Brave New World

Summary

Brave New World is set in the year 632 After Ford, in a World State that has achieved permanent stability. Human beings are no longer born but grown in bottles at hatcheries, divided before decanting into five castes from Alpha to Epsilon, and conditioned in infancy and by sleep-teaching to love their place in society. Family, monogamy, religion, history and serious art have been abolished. Citizens are kept content by constant consumption, casual sex, mass entertainment called the feelies, and soma, a drug that delivers pleasure without hangovers. The novel opens with the Director of the Central London Hatchery and Conditioning Centre guiding students through the processes that make this order possible. Bernard Marx, an Alpha psychologist who feels like an outsider, and his friend Helmholtz Watson, a writer of slogans who longs to write something real, are both quietly dissatisfied. Bernard takes Lenina Crowne, a conventional worker at the Hatchery, on holiday to a Savage Reservation in New Mexico. There they meet Linda, a woman from the World State who was stranded years earlier, and her son John, who has grown up outside the system and learned to read from an old volume of Shakespeare. Bernard brings John and Linda to London, where the Savage becomes a celebrity. Linda, the Director's former partner, disgraces him and drifts into soma until she dies. John is attracted to Lenina but repelled by her casual approach to sex, and he is horrified by a society that has traded suffering for comfort. After he tries to persuade a group of Deltas to throw away their soma, he is brought with Bernard and Helmholtz before Mustapha Mond, the Resident World Controller for Western Europe. In a long debate Mond explains that the state has deliberately chosen happiness and stability over truth, beauty and God. John claims the right to be unhappy. Bernard and Helmholtz are sent to islands for misfits; John retreats to an abandoned lighthouse, is mobbed by sightseers, and takes his own life. The title comes from Miranda's line in Shakespeare's The Tempest. Huxley wrote the novel in 1931 partly as a satire on the optimistic technological forecasts of H. G. Wells and on American mass production, and it has become one of the two or three most influential dystopias in English.

Plot or Argument

• The Hatchery (Chapters 1–6)

  The Director shows students the hatching and conditioning of citizens; Mustapha Mond explains the abolition of the family and of history. Bernard Marx, dissatisfied with his society, takes Lenina Crowne to New Mexico.

• The Reservation (Chapters 7–9)

  At Malpais Bernard and Lenina meet Linda and her son John, the Savage, who has learned from Shakespeare a language for love, grief and honour.

• John in London (Chapters 10–15)

  John humiliates the Director by greeting him as his father. Linda dies in a hospital among conditioned children. John, appalled, tries to free a group of Deltas from soma and causes a riot.

• The Controller and the Lighthouse (Chapters 16–18)

  Mustapha Mond defends the World State's choice of stability over freedom. Bernard and Helmholtz are exiled; John withdraws to a lighthouse, is besieged by crowds, and hangs himself.

Characters

• Bernard Marx, major

  Alpha psychologist who resents his society until success gives him a taste of its rewards.

• Lenina Crowne, major

  Hatchery technician, attractive and thoroughly conditioned, who is drawn to John.

• John (the Savage), protagonist

  Son of Linda and the Director, raised on the Reservation, who judges the World State by Shakespeare.

• Helmholtz Watson, major

  Emotional engineer and writer of slogans who longs to write about something that matters.

• Mustapha Mond, major

  Resident World Controller for Western Europe, who knows the forbidden books and defends the system anyway.

• Linda, minor

  John's mother, a Beta stranded on the Reservation who returns to London and dies of soma.

• The Director (Tomakin), minor

  Director of Hatcheries and Conditioning, exposed as John's father.

Lessons

• Happiness and freedom

  The World State offers comfort in exchange for freedom, truth and deep feeling. Students can weigh what is lost and gained in that trade.

  • What does Mustapha Mond say the state has sacrificed for stability?
  • What does John mean when he claims the right to be unhappy?

• Conditioning and choice

  Citizens are shaped from before birth to want what they are given. The novel asks whether a choice made by a conditioned person is really a choice.

  • How does hypnopaedia shape what citizens believe?
  • Are there forms of conditioning in our own lives?

• The uses of art and suffering

  Shakespeare gives John a language for love and grief that the World State lacks. The novel suggests that great art depends on conflict, loss and longing.

  • Why are Shakespeare's plays banned in the World State?
  • Could great art exist in a society without suffering?

Context

Huxley wrote in the years of mass production, early sound film, advertising and widespread interest in eugenics and behavioural psychology. Henry Ford's assembly line supplies the World State's deity and calendar, and the characters' names allude to Marx, Lenin, Freud and other modern figures.

Composition

Huxley wrote the novel in four months in 1931 at his home in Sanary-sur-Mer in the south of France. Chatto & Windus published it in London in early 1932, and Doubleday, Doran in New York the same year.

Reception

Early reviews were mixed, but the book sold well and has remained in print. It has frequently appeared on lists of challenged books in American schools, usually for its sexual content and drug use. Huxley revisited its forecasts in the essays of Brave New World Revisited (1958).

Comparisons

• Nineteen Eighty-Four

  Orwell's Party rules by fear and pain where Huxley's Controllers rule by pleasure; readers often ask which forecast has proved more accurate.

• We

  Zamyatin's 1920s dystopia of a perfectly rational, glass-walled state is an important predecessor of Huxley's planned society.

• The Tempest

  The title comes from Miranda's wonder at the new people she sees, and John's Shakespearean speech constantly measures the World State against the plays.

• The Abolition of Man

  Lewis warns that conditioners who reshape human nature would leave people without any standard to judge by, an argument close to the World State's design.

• That Hideous Strength

  Lewis's novel imagines a scientific institute that plans to remake humanity, a darker cousin of Huxley's hatcheries.

• Fahrenheit 451

  Bradbury's citizens, like Huxley's, are distracted by entertainment and pleasure rather than ruled chiefly by terror, and books are banished.

• Anthem

  Rand's collectivist society, in which the word 'I' has been lost, is a sterner counterpart to Huxley's comfortable, conformist world.

• The Republic

  Plato's guardians, myth of the metals and control of poetry anticipate Huxley's castes and censored art.

Quotes

For Students

A reading companion for classical Christian high school students. See the student guide.

Reading Guide

Watch for

• The castes and the way each is conditioned to like its work.
• Uses of soma whenever a character feels discomfort.
• Lines from Shakespeare in John's speech and what they show about him.
• How Bernard changes once he becomes popular.

Key terms and names

Bokanovsky's Process

The method of splitting one fertilized egg into as many as ninety-six identical embryos.

Hypnopaedia

Sleep-teaching used to instill moral and social slogans.

Soma

A state-issued drug that removes unhappiness without apparent side effects.

A.F.

'After Ford': the World State's calendar, dated from Henry Ford's Model T.

Feelies

Films that transmit physical sensations to the audience.

Seminar Questions

1. Comprehension How are citizens produced and assigned to castes in the World State?
2. Comprehension What does John learn from his volume of Shakespeare?
3. Interpretation Why does Bernard's rebellion fade when he becomes popular?
4. Interpretation Is Mustapha Mond a villain? What does his knowledge of forbidden books add to his character?
5. Interpretation What does the ending suggest about whether John could ever have lived in either world?
6. Big Question Is happiness the highest goal a society should pursue?
7. Big Question Can a person be free if all of his desires are satisfied?

Faith Connections

• Matthew 4:4 (Scripture)

  'Man shall not live by bread alone': John's protest against a life of satisfied appetites echoes this answer to the tempter.

• Dostoevsky, The Brothers Karamazov, 'The Grand Inquisitor' (Great Conversation)

  Ivan Karamazov's Inquisitor gives people bread and security in exchange for their freedom, a bargain Mustapha Mond defends in almost the same terms.

Logic and Rhetoric

Central argument: A society that guarantees universal contentment by engineering desire must abolish the conditions of art, love, faith and moral struggle, so that perfect stability comes at the cost of what makes life human.

Rhetorical device: satire. Henry Ford replaces God in oaths and the calendar ('Our Ford', 'A.F. 632'), mocking the worship of efficiency and mass production.

Debate: Resolved: A society of contented people is preferable to a society of free but unhappy people.

Writing Prompts

Essay: Analyze the debate between John and Mustapha Mond in Chapters 16 and 17. Which of Mond's arguments is strongest, and how does John answer it?

Comparison with Nineteen Eighty-Four: Compare how the World State and Oceania keep their citizens obedient. Which method seems more effective, and why?

Creative Prompts

• Essay

  Mustapha Mond argues that stability requires giving up truth and beauty. Write an essay assessing his argument.

• Dialogue

  Write a conversation between John the Savage and Winston Smith from Nineteen Eighty-Four about which world is worse.

• Classroom

  In groups, design a World State advertisement or slogan for a modern product, then discuss how it uses conditioning.

Further Reading

• Brave New World Revisited, Aldous Huxley

• The Tempest, William Shakespeare

• Aldous Huxley: A Biography, Sybille Bedford

• Amusing Ourselves to Death, Neil Postman

  Postman's 1985 book argues that Huxley's forecast fits a television age better than Orwell's.