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Brave New World
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Brave New World (1932) (edit title/settings)

by Aldous Huxley (Author) (edit contributors)

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Description edit see section history

"Community, Identity, Stability" is the motto of Aldous Huxley's Utopian World State. Here everyone consumes daily grams of Soma, to fight depression. Babies are born in laboratories, and the most popular form of entertainment is a "Feelie," (a movie that stimulates the senses of sight,... read more

Summary edit see section history

Ryan: Brave New world is a novel that outlines the Utopia/Dystopia of future London. In this world there is no room for love or compassion as the residents attempt to only live a comfortable and easy life that satisfies societal norms. These citizens are grouped before birth into different... read more (warning: may contain spoilers)

Ryan: Brave New world is a novel that outlines the Utopia/Dystopia of future London. In this world there is no room for love or compassion as the residents attempt to only live a comfortable and easy life that satisfies societal norms. These citizens are grouped before birth into different classes each of whom are given different levels of intelligence and ability since birth. However this world is shaken up when a savage from the Undeveloped lands comes to this perfect world.


Brave New World takes place in London where the Central London Hatching and Conditioning Centre is located. This center is able to create many clones out of a single embryo. They then change the embryos to make them fit into a specific caste or class of people. The top caste was the Alphas, followed by the Betas, Gammas, Deltas, and finally the Epsilon. These different castes are genetically designed to perform different jobs, such as Alphas will become the great thinkers of the world and the Epsilons will become the laborers.
A Beta named Lenina Crowne is being criticized by her friend Fanny because she has been having an exclusive relation with Henry Foster even though their society encourages non-exclusive relationships and having relations with any person you desire. Lenina confesses that she is secretly attracted to Bernard Marx, an Alpha who is somehow below the physical standards for his class. Lenina decides she will accompany him to a Savage Reservation. On this reservation they still practice religion and have sexual intercourse in order to reproduce. This is where he meets a man named John, the son of a woman who had come from London but had been lost on the reservation and become the outcast due to her willingness to sleep with any man.
John speaks of how he would like to go to this "brave new world" that John and Lenina speak of. Bernard offers to take him to London and John agrees to go, on one condition. Johns mother Linda must come too.
When they return to London, The Director tells Bernard that he is to be sent to Iceland. However, Bernard introduces Linda to The Director, who is truely The Director's old girlfriend, that he had lost on a visit to the reservation. When he finds that he is a "father," an obscene word in the society, he quickly resigns and Bernard is allowed to stay.
John becomes a famous idol and Bernard becomes famous for being his discoverer/guardian, which allows him to sleep with any girl he like. However when John refuses to appear at a party with many prominent people, Bernards popularity decreases.
When John recieves a phone call that his mother has been on a permanent soma holiday since returning to London and is now dying. While sitting by his mother's bedside there are some younge children who are being "death conditioned" and he becomes offended at their view on life. He runs to the hall where Deltas are recieving their soma ration. He attempts to start a revoolt by throwing the soma out the window. Bernard and Helmholtz Watson run to his aid and are arrested after the Deltas are calmed. John speaks to Mustapha Mond who is one of the 10 controlers of the world. He and Mond get into a great debate when he is told that he, Bernard and Helmholtz will be sent away. John speaks how their society takes away humanity and Mond argues that happiness, art, and science must be eliminated inorder to keep peace. John refuses to believe this and runs away.
John retreats to an abandoned light house where he lives out the rest of his days. He goes back to the way he had lived before, hunting and farming. His location is eventually discovered and he becomes a popular tourist attraction where people chant for him to whip himself. John participates brutally beating Lenina, the one thing in the world that he has left. He wakes the next morning and he is overcome by anger and grief, and when the citizens come to watch him again, they discover he has hanged himself, which leaves them confused and frantic.

Characters edit see section history

  • Bernard Marx: The protagonist Alpha male who does not fit in with the homogenized class system. He is much shorter and much more different than all of the other Alpha males. Throughout the story, his character develops radically.
  • Lenina Crowne: Worker at the Hatchery and Conditioning Centre
  • Director of Hatching and Conditioning: An authority who works in the Hatching and Conditioning department.
  • Helmholtz Watson: Bernard's companion in the sense that he is also mentally different (thinking of the individual); however, Helmholtz is not cynical. Looking for the greater good of his kind. While Bernard wants to feel a sense of belonging to his community, Hemholtz wants to separate..
  • Mustapha Mond: One of the World Controllers who is accused of having illegal materials.
  • John (aka the Savage): Deemed a savage in the Brave New World, John's love of Shakespeare has little place in the futuristic utopia.
  • Fanny Crowne: Friend to Lenina (no relation).
  • Benito Hoover: Typical man in BNW.
  • Popé: Linda's lover in the Reservation
  • Linda: John's mother. Former Beta who worked with the embryos.
  • Henry Ford: God-like figure
  • The Director: The Director of Hatcheries
  • Henry Foster: An Alpha and love interest of Lenina.
Show all 13 characters
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Quotes edit see section history

  • “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.”
    John 'the Savage'
  • “Well, I'd rather be unhappy than have the sort of false, lying happiness you were having here.”
    John 'the Savage'
  • “The mockery made him feel an outsider; and feeling an outsider he behaved like one, which increased the prejudice against him and intensified the contempt and hostility aroused by his physical defects. Which in turn increased his sense of being alien and alone. A chronic fear of being slighted made him avoid his equals, made him stand, where his inferiors were concerned, self-consciously on his dignity.”
  • “The greater a man's talents, the greater his power to lead astray. It is better that one should suffer than that many should be corrupted. Consider the matter dispassionately, Mr. Foster, and you will see that no offense is so heinous as unorthodoxy of behavior. Murder kills only the individual-and, after all, what is an individual?”
  • “Every one works for every one else. We can’t do without any one. Even Epsilons are useful. We couldn’t do without Epsilons. Every one works for every one else.”
    Lenina Crowne
  • “And if ever, by some unlucky chance, anything unpleasant should somehow happen, why, there’s always soma to give you a holiday from the facts. And there’s always soma to calm your anger, to reconcile you to your enemies, to make you patient and long-suffering. In the past you could only accomplish these things by making a great effort and after years of hard moral training. Now, you swallow two or three half-gramme tablets, and there you are. Anybody can be virtuous now. You can carry at least half your morality about in a bottle. Christianity without tears—that’s what soma is.”
  • “The Controller shrugged his shoulders, "Because <Shakespeare's> old; that's the chief reason <it's prohibited>." We haven't any use for old things here...Particularly when they are beautiful. Beauty's attractive and we don't want people to be attractive to old things. We want them to like the new ones.”
    Mustapha Mond
  • “Actual happiness always looks pretty squalid in comparison with the over-compensations for misery. And, of course, stability isn't nearly so spectacular as instability. And being contented has none of the glamour of a good fight against misfortune, none of the picturesqueness of a struggle with temptation, or a fatal overthrown by passion or doubt. Happiness is never grand.”
    Mustapha Mond
  • “It isn't only art that incompatible with happiness; it's also science. Science is dangerous; we have to keep it most carefully chained and muzzled.”
    Mustapha Mond
  • “All conditioning aims at that: making people like their un-escapable social destiny.”
  • “'....It's curious,' he went on after a little pause, 'to read what people in the time of Our Ford used to write about scientific progress. They seemed to have imagined that it could be allowed to go on indefinitely, regardless of everything else. Knowledge was the highest good, truth the supreme value; all the rest was secondary and subordinate. True, ideas were beginning to change even then. Our Ford himself did a great deal to shift the emphasis from truth and beauty to comfort and happiness. Mass production demanded the shift. Universal happiness keeps the wheels steadily turning; truth and beauty can't. And, of course, whenever the masses seized political power, then it was happiness rather than truth and beauty that mattered. Still, in spite of everything, unrestricted scientific research was still permitted. People still went on talking about truth and beauty as though they were sovereign goods....'”
    Mustapha Mond
  • “Words can be like X-rays, if you use them properly - they'll go through anything. You read and you're pierced.”
  • “‘Trust Henry Foster to be the perfect gentleman - always correct. And then there’s the Director to think of. You know what a stickler…’Nodding, ‘He patted me on the behind this afternoon.’ said Lenina.‘There, you see!’ Fanny was triumphant. ‘That shows what he stands for. The strictest conventionality.’”
  • “Unorthodoxy threatens more than the life of a mere individual; it strikes at Society itself.”
    The Director
  • “What fun it would be," he thought, "if one didn't have to think about happiness!”
    Bernard Marx
  • “One of the principal functions of a friend is to suffer (in a milder and symbolic form) the punishments that we should like, but are unable to inflict upon our enemies.”
  • “I'd rather be myself. Myself and nasty. Not somebody else, however jolly.”
    Bernard Marx
  • “Whether tis better in the mind to suffer the slings and arrows of outrageous fortune, or to take arms against a sea of troubles and by opposing end them...But you don't do either. Neither suffer nor oppose. You just abolish the slings and arrows. It's too easy.”
    John 'the Savage'
  • “Moral education, which ought never, in any circumstances, to be rational.”
  • “How is it that I can't, or rather - because, after all, I know quite well I can't - what would it be like if I could, if I were free - not enslaved by my conditioning.”
    Bernard Marx
  • “If one's different, one's bound to be lonely.”
    John 'the Savage'
  • “People believe in God because they've been conditioned to believe in God.”
    Mustapha Mond
  • “All right then. I'm claiming the right to be unhappy.”
    John 'the Savage'
Show all 23 quotes from this book

Organizations edit see section history

First Sentence edit see section history

A squat grey building of only thirty-four stories.

Glossary edit see section history

  • Soma: The drug given to the population of the World State to control happiness. It is taken in half-gram tablets.
  • Alphas, Betas, Gammas, Deltas, Epsilons: Social classes used to categorize people in the World State (examples: Alpha Plus, Delta Minus).
  • Bokanovsky's Process: The process of human cloning, applied to fertilized human eggs in vitro, causing them to split into identical genetic copies of the original. The process can be repeated several times, though the maximum number of viable embryos possible is 96, with 72 being a "good average".
  • Malthusian belt: a belt holding the regulation supply of contraceptives
  • Podsnap's Technique: Technique for speeding up the maturation of unfertilized eggs from an ovary
  • Ford: their 'Creator'

Themes & Symbolism edit see section history

  • The Use of Technology to Control Society: Brave New World warns of the dangers of giving the state control over new and powerful technologies. One illustration of this theme is the rigid control of reproduction through technological and medical intervention, including the surgical removal of ovaries, the Bokanovsky Process, and hypnopaedic conditioning. Another is the creation of complicated entertainment machines that generate both harmless leisure and the high levels of consumption and production that are the basis of the World State’s stability. Soma is a third example of the kind of medical, biological, and psychological technologies that Brave New World criticizes most sharply.It is important to recognize the distinction between science and technology. Whereas the State talks about progress and science, what it really means is the bettering of technology, not increased scientific exploration and experimentation. The state uses science as a means to build technology that can create a seamless, happy, superficial world through things such as the “feelies.” The state censors and limits science, however, since it sees the fundamental basis behind science, the search for truth, as threatening to the State’s control. The State’s focus on happiness and stability means that it uses the results of scientific research, inasmuch as they contribute to technologies of control, but does not support science itself.
  • The Consumer Society: It is important to understand that Brave New World is not simply a warning about what could happen to society if things go wrong, it is also a satire of the society in which Huxley existed, and which still exists today. While the attitudes and behaviors of World State citizens at first appear bizarre, cruel, or scandalous, many clues point to the conclusion that the World State is simply an extreme—but logically developed—version of our society’s economic values, in which individual happiness is defined as the ability to satisfy needs, and success as a society is equated with economic growth and prosperity.
  • The Incompatibility of Happiness and Truth: Brave New World is full of characters who do everything they can to avoid facing the truth about their own situations. The almost universal use of the drug soma is probably the most pervasive example of such willful self-delusion. Soma clouds the realities of the present and replaces them with happy hallucinations, and is thus a tool for promoting social stability. But even Shakespeare can be used to avoid facing the truth, as John demonstrates by his insistence on viewing Lenina through the lens of Shakespeare’s world, first as a Juliet and later as an “impudent strumpet.” According to Mustapha Mond, the World State prioritizes happiness at the expense of truth by design: he believes that people are better off with happiness than with truth. What are these two abstract entities that Mond juxtaposes? It seems clear enough from Mond’s argument that happiness refers to the immediate gratification of every citizen’s desire for food, sex, drugs, nice clothes, and other consumer items. It is less clear what Mond means by truth, or specifically what truths he sees the World State society as covering up. From Mond’s discussion with John, it is possible to identify two main types of truth that the World State seeks to eliminate. First, as Mond’s own past indicates, the World State controls and muffles all efforts by citizens to gain any sort of scientific, or empirical truth. Second, the government attempts to destroy all kinds of “human” truths, such as love, friendship, and personal connection. These two types of truth are quite different from each other: objective truth involves coming to a definitive conclusion of fact, while a “human” truth can only be explored, not defined. Yet both kinds of truth are united in the passion that an individual might feel for them. As a young man, Mustapha Mond became enraptured with the delight of making discoveries, just as John loves the language and intensity of Shakespeare. The search for truth then, also seems to involve a great deal of individual effort, of striving and fighting against odds. The very will to search for truth is an individual desire that the communal society of Brave New World, based as it is on anonymity and lack of thought, cannot allow to exist. Truth and individuality thus become entwined in the novel’s thematic structure.
  • The Dangers of an All-Powerful State: Like George Orwell’s 1984, this novel depicts a dystopia in which an all-powerful state controls the behaviors and actions of its people in order to preserve its own stability and power. But a major difference between the two is that, whereas in 1984 control is maintained by constant government surveillance, secret police, and torture, power in Brave New World is maintained through technological interventions that start before birth and last until death, and that actually change what people want. The government of 1984 maintains power through force and intimidation. The government of Brave New World retains control by making its citizens so happy and superficially fulfilled that they don’t care about their personal freedom. In Brave New World the consequences of state control are a loss of dignity, morals, values, and emotions—in short, a loss of humanity.
  • Pneumatic: The word pneumatic is used with remarkable frequency to describe two things: Lenina’s body and chairs. Pneumatic is an adjective that usually means that something has air pockets or works by means of compressed air. In the case of the chairs (in the feely theater and in Mond’s office), it probably means that the chairs’ cushions are inflated with air. In Lenina’s case, the word is used by both Henry Foster and Benito Hoover to describe what she’s like to have sex with. She herself remarks that her lovers usually find her “pneumatic,” patting her legs as she does so. In reference to Lenina it means well-rounded, balloon-like, or bouncy, in reference to her flesh, and in particular her bosom. Huxley is not the only writer to use the word pneumatic in this sense, although it is an unusual usage. The use of this odd word to describe the physical characteristics of both a woman and a piece of furniture underscores the novel’s theme that human sexuality has been degraded to the level of a commodity.
  • Ford, “My Ford,” “Year of Our Ford,” etc.: Throughout Brave New World, the citizens of the World State substitute the name of Henry Ford, the early twentieth-century industrialist and founder of the Ford Motor Company, wherever people in our own world would say Lord” (i.e., Christ). This demonstrates that even at the level of casual conversation and habit, religion has been replaced by reverence for technology—specifically the efficient, mechanized factory production of goods that Henry Ford pioneered.
  • Alienation: The motif of alienation provides a counterpoint to the motif of total conformity that pervades the World State. Bernard Marx, Helmholtz Watson, and John are alienated from the World State, each for his own reasons. Bernard is alienated because he is a misfit, too small and powerless for the position he has been conditioned to enjoy. Helmholtz is alienated for the opposite reason: he is too intelligent even to play the role of an Alpha Plus. John is alienated on multiple levels and at multiple sites: not only does the Indian community reject him, but he is both unwilling and unable to become part of the World State. The motif of alienation is one of the driving forces of the narrative: it provides the main characters with their primary motivations.
  • Sex: Brave New World abounds with references to sex. At the heart of the World State’s control of its population is its rigid control over sexual mores and reproductive rights. Reproductive rights are controlled through an authoritarian system that sterilizes about two-thirds of women, requires the rest to use contraceptives, and surgically removes ovaries when it needs to produce new humans. The act of sex is controlled by a system of social rewards for promiscuity and lack of commitment. John, an outsider, is tortured by his desire for Lenina and her inability to return his love as such. The conflict between John’s desire for love and Lenina’s desire for sex illustrates the profound difference in values between the World State and the humanity represented by Shakespeare’s works.
  • Shakespeare: Shakespeare provides the language through which John understands the world. Through John’s use of Shakespeare, the novel makes contact with the rich themes explored in plays like The Tempest. It also creates a stark contrast between the utilitarian simplicity and inane babble of the World State’s propaganda and the nuanced, elegant verse of a time “before Ford.” Shakespeare’s plays provide many examples of precisely the kind of human relations—passionate, intense, and often tragic—that the World State is committed to eliminating.
  • Soma: The drug soma is a symbol of the use of instant gratification to control the World State’s populace. It is also a symbol of the powerful influence of science and technology on society. As a kind of “sacrament,” it also represents the use of religion to control society.

Series & Lists edit see section history

This is book 66 of 194 in Shelfari Most Popular (December 2010). (authoritative list)
This book is in Folio Society. (publisher edition list)
This is book 68 of 195 in Shelfari Most Popular (December 2011). (authoritative list)
This is book 68 of 195 in Shelfari Most Popular (June 2011). (authoritative list)
This is book 63 of 195 in Shelfari Most Popular (June 2010). (authoritative list)
This book is in The Rory Gilmore Reading Challenge. (community list)
This is book 54 of 100 in ALA's Top 100 Banned/Challenged Books: 1990-1999. (authoritative list)
This book is in Books That Changed Man's Thinking (Heron). (publisher edition list)
This book is in Guardian 1000 Novels Everyone Must Read. (authoritative list)
This is book 5 of 93 in Modern Library's 100 Best Novels: The Board's List. (authoritative list)
This is book 9 of 99 in National Public Radio's Top 100 Science Fiction and Fantasy. (authoritative list)
This is book 44 of 100 in 20th Century's Greatest Hits: 100 English-Language Books of Fiction. (authoritative list)
This is book 21 of 99 in Le Monde's 100 Books of the Century. (authoritative list)
This book is in Random Synapses: 100 Book Reading Challenge (2011). (community list)
This is book 12 of 95 in The Art of Manliness' Essential Man’s Library. (authoritative list)
This book is in 100 Fantabulous Book Challenge. (community list)
This is book 23 of 93 in Newsweek's Top 100 Books: The Meta-List. (authoritative list)
This is book 18 of 98 in Modern Library's 100 Best Novels: Reader's List. (authoritative list)
This is book 87 of 200 in BBC 'Big Read' Top 200 Novels, 2003. (authoritative list)
This is book 63 of 113 in Book Smart Reading List. (community list)
This is book 15 of 97 in Waterstone's Top 100 Books of the 20th Century. (authoritative list)
This is book 58 of 95 in Telegraph Top 100 Books, 2008. (authoritative list)
This is book 649 of 1286 in 1001 Books You Must Read Before You Die. (authoritative list)
This is book 11 of 213 in Best English-Language Fiction of the 20th Century. (authoritative list)
This is book 36 of 100 in ALA's Top 100 Banned/Challenged Books: 2000-2009. (authoritative list)
This is book 6 of 24 in io9 Science Fiction 101. (community list)
This book is in Easton Press. (publisher edition list)
This is book 87 of 82 in BBC "Big Read" Top 100 Novels. (authoritative list)
This book is in Heritage Press. (publisher edition list)

Authors & Contributors edit see section history

  1. Aldous Huxley (Author)

First Edition edit see section history

Original Language: English
Publisher: Chatto and Windus
Country: UK
Publication Date: 1932
ISBN: 978-0060850524
Page Count: 238

Classification edit see section history

  • Library of Congress: PR6015.U9 1932
  • Dewey: 823.912

Notes for Parents edit see section history

Reading Level: Young Adults

Sex, orgys, drug use and mature themes.

Movie Connections edit see section history

More Books Like This edit see section history

   
  • The Scientific Outlook
  • Men Like Gods
  • Player Piano
  • 1984
  • The Picture of Dorian Gray
  • A Clockwork Orange
  • The Wanting Seed
  • Journey to Virginland - Epistle 1
  • Fahrenheit 451
  • Anthem

Books with Additional Background Information edit see section history

   
  • Brave New World Revisited

Books Influenced by This Book edit see section history

   
  • Four Arguments for the Elimination of Television

Books That Cite This Book edit see section history

   
  • The Language Police
  • The Know-It-All

Books Cited by This Book edit see section history

   
  • The Complete Works of William Shakespeare
  • The Merchant of Venice
  • Othello
  • Romeo and Juliet
  • The Bible
  • The Imitation Of Christ
  • The Varieties Of Religious Experience: A Study In Human Nature
  • King Lear

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