BRAVE NEW WORLD

by ALDOUS HUXLEY

Introduction
Aldous Huxley (1894 – 1963) - was an English novelist and critic gifted
with an acute and far-rainging intelligence whose works are notable for
their wit and pessimistic satire. He’s bibliography spans nearly fifty books
including non – fiction works as well as essays, narratives and poems. By
the end of his life, Huxley was widely acknowledged as one of the
foremost intelectuals of his time. He was nominated for the Nobel Prise in
literature nine times, and was elected Companion of Literature by the
Royal Society of Literature in 1962.
Aldous Huxley was an important twentieth-century writer whose work
often explored some of the greatest and most important ideas of his day,
including his experiences of drug-taking, classic dystopien fiction, radical
utopian vision, and social satires of the ’’roaring twenties’’. Huxley
encouraged his readers about the rapidly changing world around them.
Summary
’’Brave New World’’ is undoubtedly Aldous Huxley most important
novel. The novel examines a futuristic society, called the World State, that
revolves around science and efficiency. In this society, emotions and
individuality are conditioned out of children at a young age, and there are
no lasting relationships because ”every one belongs to every one else”.
Huxley begins the novel by thoroughly explaining the scientific and
compartmentalized nature of this society, beginning at the Central London
Hatchery and Conditioning Centre, where children are created outside the
womb and cloned in order to increase the population. The reader is then
introduced to the class system of this world, where citizens are sorted as
embryos to be of a certain class. The embryos, which exist within tubes
and incubators, are provided with differing amounts of chemicals and
hormones in order to condition them into predetermined classes. Embryos
destined for the higher classes get chemicals to perfect them both
physically and mentally, whereas those of the lower classes are altered to
be imperfect in those respects. These classes, in order from highest to
lowest, are Alpha, Beta, Gamma, Delta, and Epsilon. The Alphas are bred
to be leaders, and the Epsilons are bred to be menial labourers.

Protagonist

‘’Brave New World’’ has two protagonists. From the beginning of the
novel until Bernard’s visit to the Reservation, Bernard Marx is the
protagonist. Bernard is an outsider in the World State. He is physically
small, “eight centimeters short of the standard Alpha height,” which means
that people make fun of him. Because he is an outsider, he feels unique.
This sets him at odds with the society of the World State, where everyone
is supposed to feel the same as everyone else. Bernard values his
individuality, and he wants to feel even more individual: “as though I were
more me.” Bernard’s quest for autonomy and self-agency puts the plot in
motion, as he decides to visit the Savage Reservation. Everything that
happens in the book following his visit to the Reservation is a result of his
decision. The most significant result of this decision is that Bernard brings
John to the World State. From this point onward, Bernard’s story becomes
secondary to John’s. Bernard continues to feel like an individual, but he
stops pursuing greater individuality. Bernard’s association with John “the
Savage” makes him famous and popular. He starts to see himself as less of
an outsider.
From Chapter 8 until the end of the novel, John is the story’s
protagonist. John is the ultimate outsider in the World State, because he
grew up on the Savage Reservation, where none of the World State’s
technologies or forms of social control have been introduced. John
believes the purpose of life is not to be happy but to seek truth. He is
disgusted by the World State, where everything is set up to make people
happy and no one is allowed to seek truth and meaning. He has a series of
conflicts with the World State and its values. He is upset when Helmholtz
laughs at Shakespeare. He refuses to come to Bernard’s parties and he is
horrified when Lenina tries to seduce him. When he finds that his mother
has taken so much soma that she doesn’t know she is dying, John finally
snaps. He throws away the hospital workers’ soma supply because, he
says, it makes the citizens of the World State “slaves.” At the end of the
novel the Controller, Mustapha Mond, allows John to live however he
chooses. John chooses to seek truth through ritual self-punishment, but he
fails in his search and gives into the temptations of pleasure. After taking
part in an orgy, he kills himself. His death may symbolize how disgusted
he is by his actions.
Analysis
In telling the story of a civilization where suffering and pain have
been eradicated at the price of personal autonomy, ”Brave New
World” explores the dehumanizing effects of technology, and implies that
pain is necessary for life to have meaning. The story begins with three
expository chapters describing the futuristic society of World State. In this
society, marriage, family, and procreation have been eliminated, and
babies are genetically engineered and grown in bottles. Citizens are
programmed to be productive and complaisant through a combination of
biological manipulation, psychological conditioning, and a drug called
soma. A character named Mustapha Mond explains that in the previous
era, people suffered from poverty, disease, unhappiness, and wars. A new
society, named for the twentieth century automotive manufacturer Henry
Ford, was formed to improve the human experience. These chapters do not
include many significant elements of the plot, but they introduce the major
themes of the novel. They signal to the reader that World State
brainwashes its citizens to remain obedient, and suggest the reader should
be skeptical about how truly utopian the society really is. The World State
emerges as the antagonist of the novel, a sinister force that prevents
characters from achieving meaningful happiness or free will.
 The plot is initiated when Bernard, the novel’s initial protagonist, asks
Lenina on a date to visit a Reservation. The reader can infer that
Reservations serve as sort of human zoos where World State citizens can
gawk at what civilization used to be like. We can soon tell that despite
their mutual attraction, Bernard and Lenina are incompatible. Bernard does
not want to participate in Obstacle Golf, but wants to go on a walk and get
to know Lenina. Lenina wants to act like everyone else and enjoy the same
activities without thinking or talking too much. We see that most of the
main characters struggle to conform to society to one degree or another.
Lenina is mostly content to follow the rules, but questions the government-
enforced promiscuity, and feels oddly attracted to Bernard, despite the fact
that he is an outsider. Bernard more profoundly questions World State’s
habit of drugging citizens, and wonders if his life might have more
meaning if he experienced the full range of human emotion. Bernard’s
friend, Helmholtz, is even more disturbed by World State, and longs to
create art that can act as a sort of x-ray for human experience, rather than
propaganda that enforces World State policies.

The conflict of the novel is developed on the eve of Lenina and

Bernard’s trip, when the Director tells Bernard about his own visit to the
Reservation, raising further questions about how successful the society
really is at creating an ideal existence. The Director describes being
separated from the woman he was with, hurting himself, and having a
painful and arduous trip back to the Reservation. The physical and
emotional difficulty of the experience make it one of his most significant
memories, and he admits that he still dreams about it. This recollection
introduces the idea that pain is necessary for meaning, and also
foreshadows John and Linda’s relationship to the Director. At the
Reservation, John and Lenina witness several scenes directly contrasting
the two ideas of civilization presented by the novel: the Native American-
like civilization of the Reservation, and the futuristic civilization of World
State. Unlike in World State, residents of the Reservation grow old, have
disease, hunger, and treat each other with cruelty. At the same time, they
create art, experience love and marriage, and have a powerful religious
system.

At the Reservation, Lenina and Bernard meet John, a white-skinned

resident who Bernard realizes is the Director’s son, setting up the eventual
collision of the opposing cultures. John tells them his memories of
growing up on the reservation with Linda, where he experienced maternal
love and the joy of reading Shakespeare and learning skills, but also the
pain of ostracism. Linda, still effectively brainwashed by her World State
upbringing, speaks rapturously of her time in World State, and eagerly
accepts Bernard’s offer to bring her home. Back at World State John
joyfully greets his father but the citizens, unaccustomed to displays of deep
emotion, laugh at him. Bernard enjoys momentary popularity as the
officials who once shunned him now clamor for time with John. Bernard’s
dissatisfactions melt away as he begins to feel powerful and important.
John emerges as the novel’s protagonist at this point, and our sympathies
shift to him as he years for an emotional relationship with Lenina and
worries about Linda, who exists in a drugged stupor. Lenina, confused by
John’s refusal to have sex with her, takes off her clothes and tries to
embrace him, but John flies into a rage and beats her, showing the dark,
dangerous side of human emotions and morality.

The climax of the novel occurs when Linda dies and John, deranged
by grief, tries to stage a revolution. Helmholtz joins in, while Bernard
watches, unsure whether it is safer for him to join or call for help. In this
scene, Bernard becomes entirely unsympathetic for his cowardice and lack
of morality. Mustapha Mond exiles Bernard and Helmholtz, then discusses
religion, literature, and art with John. Citing Shakespeare, John argues for
the importance of pain and difficulty, saying, “I don’t want comfort… I
want God, I want poetry, I want danger, I want freedom, I want goodness.”
Mond replies that John is asking for the right to be unhappy, a right that
the book asserts is central to the experience of being human. The falling
action of the novel takes place after John exiles himself from the city, and
attempts to live a life as free of comfort and ease as possible. Reporters
find him whipping himself, and soon he is surrounded by a crowd of
onlookers demanding a show. The crowd’s frenzy turns into an orgy,
which John participates in. The next day, horrified by what he’s done, he
hangs himself.