First edition cover
| |
| Author | Aldous Huxley |
|---|---|
| Cover artist | Leslie Holland |
| Country | United Kingdom |
| Genre | Science fiction, dystopian fiction |
| Published | 1932 (Chatto & Windus) |
| Pages | 311 (1932 ed.) 63,766 words |
| OCLC | 20156268 |
Brave New World is a dystopian novel by English author Aldous Huxley, written in 1931 and published in 1932. Largely set in a futuristic World State, inhabited by genetically modified citizens and an intelligence-based social hierarchy, the novel anticipates huge scientific advancements in reproductive technology, sleep-learning, psychological manipulation and classical conditioning that are combined to make a dystopian society which is challenged by only a single individual: the story's protagonist. Huxley followed this book with a reassessment in essay form, Brave New World Revisited (1958), and with his final novel, Island (1962), the utopian counterpart. The novel is often compared to George Orwell's Nineteen Eighty-Four (1949).
In 1999, the Modern Library ranked Brave New World as #5 on its list of the 100 best English-language novels of the 20th century. In 2003, Robert McCrum, writing for The Observer, included Brave New World chronologically at #53 in "the top 100 greatest novels of all time", and the novel was listed at #87 on The Big Read survey by the BBC.
Title
Brave New World's title derives from Miranda's speech in William Shakespeare's The Tempest, Act V, Scene I:
O wonder!
How many goodly creatures are there here!
How beauteous mankind is! O brave new world,
That has such people in't.
— William Shakespeare, The Tempest, Act V, Scene I, ll. 203–206
Shakespeare's use of the phrase is intended ironically,
because the speaker's innocence means she fails to recognise the evil
nature of the island's visitors.
Translations of the title often allude to similar expressions
used in domestic works of literature: the French edition of the work is
entitled Le Meilleur des mondes (The Best of All Worlds), an allusion to an expression used by the philosopher Gottfried Leibniz and satirised in Candide, Ou l'Optimisme by Voltaire (1759).
History
Huxley wrote Brave New World while living in Sanary-sur-Mer, France, in the four months from May to August 1931. By this time, Huxley had already established himself as a writer and social satirist. He was a contributor to Vanity Fair and Vogue magazines, and had published a collection of his poetry (The Burning Wheel, 1916) and four successful satirical novels: Crome Yellow (1921), Antic Hay (1923), Those Barren Leaves (1925), and Point Counter Point (1928). Brave New World was Huxley's fifth novel and first dystopian work.
A passage in Crome Yellow contains a brief pre-figuring of Brave New World,
showing that Huxley had such a future in mind already in 1921. Mr.
Scogan, one of the earlier book's characters, describes an "impersonal
generation" of the future that will "take the place of Nature's hideous
system. In vast state incubators, rows upon rows of gravid bottles will
supply the world with the population it requires. The family system will
disappear; society, sapped at its very base, will have to find new
foundations; and Eros, beautifully and irresponsibly free, will flit
like a gay butterfly from flower to flower through a sunlit world."
Huxley said that Brave New World was inspired by the utopian novels of H. G. Wells, including A Modern Utopia (1905), and Men Like Gods (1923).
Wells's hopeful vision of the future's possibilities gave Huxley the
idea to begin writing a parody of the novels, which became Brave New World.
He wrote in a letter to Mrs. Arthur Goldsmith, an American
acquaintance, that he had "been having a little fun pulling the leg of
H. G. Wells", but then he "got caught up in the excitement of [his] own
ideas."
Unlike the most popular optimistic utopian novels of the time, Huxley
sought to provide a frightening vision of the future. Huxley referred to
Brave New World as a "negative utopia", somewhat influenced by Wells's own The Sleeper Awakes (dealing with subjects like corporate tyranny and behavioural conditioning) and the works of D. H. Lawrence.
George Orwell believed that Brave New World must have been partly derived from the 1921 novel We by Russian author Yevgeny Zamyatin. However, in a 1962 letter to Christopher Collins, Huxley says that he wrote Brave New World long before he had heard of We. According to We translator Natasha Randall, Orwell believed that Huxley was lying. The scientific futurism in Brave New World is believed to be apropriated from Daedalus by J. B. S. Haldane.
The events of the Depression in the UK
in 1931, with its mass unemployment and the abandonment of the gold
currency standard, persuaded Huxley to assert that stability was the
"primal and ultimate need" if civilisation was to survive the present
crisis. The Brave New World character Mustapha Mond, Resident World Controller of Western Europe, is named after Sir Alfred Mond. Shortly before writing the novel, Huxley visited Mond's technologically advanced plant near Billingham, north east England, and it made a great impression on him.
Huxley used the setting and characters in his science fiction
novel to express widely felt anxieties, particularly the fear of losing
individual identity in the fast-paced world of the future. An early trip
to the United States gave Brave New World much of its character.
Huxley was outraged by the culture of youth, commercial cheeriness, and
sexual promiscuity, and the inward-looking nature of many Americans; he had also found the book My Life and Work by Henry Ford on the boat to America, and he saw the book's principles applied in everything he encountered after leaving San Francisco.
Plot
The novel opens in the World State city of London in AF (After Ford) 632 (AD 2540 in the Gregorian calendar), where citizens are engineered through artificial wombs and childhood indoctrination programmes into predetermined classes
(or castes) based on intelligence and labour. Lenina Crowne, a hatchery
worker, is popular and sexually desirable, but Bernard Marx, a
psychologist, is not. He is shorter in stature than the average member
of his high caste, which gives him an inferiority complex. His work with sleep-learning
allows him to understand, and disapprove of, his society's methods of
keeping its citizens peaceful, which includes their constant consumption
of a soothing, happiness-producing drug called soma. Courting disaster, Bernard is vocal and arrogant about his criticisms, and his boss contemplates exiling him to Iceland
because of his nonconformity. His only friend is Helmholtz Watson, a
gifted writer who finds it difficult to use his talents creatively in
their pain-free society.
Bernard takes a holiday with Lenina outside the World State to a Savage Reservation in New Mexico, in which the two observe natural-born
people, disease, the ageing process, other languages, and religious
lifestyles for the first time (the culture of the village folk resembles
the contemporary Native American groups of the region, descendants of
the Anasazi, including the Puebloan peoples of Acoma, Laguna and Zuni).
Bernard and Lenina witness a violent public ritual and then encounter
Linda, a woman originally from the World State who is living on the
reservation with her son John, now a young man. She, too, visited the
reservation on a holiday many years ago, but became separated from her
group and was left behind. She had meanwhile become pregnant by a
fellow-holidaymaker (who is revealed to be Bernard's boss, the Director
of Hatcheries and Conditioning). She did not try to return to the World
State, because of her shame at her pregnancy. Despite spending his whole
life in the reservation, John has never been accepted by the villagers,
and his and Linda's lives have been hard and unpleasant. Linda has
taught John to read, although from the only two books in her
possession—a scientific manual and the complete works of Shakespeare. Ostracised by the villagers, John is able to articulate his feelings only in terms of Shakespearean drama, quoting often from The Tempest, King Lear, Othello, Romeo and Juliet and Hamlet.
Linda now wants to return to London, and John, too, wants to see this
"brave new world". Bernard sees an opportunity to thwart plans to exile
him, and gets permission to take Linda and John back. On their return to
London, John meets the Director and calls him his "father", a vulgarity
which causes a roar of laughter. The humiliated Director resigns in
shame before he can follow through with exiling Bernard.
Bernard, as "custodian" of the "savage" John who is now treated
as a celebrity, is fawned on by the highest members of society and
revels in attention he once scorned. Bernard's popularity is fleeting,
though, and he becomes envious that John only really bonds with the
literary-minded Helmholtz. Considered hideous and friendless, Linda
spends all her time using soma, while John refuses to attend social
events organised by Bernard, appalled by what he perceives to be an
empty society. Lenina and John are physically attracted to each other,
but John's view of courtship and romance, based on Shakespeare's
writings, is utterly incompatible with Lenina's freewheeling attitude to
sex. She tries to seduce him, but he attacks her, before suddenly being
informed that his mother is on her deathbed. He rushes to Linda's
bedside, causing a scandal, as this is not the "correct" attitude to
death. Some children who enter the ward for "death-conditioning" come
across as disrespectful to John until he attacks one physically. He then
tries to break up a distribution of soma to a lower-caste group,
telling them that he is freeing them. Helmholtz and Bernard rush in to
stop the ensuing riot, which the police quell by spraying soma vapor
into the crowd.
Bernard, Helmholtz, and John are all brought before Mustapha
Mond, the "Resident World Controller for Western Europe", who tells
Bernard and Helmholtz that they are to be exiled to islands for
antisocial activity. Bernard pleads for a second chance, but Helmholtz
welcomes the opportunity to be a true individual, and chooses the Falkland Islands as his destination, believing that their bad weather
will inspire his writing. Mond tells Bernard that exile is actually a
reward. The islands are full of the most interesting people in the
world, individuals who did not fit into the social model of the World
State. Mond outlines for John the events that led to the present society
and his arguments for a caste system and social control. John rejects
Mond's arguments, and Mond sums up John's views by claiming that John
demands "the right to be unhappy". John asks if he may go to the islands
as well, but Mond refuses, saying he wishes to see what happens to John
next.
Jaded with his new life, John moves to an abandoned hilltop tower, near the village of Puttenham, where he intends to adopt a solitary ascetic lifestyle in order to purify himself of civilization, practising self-flagellation. This soon draws reporters and eventually hundreds of amazed sightseers, hoping to witness
his bizarre behaviour; one of them is implied to be Lenina. At the
sight of the woman he both adores and loathes, John attacks her with his whip.
The onlookers are wildly aroused by the display and John is caught up
in the crowd's soma-fuelled frenzy. The next morning, he remembers the
previous night's events and is stricken with remorse. Onlookers and
journalists who arrive that evening discover John dead, having hanged
himself.
Characters
Bernard Marx,
a sleep-learning specialist at the Central London Hatchery and
Conditioning Centre. Although Bernard is an Alpha-Plus (the upper class
of the society), he is a misfit. He is unusually short for an Alpha; an
alleged accident with alcohol in Bernard's blood-surrogate before his
decanting has left him slightly stunted. Bernard's independence of mind
stems more from his inferiority complex and depressive nature than from
any depth of philosophical conviction. Unlike his fellow utopians,
Bernard is often angry, resentful, and jealous. At times, he is also
cowardly and hypocritical. His conditioning is clearly incomplete. He
doesn't enjoy communal sports, solidarity services, or promiscuous sex.
He doesn't even get much joy out of soma. Bernard is in love with Lenina
but he doesn't like her sleeping with other men, even though "everyone
belongs to everyone else". Bernard's triumphant return to utopian
civilisation with John the Savage from the Reservation precipitates the
downfall of the Director, who had been planning to exile him. Bernard's
triumph is short-lived. Success goes to his head. Despite his tearful
pleas, he is ultimately banished to an island for his non-conformist
behaviour.
John, the illicit son of the Director and Linda, born and
reared on the Savage Reservation ("Malpais") after Linda was unwittingly
left behind by her errant lover. John ("the Savage", as he is often
called) is an outsider both on the Reservation—where the natives still
practice marriage, natural birth, family life and religion—and the
ostensibly civilised World State, based on principles of stability and
shallow happiness. He has read nothing but the complete works of William Shakespeare, which he quotes extensively, and, for the most part, aptly, though his allusion to the "Brave New World" (Miranda's words in The Tempest)
takes on a darker and bitterly ironic resonance as the novel unfolds.
John is intensely moral according to a code that he has been taught by
Shakespeare and life in Malpais but is also naïve: his views are as
imported into his own consciousness as are the hypnopedic
messages of World State citizens. The admonishments of the men of
Malpais taught him to regard his mother as a whore; but he cannot grasp
that these were the same men who continually sought her out despite
their supposedly sacred pledges of monogamy. Because he is unwanted in
Malpais, he accepts the invitation to travel back to London and is
initially astonished by the comforts of the World State. However, he
remains committed to values that exist only in his poetry. He first
spurns Lenina for failing to live up to his Shakespearean ideal and then
the entire utopian society: he asserts that its technological wonders
and consumerism are poor substitutes for individual freedom, human
dignity and personal integrity. After his mother's death, he becomes
deeply distressed with grief, surprising onlookers in the hospital. He
then ostracizes himself from society and attempts to purify himself of
"sin" (desire), but is finally unable to do so and hangs himself in
despair.
Helmholtz Watson, a handsome and successful Alpha-Plus
lecturer at the College of Emotional Engineering and a friend of
Bernard. He feels unfulfilled writing endless propaganda doggerel, and
the stifling conformism and philistinism of the World State make him
restive. Helmholtz is ultimately exiled to the Falkland Islands—a
cold asylum for disaffected Alpha-Plus non-conformists—after reading a
heretical poem to his students on the virtues of solitude and helping
John destroy some Deltas' rations of soma following Linda's death.
Unlike Bernard, he takes his exile in his stride and comes to view it as
an opportunity for inspiration in his writing.
Lenina Crowne, a young, beautiful fetus technician at the
Central London Hatchery and Conditioning Centre. She is part of the 30%
of the female population that are not freemartins (sterile women).
Lenina is promiscuous and popular but somewhat quirky in her society:
she had a four-month relation with Henry Foster, choosing not to have
sex with anyone but him for a period of time. She is basically happy and
well-conditioned, using soma to suppress unwelcome emotions, as is
expected. Lenina has a date with Bernard, to whom she feels ambivalently
attracted, and she goes to the Reservation with him. On returning to
civilization, she tries and fails to seduce John the Savage. John loves
and desires Lenina but he is repelled by her forwardness and the
prospect of pre-marital sex, rejecting her as an "impudent strumpet".
Lenina visits John at the lighthouse but he attacks her with a whip,
unwittingly inciting onlookers to do the same. Her exact fate is left
unspecified.
Mustapha Mond, Resident World Controller of Western
Europe, "His Fordship" Mustapha Mond presides over one of the ten zones
of the World State, the global government set up after the cataclysmic
Nine Years' War and great Economic Collapse. Sophisticated and
good-natured, Mond is an urbane and hyperintelligent advocate of the
World State and its ethos of "Community, Identity, Stability". Among the
novel's characters, he is uniquely aware of the precise nature of the
society he oversees and what it has given up to accomplish its gains.
Mond argues that art, literature, and scientific freedom must be
sacrificed to secure the ultimate utilitarian
goal of maximising societal happiness. He defends the genetic caste
system, behavioural conditioning, and the lack of personal freedom in
the World State: these, he says, are a price worth paying for achieving
social stability, the highest social virtue because it leads to lasting
happiness.
Fanny Crowne, Lenina Crowne's friend (they have the same
last name because only ten thousand last names are in use in a World
State comprising two billion people). Fanny voices the conventional
values of her caste and society, particularly the importance of
promiscuity: she advises Lenina that she should have more than one man
in her life because it is unseemly to concentrate on just one. Fanny
then, however, warns Lenina away from a new lover whom she considers
undeserving, yet she is ultimately supportive of the young woman's
attraction to the savage John.
Henry Foster, One of Lenina's many lovers, he is a
perfectly conventional Alpha male, casually discussing Lenina's body
with his coworkers. His success with Lenina, and his casual attitude
about it, infuriate the jealous Bernard. Henry ultimately proves himself
every bit the ideal World State citizen, finding no courage to defend
Lenina from John's assaults despite having maintained an uncommonly
longstanding sexual relationship with her.
Benito Hoover, Another of Lenina's lovers. She remembers that he is particularly hairy when he takes his clothes off.
The Director of Hatcheries and Conditioning (DHC), also known as Thomas "Tomakin" Grahambell,
He is the administrator of the Central London Hatchery and Conditioning
Centre, where he is a threatening figure who intends to exile Bernard
to Iceland. His plans take an unexpected turn, however, when Bernard
returns from the Reservation with Linda (see below) and John, a child
they both realize is actually his. This fact, scandalous and obscene in
the World State not because it was extramarital (which all sexual acts
are) but because it was procreative, leads the Director to resign his
post in shame.
Linda, John's mother, decanted as a Beta-Minus in the
World State, originally worked in the DHC's hero Room, and subsequently
lost during a storm while visiting the New Mexico Savage Reservation
with the Director many years before the events of the novel. Despite
following her usual precautions, Linda became pregnant with the
Director's son during their time together and was therefore unable to
return to the World State by the time that she found her way to Malpais.
Having been conditioned to the promiscuous social norms of the World
State, Linda finds herself at once popular with every man in the pueblo
(because she is open to all sexual advances) and also reviled for the
same reason, seen as a whore by the wives of the men who visit her and
by the men themselves (who come to her nonetheless). Her only comforts
there are mescal brought by Popé as well as peyotl.
Linda is desperate to return to the World State and to soma, wanting
nothing more from her remaining life than comfort until death.
The Arch-Community-Songster, The secular equivalent of the Archbishop of Canterbury in the World State society. He takes personal offense when John refuses to attend Bernard's party.
The Director of Crematoria and Phosphorus Reclamation, one of the many disappointed, important figures to attend Bernard's party.
The Warden, An Alpha-Minus, the talkative chief
administrator for the New Mexico Savage Reservation. He is blond, short,
broad-shouldered, and has a booming voice.
Darwin Bonaparte, a "big game photographer" (i.e.
filmmaker) who films John flogging himself. Darwin Bonaparte is known
for two other works: "feely of the gorillas' wedding", and "Sperm Whale's Love-life". He has already made a name for himself but still seeks more. He renews his fame by filming the savage, John, in his newest release "The Savage of Surrey". His name alludes to Charles Darwin and Napoleon Bonaparte.
Dr. Shaw, Bernard Marx's physician who consequently
becomes the physician of both Linda and John. He prescribes a lethal
dose of soma to Linda, which will stop her respiratory system from
functioning in a span of one to two months, at her own behest but not
without protest from John. Ultimately, they all agree that it is for the
best, since denying her this request would cause more trouble for
Society and Linda herself.
Dr. Gaffney, Provost of Eton, an Upper School for high-caste individuals.
Miss Keate, Head Mistress of Eton Upper School.
Others
- Freemartins,
women who have been deliberately made sterile by exposure to male
hormones during fetal development but still physically normal except for
"the slightest tendency to grow beards." In the book, government policy
requires freemartins to form 70% of the female population.
Of Malpais
- Popé, a native of Malpais. Although he reinforces the behavior that causes hatred for Linda in Malpais by sleeping with her and bringing her mescal, he still holds the traditional beliefs of his tribe. In his early years John attempted to kill him, but Popé brushed off his attempt and sent him fleeing. He gave Linda a copy of the Complete Works of Shakespeare.
- Mitsima, an elder tribal shaman who also teaches John survival skills such as rudimentary ceramics (specifically coil pots, which were traditional to Native American tribes) and bow-making.
- Kiakimé, a native girl who John fell for, but is instead eventually wed to another boy from Malpais.
- Kothlu, a native boy with whom Kiakimé is wed.
Background figures
These are non-fictional and factual characters who lived before the events in this book, but are of note in the novel:
- Henry Ford, who has become a messianic figure to the World State. "Our Ford" is used in place of "Our Lord", as a credit to popularising the use of the assembly line. Huxley's description of Ford as a central figure in the emergence of the Brave New World might also be a reference to the utopian industrial city of Fordlândia commissioned by Ford in 1927.
- Sigmund Freud, "Our Freud" is sometimes said in place of "Our Ford" because Freud's psychoanalytic method depends implicitly upon the rules of classical conditioning, and because Freud popularized the idea that sexual activity is essential to human happiness. (It is also strongly implied that citizens of the World State believe Freud and Ford to be the same person.)
- H. G. Wells, "Dr. Wells", British writer and utopian socialist, whose book Men Like Gods was an incentive for Brave New World. "All's well that ends Wells", wrote Huxley in his letters, criticising Wells for anthropological assumptions Huxley found unrealistic.
- Ivan Petrovich Pavlov, whose conditioning techniques are used to train infants.
- William Shakespeare, whose banned works are quoted throughout the novel by John, "the Savage". The plays quoted include Macbeth, The Tempest, Romeo and Juliet, Hamlet, King Lear, Troilus and Cressida, Measure for Measure and Othello. Mustapha Mond also knows them because as a World Controller he has access to a selection of books from throughout history, including the Bible.
- Thomas Robert Malthus, 19th century British economist, believed the people of the Earth would eventually be threatened by their inability to raise enough food to feed the population. In the novel, the eponymous character devises the contraceptive techniques (Malthusian belt) that are practiced by women of the World State.
- Reuben Rabinovitch, the Polish-Jew character on whom the effects of sleep-learning, hypnopædia, are first observed.
- John Henry Newman, 19th century Catholic theologian and educator, believed university education the critical element in advancing post-industrial Western civilization. Mustapha Mond and The Savage discuss a passage from one of Newman's books.
- Alfred Mond, British industrialist, financier and politician. He is the namesake of Mustapha Mond.
Sources of names and references
The
limited number of names that the World State assigned to its
bottle-grown citizens can be traced to political and cultural figures
who contributed to the bureaucratic, economic, and technological systems
of Huxley's age, and presumably those systems in Brave New World.
Critical reception
Upon publication, Rebecca West praised Brave New World as "The most accomplished novel Huxley has yet written", Joseph Needham lauded it as "Mr. Huxley's remarkable book", and Bertrand Russell also praised it, stating, "Mr. Aldous Huxley has shown his usual masterly skill in Brave New World."
However, Brave New World also received negative responses from other contemporary critics, although his work was later embraced.
In an article in the 4 May 1935 issue of the Illustrated London News, G. K. Chesterton
explained that Huxley was revolting against the "Age of Utopias". Much
of the discourse on man's future before 1914 was based on the thesis
that humanity would solve all economic and social issues. In the decade
following the war the discourse shifted to an examination of the causes
of the catastrophe. The works of H. G. Wells and George Bernard Shaw on the promises of socialism and a World State were then viewed as the ideas of naive optimists. Chesterton wrote:
After the Age of Utopias came what we may call the American Age, lasting as long as the Boom. Men like Ford or Mond seemed to many to have solved the social riddle and made capitalism the common good. But it was not native to us; it went with a buoyant, not to say blatant optimism, which is not our negligent or negative optimism. Much more than Victorian righteousness, or even Victorian self-righteousness, that optimism has driven people into pessimism. For the Slump brought even more disillusionment than the War. A new bitterness, and a new bewilderment, ran through all social life, and was reflected in all literature and art. It was contemptuous, not only of the old Capitalism, but of the old Socialism. Brave New World is more of a revolution against Utopia than against Victoria.
Similarly, in 1944 economist Ludwig von Mises described Brave New World as a satire of utopian predictions of socialism: "Aldous Huxley was even courageous enough to make socialism's dreamed paradise the target of his sardonic irony."
Legacy
Kurt Vonnegut said that in writing Player Piano (1952), he "cheerfully ripped off the plot of Brave New World, whose plot had been cheerfully ripped off from Yevgeny Zamyatin's We".
In 1999, the Modern Library ranked Brave New World fifth on its list of the 100 best English-language novels of the 20th century. In 2003, Robert McCrum writing for The Observer included Brave New World chronologically at number 53 in "the top 100 greatest novels of all time", and the novel was listed at number 87 on the BBC's survey The Big Read.
On November 5, 2019, the BBC News listed Brave New World on its list of the 100 most influential novels.
Fordism and society
The World State is built upon the principles of Henry Ford's assembly line:
mass production, homogeneity, predictability, and consumption of
disposable consumer goods. While the World State lacks any
supernatural-based religions, Ford himself is revered as the creator of
their society but not as a deity, and characters celebrate Ford Day and
swear oaths by his name (e.g., "By Ford!"). In this sense, some
fragments of traditional religion are present, such as Christian
crosses, which had their tops cut off to be changed to a "T",
representing the Ford Model T. In England, there is an Arch-Community-Songster of Canterbury, obviously continuing the Archbishop of Canterbury, and in America the Christian Science Monitor continues publication as The Fordian Science Monitor.
The World State calendar numbers years in the "AF" era—"Anno Ford"—with
the calendar beginning in AD 1908, the year in which Ford's first Model T rolled off his assembly line. The novel's Gregorian calendar year is AD 2540, but it is referred to in the book as AF 632.
From birth, members of every class are indoctrinated
by recorded voices repeating slogans while they sleep (called
"hypnopædia" in the book) to believe their own class is superior, but
that the other classes perform needed functions. Any residual
unhappiness is resolved by an antidepressant and a hallucinogenic drug called soma.
The biological techniques used to control the populace in Brave New World do not include genetic engineering; Huxley wrote the book before the structure of DNA was known. However, Gregor Mendel's work with inheritance patterns in peas had been rediscovered in 1900 and the eugenics movement, based on artificial selection, was well established. Huxley's family included a number of prominent biologists including Thomas Huxley, half-brother and Nobel Laureate Andrew Huxley, and his brother Julian Huxley who was a biologist and involved in the eugenics movement. Nonetheless, Huxley emphasises conditioning over breeding (nurture versus nature);
human embryos and fetuses are conditioned through a carefully designed
regimen of chemical (such as exposure to hormones and toxins), thermal
(exposure to intense heat or cold, as one's future career would
dictate), and other environmental stimuli, although there is an element
of selective breeding as well.
Fordism and science
In Brave New World,
the World State has no use for scientific discoveries that would be
potentially subversive to its ethos that celebrates "Community,
Identity, Stability." In Chapter 16, Huxley wrote,
Every discovery in pure science is potentially subversive; even science must sometimes be treated as a possible enemy. Yes, even science."
Science? The Savage frowned. He knew the word. But what it exactly signified he could not say. Shakespeare and the old men of the pueblo had never mentioned science, and from Linda he had only gathered the vaguest hints: science was something you made helicopters with, some thing that caused you to laugh at the Corn Dances, something that prevented you from being wrinkled and losing your teeth. He made a desperate effort to take the Controller's meaning.
"Yes," Mustapha Mond was saying, "that's another item in the cost of stability. It isn't only art that's incompatible with happiness; it's also science. Science is dangerous; we have to keep it most carefully chained and muzzled."
"What?" said Helmholtz, in astonishment. "But we're always saying that science is everything. It's a hypnopædic platitude."
"Three times a week between thirteen and seventeen," put in Bernard.
"And all the science propaganda we do at the College …"
"Yes; but what sort of science?" asked Mustapha Mond sarcastically. "You've had no scientific training, so you can't judge. I was a pretty good physicist in my time. Too good–good enough to realize that all our science is just a cookery book, with an orthodox theory of cooking that nobody's allowed to question, and a list of recipes that mustn't be added to except by special permission from the head cook. I'm the head cook now. But I was an inquisitive young scullion once. I started doing a bit of cooking on my own. Unorthodox cooking, illicit cooking. A bit of real science, in fact." He was silent.
"What happened?" asked Helmholtz Watson.
The Controller sighed. "Very nearly what's going to happen to you young men. I was on the point of being sent to an island."
Comparisons with George Orwell's Nineteen Eighty-Four
Social critic Neil Postman contrasted the worlds of Nineteen Eighty-Four and Brave New World in the foreword of his 1985 book Amusing Ourselves to Death. He writes:
What Orwell feared were those who would ban books. What Huxley feared was that there would be no reason to ban a book, for there would be no one who wanted to read one. Orwell feared those who would deprive us of information. Huxley feared those who would give us so much that we would be reduced to passivity and egotism. Orwell feared that the truth would be concealed from us. Huxley feared the truth would be drowned in a sea of irrelevance. Orwell feared we would become a captive culture. Huxley feared we would become a trivial culture, preoccupied with some equivalent of the feelies, the orgy porgy, and the centrifugal bumblepuppy. As Huxley remarked in Brave New World Revisited, the civil libertarians and rationalists who are ever on the alert to oppose tyranny "failed to take into account man's almost infinite appetite for distractions." In 1984, Orwell added, people are controlled by inflicting pain. In Brave New World, they are controlled by inflicting pleasure. In short, Orwell feared that our fear will ruin us. Huxley feared that our desire will ruin us.
Journalist Christopher Hitchens,
who himself published several articles on Huxley and a book on Orwell,
noted the difference between the two texts in the introduction to his
1999 article "Why Americans Are Not Taught History":
We dwell in a present-tense culture that somehow, significantly, decided to employ the telling expression "You're history" as a choice reprobation or insult, and thus elected to speak forgotten volumes about itself. By that standard, the forbidding dystopia of George Orwell's Nineteen Eighty-Four already belongs, both as a text and as a date, with Ur and Mycenae, while the hedonist nihilism of Huxley still beckons toward a painless, amusement-sodden, and stress-free consensus. Orwell's was a house of horrors. He seemed to strain credulity because he posited a regime that would go to any lengths to own and possess history, to rewrite and construct it, and to inculcate it by means of coercion. Whereas Huxley ... rightly foresaw that any such regime could break because it could not bend. In 1988, four years after 1984, the Soviet Union scrapped its official history curriculum and announced that a newly authorized version was somewhere in the works. This was the precise moment when the regime conceded its own extinction. For true blissed-out and vacant servitude, though, you need an otherwise sophisticated society where no serious history is taught.
Brave New World Revisited
First UK edition
Brave New World Revisited (Harper & Brothers, US, 1958; Chatto & Windus, UK, 1959), written by Huxley almost thirty years after Brave New World,
is a non-fiction work in which Huxley considered whether the world had
moved toward or away from his vision of the future from the 1930s. He
believed when he wrote the original novel that it was a reasonable guess
as to where the world might go in the future. In Brave New World Revisited, he concluded that the world was becoming like Brave New World much faster than he originally thought.
Huxley analysed the causes of this, such as overpopulation, as well as all the means by which populations can be controlled. He was particularly interested in the effects of drugs and subliminal suggestion. Brave New World Revisited is different in tone because of Huxley's evolving thought, as well as his conversion to Hindu Vedanta in the interim between the two books.
The last chapter of the book aims to propose action which could be taken to prevent a democracy from turning into the totalitarian world described in Brave New World. In Huxley's last novel, Island, he again expounds similar ideas to describe a utopian nation, which is generally viewed as a counterpart to Brave New World.
Censorship, banning, and accusation of plagiarism
The American Library Association ranks Brave New World as No. 52 on their list of most challenged books. The following list includes some incidents in which it has been censored, banned, or challenged:
- In 1932, the book was banned in Ireland for its language, and for supposedly being anti-family and anti-religion.
- In 1965, a Maryland English teacher alleged that he was fired for assigning Brave New World to students. The teacher sued for violation of First Amendment rights but lost both his case and the appeal.
- The book was banned in India in 1967, with Huxley accused of being a "pornographer".
- In 1980, it was removed from classrooms in Miller, Missouri among other challenges.
- In 1982, Polish author Antoni Smuszkiewicz, in his analysis of Polish science-fiction Zaczarowana gra ("The Magic Game"), presented accusations of plagiarism against Huxley. Smuszkiewicz showed similarities between Brave New World and two science fiction novels written earlier by Polish author Mieczysław Smolarski, namely Miasto światłości ("The City of Light", 1924) and Podróż poślubna pana Hamiltona ("Mr Hamilton's Honeymoon Trip", 1928).
Smolarski wrote in his open letter to Huxley: "This work of a great
author, both in the general depiction of the world as well as countless
details, is so similar to two of my novels that in my opinion there is
no possibility of accidental analogy."
Adaptations
Theatre
- Brave New World
(opened 4 September 2015) in co-production by Royal & Derngate,
Northampton and Touring Consortium Theatre Company which toured the UK.
The adaptation was by Dawn King, composed by These New Puritans and directed by James Dacre.
Radio
- Brave New World (radio broadcast) CBS Radio Workshop (27 January and 3 February 1956): music composed and conducted by Bernard Herrmann. Adapted for radio by William Froug. Introduced by William Conrad and narrated by Aldous Huxley. Featuring the voices of Joseph Kearns, Bill Idelson, Gloria Henry, Charlotte Lawrence, Byron Kane, Sam Edwards, Jack Kruschen, Vic Perrin, Lurene Tuttle, Herb Butterfield, Paul Hebert, Doris Singleton.
- Brave New World (radio broadcast) BBC Radio4 (May 2013)
- Brave New World (radio broadcast) BBC Radio4 (22, 29 May 2016)
Film
- Brave New World (1980), a television film directed by Burt Brinckerhoff
- Brave New World (1998), a television film directed by Leslie Libman and Larry Williams
Planned adaptation
In 2009, Ridley Scott and Leonardo DiCaprio announced that they would collaborate on a new adaptation of the book. However, as of 2013, the project has been on hold. In an interview with Collider (website), Scott said,
I don’t know what to do with Brave New World. It’s tough. I think Brave
New World in a funny kind of way was good in nineteen thirty-eight,
because it had a very interesting revolutionary idea. Don’t forget it
came shortly before or after George Orwell, roughly the same time. When
you re-analyze it, maybe it should stay as a book. I don’t know. We
tried to get it…. In the meantime Scott has been involved with other projects.
Television
In May 2015, The Hollywood Reporter reported that Steven Spielberg's Amblin Entertainment will bring Brave New World to the SyFy TV channel as a scripted series, written (adapted) by Les Bohem. The adaptation was eventually written by David Wiener, with Grant Morrison and Brian Taylor and a series ordered to air on USA Network in February 2019.
Publications
Brave New World title listing at the Internet Speculative Fiction Database:
- Brave New World
- Aldous Huxley; Perennial, Reprint edition, 1 September 1998; ISBN 0-06-092987-1
- Brave New World Revisited
- Aldous Huxley; Perennial, 1 March 2000; ISBN 0-06-095551-1
- Brave New World and Brave New World Revisited
- Aldous Huxley (with a foreword by Christopher Hitchens); Harper Perennial Modern Classics, 2005; ISBN 0-06-077609-9
- Brave New World & Brave New World Revisited
- Aldous Huxley (with an introduction by Margaret Atwood); Vintage Canada Edition, 2007; ISBN 978-0-307-35655-0
- Huxley's Brave New World (Cliffs Notes)
- Charles and Regina Higgins; Cliffs Notes, 30 May 2000; ISBN 0-7645-8583-5
- Spark Notes Brave New World
- Sterling, 31 December 2003; ISBN 1-58663-366-X
- Aldous Huxley's Brave New World (Barron's Book Notes)
- Anthony Astrachan, Anthony Astrakhan; Barrons Educational Series, November 1984; ISBN 0-8120-3405-8
