Brave New World Topics of Discussion
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Brave New World Topics of Discussion: Where does the title come from? It is a quote from William Shakespeare’s The Tempest, which states, “O brave new world/ That has such people in’t” (V.I). Notice how John uses it when he first goes to London considering it a blessing, kind of like going to a Utopia. However, shortly after being in London, he uses the same quote again, but in an ironic mood trying to portray the perversity of “the Other place.” In his mind, this place with all its technology is not “expensive enough” because it doesn’t provide books and other forms of entertainment he’s used to. This is important for Huxley to juxtapose what the reader has heard because it suddenly changes this infantile place into a more dystopian light. The question then becomes: does Huxley believe our society should be a drug-infested utopia where the infantile ethos thrives, or should it have an adult ethos that places the individual and reality as the most important? What is the translation of the Nicholas Berdiaeff quote after the title page? Utopias appear to be much easier to realize than one formerly believed. We currently face a question that would otherwise fill us with anguish: How to avoid their becoming definitively real? This quote reveals a little the importance of Huxley’s time. After World War I, politicians of his time, namely Chamberlain thought post World War I was a time of utopic peace. England and France were beginning to disarm themselves, which led directly into the hands of World War II where NAZI’s took advantage of a weakened Europe. In this regard, the quote is partially a prophecy, but also warning as to the way this book will turn out: no matter how perfect societies are made to appear, there will always be problems because society is not a well-oiled machine even with conditioning. A good example of this appears in Chs. 14-15. Main Characters (in order of appearance) Director of Hatcheries and Conditioning (D.H.C.)/Thomas- Henry Foster- Lenina Crowne- Mustapha Mond- Bernard Marx- Fanny Crowne- Benito Hoover- Helmholtz Watson- Linda- Who do you think is the actual main character of the book? Explain. Setting: 26th century London and a traditional pueblo Malpais (or “bad country”) on an Indian Reservation in New Mexico. Conflicts: External -- between Mustapha Mond and Bernard and John; others? Internal -- within Bernard, within John; others? Societal – London and Malpais; others? Themes: 1. The price for technological progress is the loss of individuality and human freedom. Why are these critical to our understanding of society and human nature, especially as we try to make things more mechanized? How has consumerism become synonymous, it seems, with technology in our society? What might Huxley be arguing and what do you say in regards to his argument? 2. The triumph of reason over passion, and science over art leads to distortions of human nature. Why does Huxley purposefully juxtapose these concepts within the novel? Can you connect these ideas to our current society? Focus on political stances such as the idea of decreasing funding for the arts because they are considered unimportant facets of education. What do you think the result will be? 3. The purpose of society is governed by an infantile ethos of consumption and open sexuality. From this novel, do you get the feeling that one should love and be jealous, or that people should be more open to their inner desires? What happens when these two collide and what is Huxley’s purpose in pinpointing these two motifs on John and Lenina? 4. The price of a utopian society to rid one’s self of individual freedoms. To whom should we give more importance to, based on this novel, society or individual thinking? Consider the way Huxley uses multiple people that bend both ideas, but controversially (I think) ends with John the Savage. Why does Huxley choose to end this novel with John? What has he shown: the destruction of Mond’s society or a perfection of it? For Further Reading (and Watching): Books ▪ Brave New World (Bloom's Modern Critical Interpretations) by Harold Bloom ▪ Aldous Huxley's Brave New World (Bloom’s Guides) by Harold Bloom ▪ Brave New World Revisited by Aldous Huxley ▪ I, Robot by Isaac Asimov ▪ 1984 by George Orwell ▪ Fahrenheit 451 by Ray Bradbury ▪ V for Vendetta Alan Moore and David Lloyd ▪ Minority Report by Phillip K. Dick ▪ Blade Runner (i.e. Do Androids Dream of Electronic Sheep?) by Phillip K. Dick Films: ▪ Brave New World by Burt Brinckerhoff (1980) ▪ Brave New World by Leslie Libman and Larry Williams (1998) ▪ Equilibrium by Kurt Wimmer ▪ Artificial Intelligence (A.I.) by Stanley Kubrick and Stephen Spielberg ▪ The Matrix by the Wachowski Brothers ▪ Aldoux Huxley Biography (1894-1953) English novelist and critic, grandson of the prominent biologist T.H. Huxley (see further below) and brother of Julian Huxley, also a biologist. Aldous Huxley's production was wide. Besides novels he published travel books, histories, poems, plays, and essays on philosophy, arts, sociology, religion and morals. Among Huxley's best known novels is BRAVE NEW WORLD (1932), which is one of the classical works of science fiction along with George Orwell's Nineteen-Eighty-Four. "Half of the human race lives in manifest obedience to the lunar rhythm; and there is evidence to show that the psychological and therefore the spiritual life, not only of women, but of men too, mysteriously ebbs and flows with the changes of the moon. There are unreasoned joys, inexplicable miseries, laughters and remorses without a cause. Their sudden and fantastic alternations constitute the ordinary weather of our minds. These moods, of which the more gravely numinous may be hypostasized as gods, the lighter, if we will, as hobgoblins and fairies, are the children of the blood and humours. But the blood and humours obey, among many other masters, the changing moon. Touching the soul directly through the eyes and, indirectly, along the dark channels of the blood, the moon is doubly a divinity." (from 'Meditations of the Moon' in Music at Night and Other Essays, 1931) Aldous Leonard Huxley was born in Godalming, Surrey, into a well-to-do upper-middle-class family. Leonard Huxley, his father, was a biographer, editor, and poet. Huxley's mother, Julia Arnold, was the daughter of Thomas Arnold, a brother of Matthew Arnold, the great British humanist. Julia's sister was the novelist Mary Augusta Ward, who published under the name Mrs. Humphry Ward. Julia Arnold died of cancer when Huxley was fourteen. Later Huxley said that it gave him a sense of the transience of human happiness. Huxley first studied at Eton College, Berkshire (1908-13). At the age of 16 Huxley suffered an attack of keratitis punctata and became for a period of about 18 months totally blind. By using special glasses and one eye recovered sufficiently he was able to read and he also learned braille. Despite a condition of near- blindness, Huxley continued his studies at Balliol College, Oxford (1913-15), receiving his B.A. in English in 1916. Unable to pursue his chosen career as a scientist - or fight in World War on the front - Huxley turned to writing. He worked for the War Office in London in 1917, and taught briefly at Eton College and Repton. His first collection of poetry appeared in 1916 and two more volumes followed by 1920. In 1919-20 he was member of the editorial staff of Athenaeum under Middleton Murray, Katherine Mansfield's husband. Huxley wrote biographical and architectural articles and reviews of fiction, drama music and art. "I met, not long ago, a young man who aspired to become a novelist. Knowing that I was in the profession, he asked me to tell him how he should set to work to realize his ambition. I did my best to explain. 'The first thing,' I said, 'is to buy quite a lot of paper, a bottle of ink, and a pen. After that you merely have to write.'" (from 'Sermons in Cats' in Music at Night) In 1920-21 Huxley was drama a critic for Westminster Gazette, an assistant at the Chelsea Book Club and worked for Condé Nast Publications (1922). His first novel, CROME YELLOW (1921), a witty criticism of society, appeared in 1921. Huxley's style, a combination of brilliant dialogue, cynicism, and social criticism, made him one of the most fashionable literary figures of the decade. He was a friend of Lady Ottoline Morrell and the Bloomsbury group, which included such writers as Virginia Woolf, Clive Bell, Lytton Strachey, and E.M. Forster. In eight years he published a dozen books, among them POINT COUNTER POINT (1928), in which the numerous characters, among them D.H. Lawrence, Murray, Mansfield, and the author himself, are compared to instruments in an orchestra, and each character plays his separate portion of Huxley's vision of life. Later these early works, mostly satirical comments on contemporary events, have been criticized for their rather one-dimensional characters, which the author used as a mouthpiece to say "almost everything about almost anything" - as Huxley once described the nature of the essay. In DO WHAT YOU WILL (1929) Huxley predicts that Karl Marx's Proletariat becomes "a bourgeoisie with oily instead of inky fingers", compares the first motion picture in which spoken dialogue is heard, 'The Jazz Singer', to a "brimming bowl of hog-wash", and sees that at out time "monotheism has lost the value which circumstances once gave it. It lacks political utility, and to the individual it is a poison." In the essay 'Fashions on Love' he defends D.H.