Community Identity Stability, Study notes of Religion

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Community

Identity

Stability

Aldous

Huxley’s

Brave New

World

Aldous Huxley

• 1894-
• Family had many

notable members,

including great uncle,

poet Matthew Arnold

• Plagued with vision

problems throughout

his life

• Denied by the British

army, so became a

teacher

Brave New World

• Published

• Genre

– Dystopian

Future

Setting- Time

• 2450 A.D.
  • 632 years “After Ford”
    • Meaning after the invention of the Model “T”
    • This is symbolic of the societal shift in thinking—time is

referenced in terms of a technological breakthrough

versus a religious landmark

• Civilization as we know it has gone through a devastating

war.

• The use of anthrax bombs and poison gases exhausted

both sides, leaving the people that remained a choice

between World Control and devastation.

• After a further so-called nine years’ war, the dictatorship

got control and brought stability

• Stability is maintained by rigid control of the number and

type of people

What’s his point?

• Mustapha Mond, Resident Controller of Western Europe, governs a society where all aspects of an individual's life are determined by the state, beginning with conception and conveyor-belt reproduction.
• A government bureau, the Predestinators, decides all roles in the hierarchy.
• Children are raised and conditioned by the state bureaucracy, not brought up by natural families. - There are only 10, surnames. - Citizens must not fall in love, marry, or have their own kids. - Brave New World , then, is centered around control and manipulation - He instills the fear that a future world state may rob us of the right to be unhappy.

Historical Context

• Abroad
  • Russian Revolution
  • Challenges to the British Empire
  • Raised the possibility of change on a world scale
• At home
  • Expansion of transportation and communication—the cars, telephones, and radios made affordable through mass production—also
  • Brought revolutionary changes to daily life.
• New technology
  • Distances grew suddenly shorter and true privacy rarer.
• Industrialized societies
  • Welcomed these advances,
  • Worried about losing a familiar way of life, and perhaps even themselves, in the process.
• The nightmare vision of the fast-paced but meaningless routine of

Brave New World reflects this widespread concern about the world of the 1920s and 1930s.

• This novel is more

applicable today than

it was in 1932. This is a

time of: propaganda,

censorship,

conformity, genetic

engineering, social

conditioning, and

mindless

entertainment.

• This was what Huxley

saw in our future. His

book is a warning.

History

• Huxley creates a world in which all the

present worrying trends have produced

terrible consequences.

• Socialism in the 1920s
  • Totalitarian World State.
• Questioning of religious beliefs and the

growth of materialism

• Religion of consumerism with Henry Ford as its

god.

• Model T’s roll off the assembly line in the

present

• Human beings will be mass-produced, too.

Ford’s Model T: The Tin Lizzy

• Designed so that

everyone could afford

to own a car

• Came in only one color:

BLACK

Literary Focus

Point of View

• Omniscient Third Person
• The unique thing about

the narration is that it is

used through the

perspective of various

characters

• This allows the reader to

see inside the minds of

people who belong to the

different castes in the

society

Dystopia

• A “Brave New World”

predicts a future where

people don’t have serious

relationships, where they

don’t have opinions and are

classified from birth into a

caste

• People sleep carelessly with

many different partners

• People are filed into five

castes: Alpha, Beta, Gamma,

Delta, or Epsilon

Literary Focus

Themes and Conflicts

• Technology and Its Ability

to Manipulate

• Control versus Emotion
• Religion versus

Technology

• Free-Will versus Stability
• Fantasy versus Reality
• Science versus

Technology

• Corruptive Nature of

Power

Satire

• By making the Dystopia of the “Brave New World” so extreme, it is easy for readers to see the ridiculousness of the society
• A piece of literature designed to ridicule the subject of the work.
• While satire can be funny, its aim is not to amuse, but to arouse contempt.
• Ridicule, irony, exaggeration, and several other techniques are almost always present.
• Some examples of the over-the- top nature of the novel - Frivolous sexual encounters - Reverence for Henry Ford - Humiliation of over having a child

Soma Symbols

• The government uses

a drug called Soma to symbolize the control and power of the government over the people

Savage Reservation

• Representative of the old ways—the ways when humans felt emotion and love

Do we have a modern soma?

• Consider the number of ads

for prescription drugs, which are permitted only in the United States and New Zealand

• Doctors and consumer

advocates believe these ads drive up health-care costs and seduce millions into asking their MDs for drugs they don’t need for diseases they had never before heard of, like restless leg syndrome

Overview

• Huxley offers a fictional

future in which man’s free

will, ability to love and

ability to be an individual

has been marginalized at

the expense of the

stability of society

• Huxley’s work, in essence,

forecasted many of the

world’s future conflicts

such as Hitler’s rise to

power, World War II and

the Cold War