. I believe the genius of Huxley’s writing was his ability to effectively select the traits of 1930’s society that would later become a staple for Americanism in the coming century and, in time, allowing for a relatable story to the modern day while giving us warning to the future.
By including words such as, “beautiful lesson” and “happiness”, Gladwell touches upon the hearts of the audience, which also demonstrates his usage of rhetoric, in this case, pathos. It allows him to argue passionately that there “will be a surer way to true happiness.” He continues his usage of rhetoric through ethos by mentioning a psychophysicist named Howard
In the novel, Brave New World by Aldous Huxley, Huxley includes allusion, ethos, and pathos to mock the wrongdoings of the people which causes physical and mental destruction in the society as a whole. The things that happened in the 1930’s plays a big contribution to the things that go on in the novel. The real world can never be looked at as a perfect place because that isn't possible. In this novel, Huxley informs us on how real life situations look in his eyes in a nonfictional world filled with immoral humans with infantile minds and a sexual based religion.
details, Aldous Huxley describes how sex and drugs are used to keep the individuals of this
In Brave New World Aldous Huxley, creates a dystopian society which is scientifically advance in order to make life orderly, easy, and free of trouble. This society is controlled by a World State who is not question. In this world life is manufactured and everyone is created with a purpose, never having the choice of free will. Huxley use of irony and tone bewilders readers by creating a world with puritanical social norms, which lacks love, privacy and were a false sense of happiness is instituted, making life meaningless and controlled.
“But I don’t want comfort. I want God, I want poetry, I want real danger, I want freedom, I want goodness. I want sin.” “In fact,” said Mustapha Mond, “you’re claiming the right to be unhappy.” “All right then,” said the Savage defiantly, “I’m claiming the right to be unhappy,” This significant quote from Brave New World had moved innumerable readers’ heart, so do I. Exaggeration? No. It’s the satire to the false meaning of the universal happiness, and it’s this quote which made me had rethink what do I really want and the way of living I want to choose. Because the deep influence and rumination brought by the book, I would like to say
Aldous Huxley’s Brave New World, like most satires, addresses several issues within society. Huxley accomplishes this by using satirical tools such as parody, irony, allusion. He does this in order to address issues such as human impulses, drugs, and religion. These issues contribute to the meaning of the work as a whole by pointing out the disadvantages of having too much control within society.
The philosopher Aristotle once wrote, “Happiness is the meaning and the purpose of life, the whole aim and end of human existence.” This famous quote compels people to question the significance of their joy, and whether it truly represents purposeful lives they want to live. Ray Bradbury, a contemporary author, also tackles this question in his book, Fahrenheit 451, which deals heavily with society's view of happiness in the future. Through several main characters, Bradbury portrays the two branches of happiness: one as a lifeless path, heading nowhere, seeking no worry, while the other embraces pure human experience intertwined together to reveal truth and knowledge.
At the very beginning of the novel sex is shown to play an important role in the new society because kids are playing sex games in bushes. This should immediately evoke a sense of bewilderment by the reader because sex amongst children is looked down upon by normal society. Throughout the entire novel sex occurs quite often, but love is never correlated with the intimacy. The characters simply choose who they want to be with and then act upon the person without putting forth much effort at all. Having sex with others and not loving the person is something that is normally looked down upon in normal society, so Huxley obviously intended to have a large impact on the readers. To further his exploitation of taboo subjects, Huxley makes the New World a society in which drugs known as Soma are used to fix any problem that may occur. Whenever something that seems like it might be the least bit problematic arises, Soma is taken to ease them of any tension. This eliminates any problem solving and rids of the overall satisfaction from overcoming difficulties. But problems seldom occur to inhabitants of the New World, and Huxley wanted to make drugs commonplace in Brave New World. So, Soma is also taken during most instances of sex which increases the drastic impact on the reader. All of Huxley’s exaggerations of the New World is meant to make the reader think about his own society and think about the path
Brave New World is greatly dependant upon soma, as in our world where prescribed drugs and drug abuse are prominent. This is evident when Bernard and Lenina return from the Savage Reservation. Lenina is devastated from her experiences, so decides to take soma. It illustrates how like our world when something upsets
“Community, Identity, Stability.” -- The motto that shapes and defines the entire civilized world. Civilians like Lenina believe that the motto has given them their individual freedom. “I am free. Free to have the most wonderful time. Everybody's happy nowadays.” (Page 79) Ironically, Huxley was trying to convey the exact opposite message. The motto really speaks of a heavy price paid -- freedom in exchange for collective happiness. Freedom to feel, freedom of identity, and the freedom to know and create. It is too heavy a price, perhaps, because freedom is never dear at any
The formative years of the 1900’s, suffered from communism, fascism, and capitalism. The author of the Brave New World, Mr. Aldous Huxley lived in a social order in which he had been exposed to all three of these systems. In the society of the Brave New World, which is set 600 years into the future, individuality is not condoned and the special motto “Community, Identity, Stability” frames the structure of the Totalitarian Government.
Brave New World by Aldous Huxley depicts a future that seems happy and stable on the surface, but when you dig deeper you realize that it is not so bright at all. People almost autonomously fall in line to do what they have been taught to do through constant conditioning and hypnopædia. Neil Postman’s argument that Huxley’s book is becoming more relevant than George Orwell’s 1984 is partly true. Huxley’s vision of the future is not only partly true, but it is only the beginning of what is to come.
Feeling strongly toward any thing creates individual instability. Individual instability equals social instability. Civilized people of the New World are fertilized in bottles; thus, they have no parents. No parents, no mothers, no families to create emotions and boundaries. Hence, individual stability. Individual stability equals social stability. Civilized people, from childhood on, learned from hypnopaedia . Every one, as embryos were conditioned for their predestined station in life. Everyone will be happy with their predestined inescapable destiny because they are conditioned to be. Happiness is part of social stability. The majority of adults in the 90s hope that our children will practice abstinence. We hope our children will not have sexual relations at an early age. We hope our children will wait until they are mature of the mind to understand the responsibilities of sex. We hope our children will respect their bodies. In our society, promiscuity is frowned upon. To many of us, monogamy is good.