Huxley, Aldous - Brave New World

BRAVE NEW WORLD

Setting

The story is set in A.F. (After Ford) 632, this is 632 years after Ford has released the first T- ford car. People are made in bottles and conditioned to do predestined work.. People have no family, marriages don’t exist. All aspects of the population are controlled. Social stability must be maintained at all costs. Unhappiness, intellectual curiosity, disagreement, suffering - none of these feelings are allowed in this brave new world (as John, the Savage, calls it). Emotions of all types are strictly controlled. Everyone enjoys his or her work because he or she was "made" or trained for it when they were young. All births are completely planned and monitored. There are different classes of people with different intelligence. The social order is divided into the most highly educated, the Alpha+, and then, in descending intelligence, the following divisions:

Alphas: Wear grey; these are the intellectuals of society. Some examples of professions can be World Controllers (Alpha double Plus), Directors of Hatcheries, and Wardens. Bernard, a psychologist, is also an Alpha.

Betas: Mulberry colored; these persons are somewhat intelligent and often work as mechanics.

Gammas: Wear green; often work as machine minders/manipulators, butlers, and other semithought-provoking jobs.

Deltas: Wear khaki, helicopter attendants, cold pressers, screw-cutters, package packers; are mass produced and have no individuality.

Epsilons: Wear black, can't read or write, Sewage Workers, liftmen, foundry-workers, carriers, semi-morons.

Everyone is conditioned from childhood on to like his caste and to be happy not to be born into another. Children make sexual experiences from early years on and they are "educated" by electric shocks and "dreamteaching".

The regime controlls people and keeps them happy, because if somebody gets angry or depressive, the wonder drug Soma is prescribed to him or her. Soma is a kind of multi - function drug that has no side effects like a hangover and helps to calm down, feel happy and provides happiness.

Freedom and religion in society are fully sacrified for what Mustapha Mond calls happiness

Characters

Bernard Marx:

An Alpha plus member of the Central London Hatchery. He's very intelligent, specialist in sleep-teaching. He's shorter than normal Alpha people, he doesn't like sport and he's not very attractive (he looks like a gamma person). Bernard is isolated, because of his small body and he likes to be alone →Outsider. He hasn't got so many girls as other men. The other people say, they accidentally put some alcohol in his blood, when he was still in the bottle, because they confounded him. Bernard hates Ford and because of that, he's an enemy of Society.

Thomas (D.H.C.):

The Director of the Central London Hatchery and Conditioning Centre (Brut- und Normcenter). He was in New Mexico more than 20 years ago and there he lost his girlfriend Linda. He's Bernard's boss and the one, who wants to send him to Iceland. When he learns, that John is his son, he gives up his job and goes away.

Linda:

She was a Betha minus in the civilized world, who slept with the director. They were together in the Savage Reservation, where she was left. She was pregnant and gave birth to John in the Savage Reservation. She came back with John and Bernard, but between these 20 years she got fat and old. The people don't like her and because of that, she takes a lot of soma (drug with no side-effects). At the end, she dies of soma

John the Savage:

He was born in New Mexico in a Savage Reservation. He's the son of two members of Utopia: Linda and Thomas (the director). He's brought into the civilization by Bernard. He grew up with 3 cultures: 1. Utopian culture, told by his mother. 2. Indian culture he lived in it, but he was an outsider. 3. culture of Shakespeare, he had a book by him. He expects the new world to be wonderful. He believes in religion, family and other human things, but people in Utopia don't do that. Because of that, he doesn't feel happy in the new world. →suicide

Lenina Crowne:

A typical Betha girl (young and pretty), she's a nurse, who's injecting the embryos immunizations against diseases. She's not normal, because she wants to go out more than once with Henry Foster (alpha plus worker). She had him for 4 months without having another man! She believes in having sex whenever she wants it; so she can't understand that John avoids sex with her. She falls in love with John, but they can't be together because of their difference.

Henry Foster:

Alpha plus man, who works in the London Hatchery. He' an Ex- Boyfriend of Lenina, they were 4 months together. That's not normal in the Brave New World!

Mustapha Mond:

He's one of the ten World State Controllers (Alpha plus plus). He's extremely intelligent, because he reads a lot of forbidden books as the bible and books by Shakespeare. He knows history and philosophy very well.

Helmholtz Watson:

He's an alpha plus like his friend Bernard. He's too intelligent, because of that he's an outsider too. He was professor of emotional engineering (feelies = Fühlkino).

Plot summary

Chapter 1

The reader is given a tour of the "Central London Hatchery and Conditioning Centre". It is basically a hatchery for human beings. They produce humans, and shape them the way that they want them to be. It seems like no one has any feelings other than wanting to control the humans they bring into the world.

Chapter 2

In this chapter, Mr. Foster shows the D.H.C., and his students, how they train the Deltas to hate flowers and reading through means of electrical shock and explosions. They visit the Beta's room where they are undergoing elementary class-consciousness. They are consciously repeating to themselves how glad they are to be Betas, and how Gammas and Bettas are unfit and gross.

Chapter 3

Children are encouraged to play erotic games at a very young age during recess. There is no morality in this world. People who aren't sexually active are considered outcasts. People are encouraged to date more than one person at a time. Lenina is a typical civilized girl in this society. She is considering dating Bernard who is an outcast of the society. Bernard doesn't like it when the boys talk about Lenina as though she was meat, and he doesn't enjoy taking soma like everyone else.

Chapter 4

Lenina and Bernard plan on going to New Mexico to the savage reservations. We are introduced to Helmholtz who is a genius writer who is adored by the women. He has been feeling kind of weird lately, as though there is something to be said, with a power that he has within him, but he doesn't know what is so important to be said.

Chapter 5

Lenina and Henry go to a music club, and afterwards retreat to Henry's apartment. Bernard attends a religious ceremony in honor of Ford. Ford seems to be the fake entity that the civiliaztion looks up to. Bernard heras synthetic music controlled by the President, while the eleven others hear Ford's footsteps and feel his presence. All throughout the ceremony, Morgan's unibrow haunts Bernard as he concentrates and tries to experience what the others experience. He pretends to fell the great Ford as the others do, and yet feels even more secluded from the civilization.

Chapter 6

Lenina and Bernard go on a "date". Lenina wants to go some place social, but Bernard insists on being alone. They fly to a secluded area underneath the stars and moon, with the water beneath them. The scenery frightens Lenina, so they left. They talk in differences throughout the rest of the "date".

The Director Thomas approves Bernard's vacation to the New Mexico Reservations. The Director tells Bernard of an occurance that happened to him when he went to the reservations years ago. The girl that the Director took with him disappeared. A search party was organized to find her, but no trace was found. The director realized that he was telling Bernard something personal, and made up for it by lecturing Bernard on his odd behavior.

Lenina and Bernard take the flight to New Mexico. They stay the first night in a lavish hotel, and Bernard enjoys reminding Lenina that where they are destined is not so comfortable as the luxury hotel. The warden of the reservation gives them a lecture on what they are to expect at the reservations, and gives them a little history behind the reservations. They take a plane to the reservations.

Chapter 7

Lenina and Bernard see the savage people. Lenina feels sick when she looks at an old man. She is horrified to realize that her soma is not with her. They attend a religous ceremony. The drums soothe Lenina's mind, which reminds her of a Ford's day celebration. When the people started singing, and dancing, she was appalled. During their ceremony, a boy was whipped to death as an offering to Jesus and Pookoong. Lenina could not take it, and began sobbing.

After the ceremony, they meet John, who wishes he were able to be the offering. John's mother was from the civilization. When his mother, Linda, meets Lenina she is ecstatic.It turns out that Linda is the women that the director left behind, and John is the director's son. Lenina is devastated to see a Beta in this condition. Linda's body is out of shape, and she wares rag clothes. She was dirty and she smelled bad.

Chapter 8

Bernard and John talk; John shares his experiences in growing up in the reservation. When he was growing up, everyone secluded him because he was not Indian like the other savages. He hated any man that his mother came in contact with. He remembers walking in on his mother being whipped by the village women, and he could do nothing to protect her. His mother beat him because she couldn't stand the fact that she bore a child. Linda would always tell him of the civilization, , where everything was happy. She taught John to read. After Bernard and John's long talk, Bernard invites John to come back to London with him. John read a lot of Shakespeare when he was young, and it was a major way of sorting out his thoughts and communicating what he felt in life by comparing it with Shakespeare's works.

Chapter 9

Bernard Marx makes arrangements with Mustapha Mond to bring John and Linda back to London with them for the benefit of scientific interest. John goes to meet Bernard. He breaks into the hotel where they were staying to see Lenina on soma holiday. He recites Shakespeare while caressing her face and hair to express the emotions that he feels for her. Bernard comes back and they get ready to leave.

Chapter 10

Bernard returns with the two savages and meets up with the director in the middle of one of his lectures. The director gets very angry because of his "uncivilized" behavior in front of the crowd that he is lecturing. When asked to show any reason why he should not be executed, Bernard brings in Linda and John. Linda's ecstatic outbursts of seeing the director humiliate his character. When John called the director Father, the students where beaming with laughter. Embarrassed, the director left the room.

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Chapter 11

The director is reassigned, and John and Linda were kept for special studies. Nobody really bothers with Linda due to her bad teeth and unyouthful appearance. She returnes to using soma, and takes holiday after holiday. The director planns the quickness of her death by using soma dosages to decay her body away. Bernard becomes a popular figure for his connection to the savage. He was finally treated like an alpha plus, and not like an outcast. Helmholtz and Bernard get into a disagreement due to how Bernard's attitude is changing. Bernard's job was to show the savage all aspects of the civilized life. He also made reports to Mustapha Mond on what he had found out about the savage's reaction and behavior. Lenina takes Bernard with her to one of the "Feelies". They watch a movie which allows the viewers to feel what is going on through electric impulses. Lenina is hoping that John might have her after the "feelie" was over. John revuses to have Lenina due to his morals. This upsets Lenina and she beginns a lust for John.

Chapter 12

John refuses to come out of his room to Bernard's savage-featured party. The guests are apalled and treat Bernard the same way that they did before his savage popularity started up.

His guests are talking bad about him to his face.

Bernard and Helmholtz become friends again. The savage and Hemholtz get along rather well, which makes Bernard jealous. Helmholtz shares his rhymes with John, and John shares his Shakespeare with Helmholtz.

Chapter 13

Lenina is feeling down and depressed because she caldn't have John. After talking with Fanny in the changing room, she decides to show up at his place and make him have her. He feels that he is in love with her when she approaches him. He begins to recite Shakespeare to her, and asks her for her hand in marriage. Lenina is of course shocked because she has been conditioned to think of marriage and love as repulsive acts. She tries to get John to sleep with her as a reaction. This angers John because he has just professed his deepest passions and morals, and Lenina tries to lay herself upon him. Lenina'a actions must have reminded John of what he hates about his mother, causing John to snap. John tries to force Lenina off of him, but she still lures him on. He beginns to hit her because she doesn't stop. She goes into the bathroom to save herself when John gets a phone call from someone saying that his mother was dying.

Chapter 14

John goes to visit his mother. The nurse find it odd that patients have visitors. When the twin children are staring at Linda with curiosity, John shoved them away in rage. Finally his mother dies, and John's reaction to her death is odd to the head nurse and the children.

Chapter 15

John followes what he believed is his mother's body after she died. He is confused about the numerous amounts of Deltas at the scene, which make it hard for him to see where they are taking Linda's body. A man calls the attention of the crowd to distribute soma tablets. John stands on the platform with the man who was distributing the soma tablets, and beginns to throw the tablets away. He tells the crowd the soma is poisoning their minds and souls. Helmholtz and Bernard arrive on the scene after a phone call of John's whereabouts and actions. Helmholtz joins John in his speech movements. Bernard, after debating what the right thing to do was, stays in the crowd and tells the police to help him stop the riot. The police shows up and takes the men away.

Chapter 16

Bernard, John, and Helmholtz are taken to the controller's study. Mustapha Mond talks with the three of them about society, civilization, books, etc. He tells them of when he was in their position and he chose Controlership over tampering with Science. A decision is made to send Helmholtz and Bernard to one of the many islands for those who break away from civilization and become individuals. John wishes to go with them, but Mustapha Mond will not allow it because they need to conduct studies on him.

Chapter 17

John and the controller keep up their conversation about books, religion, and science. The controller believed that in order to reach total happiness, civilization should not worry about God. The savage disagrees and states that total happiness is freedom from individuality, the ability to be sad and fear God, and the tortures of sin.

Chapter 18

John decides to leave the civilization also. The savage flees to a remote lighthouse. He begges for forgiveness from his gods. He makes himself suffer many injustices for the sake of being purified. He brings enough materials to sustain himself for almost a year. He starts up a garden and enjoys a secluded life tainted with self-affliction. One day, some Delta-Minus workers drive by and witness John whipping himself as a self-punishment for being impure. They word spreads around civilization and the next day reporters come to talk with John. They ask questions about the whip, and what he thinks about civilization. He answeres in Native Indian tongue, and then kicked the reporter in his coccyx.

Meanwhile, Darwin Bonaparte had hid out in the woods to get exclusive coverage on the savage. He managed to catch an outrageous moment in which John was repeatedly whipping and tormenting himself for thinking of Lenina. Bonaparte recorded all of the material on video and released it in the First Class Feelie Palaces in Western Europe. John was a craze after the movie was viewed. On the afternoon after the evening of the release, John is interrupted by masses of people. The crowd laughes at him and takes pictures of him. The crowd want John to whip himself. They yelled "WHIP! WHIP! WHIP!". John takes the whip and advances towards the crowd. They ask John to "do the whipping stunt". Lenina arrives shortly after the clatter with Henry. Furiously, the savage runs after Lenina and slashes at her with his whip. The audience respondes by striking one another. They are singing, dancing, and hitting each other. John finds himself joining the mad crowd in dancing, hitting, and usual "orgy-porgy" activities. The next day he committes suicide as a reaction to remembering what activities he joined in.

Personal evaluation

I would like to recommend this book to all those of you who either like science-fiction books or books with a lot of criticism of society in them, because Brave New World contains both. It presents a portrait of a society which is apparently a perfect world. It is care-free, problemfree and depression free. Brave New World is a warning for the whole world of uncontrolled scientific advance where people can be produced in bottles. It's not good, when people can demand what their babies should look like.

BRAVE NEW WORLD

Setting

The story is set in A.F. (After Ford) 632, this is 632 years after Ford has released the first T-ford car. People are made in bottles and conditioned to do predestined work.. People have no family, marriages don’t exist. All aspects of the population are controlled. Social stability must be maintained at all costs. All births are completely planned and monitored. There are different classes of people with different intelligence. The regime controlls people and keeps them happy, because if somebody gets angry or depressive, the wonder drug Soma is prescribed to him or her.

Characters

Bernard Marx:

An Alpha plus member of the Central London Hatchery. He's very intelligent, specialist in sleep-teaching. Bernard is isolated, because of his small body and he likes to be alone →Outsider. Bernard hates Ford and because of that, he's an enemy of Society.

Thomas (D.H.C.):

The Director of the Central London Hatchery and Conditioning Centre (Brut- und Normcenter). He was in New Mexico more than 20 years ago and there he lost his girlfriend Linda. He's Bernard's boss.

Linda:

She was a Betha minus in the civilized world, who slept with the director. They were together in the Savage Reservation, where she was left. She was pregnant and gave birth to John in the Savage Reservation. She came back with John and Bernard, but between these 20 years she got fat and old. The people don't like her.

John the Savage:

He born in New Mexico in a Savage Reservation. He's the son of two members of Utopia: Linda and Thomas (the director). He's brought into the civilization by Bernard. He believes in religion, family and other human things, but people in Utopia don't do that. Because of that, he doesn't feel happy in the new world.

Lenina Crowne:

A typical Betha girl (young and pretty), she's a nurse, who's injecting the embryos immunizations against diseases. She's not normal, because she wants to go out more than once with Henry Foster (alpha plus worker).

Mustapha Mond:

He's one of the ten World State Controllers (Alpha plus plus). He's extremely intelligent, because he reads a lot of forbidden books as the bible and books by Shakespeare. He knows history and philosophy very well.

Helmholtz Watson:

He's an alpha plus like his friend Bernard. He's too intelligent, because of that he's an outsider too. He was professor of emotional engineering

Plot summary

- The reader is given a tour of the "Central London Hatchery and Conditioning Centre". It is basically a hatchery for human beings. They produce humans, and shape them the way that they want them to be. Mr. Foster shows the D.H.C., and his students, how they train the Deltas to hate flowers and reading through means of electrical shock and explosions. Children are encouraged to play erotic games at a very young age during recess. There is no morality in this world. People who aren't sexually active are considered outcasts.
- Bernard attends a religious ceremony in honor of Ford. Ford seems to be the fake entity that the civiliaztion looks up to. Bernard heras synthetic music controlled by the President, while the eleven others hear Ford's footsteps and feel his presence. He pretends to feel the great Ford as the others do, and yet feels even more secluded from the civilization.
- Lenina and Bernard plan on going to New Mexico to the savage reservations. The Director Thomas approves Bernard's vacation to the New Mexico Reservations, so Lenina and Bernard take the flight to New Mexico.
- Lenina and Bernard see the savage people and after some time they meet John. It turns out that Lenina was the women that the director had left behind, and John was the director's son. Bernard invites John to come back to London with him.
- Bernard returns with the two savages and meets up with the director in the middle of one of his lectures. The director gets very angry, because of his "uncivilized" behavior in front of the crowd that he is lecturing. When asked to show any reason why he should not be executed, Bernard brings in Linda and John. Linda's ecstatic outbursts of seeing the director humiliate his character.
- Bernard becomes a popular figure for his connection to the savage. Helmholtz and Bernard get into a disagreement due to how Bernard's attitude is changing. John refuses to come out of his room to Bernard's savage-featured party. The guests are apalled and treat Bernard the same way that they did before his savage popularity started up. Bernard and Helmholtz become friends again.
- Lenina is feeling down and depressed because she can't have John. She decides to show up at his place and make him have her. He asks her for her hand in marriage. Lenina is of course shocked and tries to get John to sleep with her as a reaction. This angers John, but she still tries to lure him on. He beginns to hit her because she doesn't stop.
- John’s mother dies and Deltas are taking Linda's body away. A man calls the attention of the crowd to distribute soma tablets. John tells the crowd the soma is poisoning their minds and souls. Afte some time the police shows up and takes the men away.
- Bernard, John, and Helmholtz are taken to the controller's study. Mustapha Mond talks with the three of them about society, civilization, books, etc. A decision is made to send Helmholtz and Bernard to one of the many islands for those who break away from civilization and become individuals. John decides to leave the civilization also. The savage flees to a remote lighthouse. One day, some Delta-Minus workers drive by and witness John whipping himself as a self-punishment for being impure. The next day reporters come to talk with John. He kicks them in his coccyx.
- Meanwhile, Darwin Bonaparte had hid out in the woods to get exclusive coverage on the savage. He recorded all of the material on video and released it in the First Class Feelie Palaces in Western Europe. On the afternoon after the evening of the release, John is interrupted by masses of people. They are singing, dancing, and hitting each other. John finds himself joining the mad crowd in dancing, hitting, and usual "orgy-porgy" activities. The next day he committs suicide as a reaction to remembering what activities he joined in.

Personal evaluation

I would like to recommend this book to all those of you who either like science-fiction books or books with a lot of criticism of society in them, because Brave New World contains both.

It presents a portrait of a society which is apparently a perfect world. It is care-free, problem-free and depression free. Brave New World is a warning for the whole world of uncontrolled scientific advance where people can be produced in bottles. It's not good, when people can demand what their babies should look like.

Handout written by Markus Lenz on March 12th 2002