Remix

The theme of Brave New World is not the advancement of science as such; it is the advancement of science as it affects individuals

Science has basically replaced the "family" unit. Embryos are developed in bottles, children are raised and conditioned by the state. It has ruined the physical meaning of a "family". Science is a good and a bad meaning. In the book it's bad because "science" is used for cloning children and producing/raising them the way people want them to be. Children can be raised that same way without being cloned or trained by the state, that's what parents are for. Science has also provided safe lines for emotional and human desires such as, Soma. Soma placates anger, hostility and wants. Genetic engineering allows the intelligence necessary for each caste and sub-caste to fill its place is society.  

Bokanovkys Process

Bokanovky's process is the process of human cloning, that is a key aspect of the world envisioned in Aldous Huxley's novel. The process is applied to fertilized human eggs in vitro, causing them to split into identical genetic copies of the original. 

"Bokanovsky's Process is one of the major instruments of social stability "

In chapter 1, this quote undergoes the entire idea behind the modern civilization and lack of individuality. With the Bokanovkys genetic engineering process, the modern population is easier to process. The process by splitting the two embryo is nearly outrageous but the "brave new world" has come to conclusion it's the best and easiest way of life. 

The Consumer Society

It is important to understand that Brave New World is not simply a warning about what could happen to society if things go wrong, it is also a satire of the society in which Huxley existed, and which still exists today. While the attitudes and behaviors of World State citizens at first appear bizarre, cruel, or scandalous, many clues point to the conclusion that the World State is simply an extreme but logically developed version of our society’s economic values, in which individual happiness is defined as the ability to satisfy needs, and success as a society is equated with economic growth and prosperity.

Lenina Crowne

She is a vaccination worker at the Central London Hatchery and Conditioning Centre. She is an object of desire for a number of characters, including Bernard Marx and John. Her behavior is sometimes not normal or unorthodox, which makes her attractive. For example, she defies her culture’s conventions by dating one man exclusively for several months, she is attracted to Bernard the misfit and she develops a violent passion for John the Savage. Ultimately, her values are those of a conventional World State citizen. Her primary means of relating to other people is through sex, and she is unable to share Bernard’s disaffection or to understand John’s alternate values.

John

The son of the Director and Linda, John is the only major character to have grown up outside of the World State. The outsider, the savage, he has spent his life alienated from his village on the New Mexico Savage Reservation, and he finds himself unable to fit in to World State society. His entire worldview is based on his knowledge of Shakespeare’s plays, which he can quote very easily and grateful. John also refuses to take the drug soma setting him away from all the people of the World State. He basically lives in a normal society compared to the World State society.

This is a photo of the Character John from the movie

The Use of Technology to Control Society

Brave New World warns of the dangers of giving the state control over new and powerful technologies. One illustration of this is the control of reproduction through technological and medical intervention, including the surgical removal of ovaries, the Bokanovsky Process, and hypnopaedic conditioning. Another is the creation of complicated entertainment machines that generate both harmless leisure and the high levels of consumption and production that are the basis of the World State’s stability. Soma is a third example of the kind of medical, biological, and psychological technologies that Brave New World criticizes most sharply. It is important to recognize the distinction between science and technology. Whereas the State talks about progress and science, what it really means is the bettering of technology, not increased scientific exploration and experimentation. The state uses science as a means to build technology that can create a seamless, happy, superficial world through things such as the “feelies.” 

Mustapha Mond Quote

"Mother, monogamy, romance. High spurts the fountain; fierce and foamy the wild jet. The urge has but a single outlet. My love, my baby. No wonder those poor pre-moderns were mad and wicked and miserable. Their world didn’t allow them to take things easily, didn’t allow them to be sane, virtuous, happy. What with mothers and lovers, what with the prohibitions they were not conditioned to obey, what with the temptations and the lonely remorses, what with all the diseases and the endless isolating pain, what with the uncertainties and the poverty—they were forced to feel strongly. And feeling strongly (and strongly, what was more, in solitude, in hopelessly individual isolation), how could they be stable?"

This passage is from Chapter 3, when Mustapha Mond is explaining the history of the World State to the group of boys touring the Hatchery. “Mother, monogamy, romance” can be seen as a summary of the issues with which John is most concerned. And “feeling strongly” is what John values most highly, and also what leads to his eventual insanity, and suicide. Mustapha is saying that by doing away with these things the World State has finally brought stability and peace to humanity. John’s critique of this position is that stability and peace are not worth throwing away everything that is worthwhile about life “mother, monogamy, romance” included. Another facet of World State philosophy that is shown in this quote is the idea of constructing a world in which human beings have only one way of behaving. The World State is an enormous system of production and consumption in which humans are turned into machines for further production and consumption. The world “allows” them to be happy by creating a system in which not being happy, by choosing truth over soma, is forbidden.

Is John freer than the world state members?

In a way John is freer, but now as completely free. The reason is because the members of the state in the Brave New World are consciously, methodically, and rationally conditioned. They are also shaped by hypnotic slogans and drugs, as well as peer pressure, and the results markedly limits their thought. John is conditioned by the same sort of forces that shape you and me. He's shaped by prior generations, by the context which he's born, the accident of family and literature. This leaves gapes for freedom. 

The relationships between science, religion, and political power in the World State.

In Brave New World science,religion, and political power take on different meanings that what we used today. In the World State, science is feared because it requires original ideas and independent thought, which enhances the stability that helps maintain the lifestyles of citizens. Science is also configured with religion that is embraced by the citizens. Mustapha Mond, the World Controller, thinks that belief in God and prayer is only necessary when old age and discomfort are effecting an individual. In the World State, things don't longer exists without scientific help. Soma provides all of the attributes that are good to make a good Christian, such as patience and kindness, Soma is taken in the Solidarity Services much like the communion is taken in Christian services. 

Personal Favorite Quote

Every one works for every one else. We can’t do without any one. Even Epsilons are useful. We couldn't do without Epsilons. Every one works for every one else. We can’t do without any one. . . .

This quote comes from Chapter 5, meaning that  all humans, regardless of caste, become equal after death. This quote shows the power of mind-numbing repetitiveness of the rules and beliefs that make the World State society. The message also highlights conditioning: its true that “every one works for every one else,” its also true that certain castes have a much better time of it than others.

Key Facts Before Reading

THEMES: The use of technology to control society, the incompatibility of happiness and truth, the dangers of an all-powerful state
mOTIFS: Alienation, sex, Shakespeare
SYMBOLS: The drug soma is a symbol of the use of instant gratification to control the World State’s populace. It is also a symbol of the powerful influence of science and technology on society.
SETTINGS (TIME): 2540 A.D., referred to in the novel as 632 years “After Ford,” meaning 632 years after the production of the first Model T car.
SETTINGS (PLACE): England, Savage Reservation in New Mexico

Relation between sexes in the World State

Women occupy positions of inferior power and status in the World State. When we learn that in order to keep the State’s control over reproduction, many of the female fetuses are sterilized, but none of the male fetuses are. The Malthusian belt, containing regulation contraceptives, is another example of the burden put on women to avoid pregnancies. Lenina and Fanny are Beta females, and the people in positions of power, Bernard, Helmholtz, and in the Hatchery the Director, Henry, and in the government Mustapha Mond, are all male. In the social part, the relations between the sexes are liberalized, but in the works and politics the power remains to men. 

Beta

The five Castes in the book are Alpha, Beta, Gamma, Delta and Epsilon.  Gamma, Delta, and Epsilon undergo the Bokanovsky Process which involves shocking an egg so that it divides to form up to ninety-six identical embryos, which then develop into ninety-six identical human beings. The Alpha and Beta both don’t undergo the dividing process, which can weaken the embryo. The Beta is usually high functioning socialites. They accept everything that they have been taught. They live to satisfy their desires; they think and act in a superficial manner.

Bernard not acting 'infantile" how and why the World State infantilizes its citizens

1. The World State infantilizes its citizens by allowing them gratification and denying them responsibility.
2.  It assigns every citizen to a caste and a particular social function before birth.
3. It encourages its citizens to use soma regularly and to seek instant sexual gratification, and it conditions its citizens to have no identity independent of the World State.
4. The lifelong process of conditioning socializes the citizens into infantile dependence on the State through the lures of pleasure, security, and happiness. They are never allowed to make independent moral choices. Instead, these choices are made for them through conditioned, blind obedience to the World State’s moral laws. All of this occurs in the name of stability. 

Brave New World and Shakespeare’s The Tempest - John the Savage

The Tempest as an allegory of imperialism, Prospero decides to raise Caliban and “civilize." England has a long history of colonizing “savages” it saw as being in need of “civilizing.” In some respects, the World State practices a form of British imperialism. “Civilizing the savages” often involved replacing native languages with English. John identifies with Miranda by quoting her, and, like Miranda, he is raised in isolation from the culture of his parents. However, John resembles Caliban, because he becomes known as “the Savage” when he travels to the World State.

Connections between Brave New World and Aldous Huxley

Brave New World was inspired by the Utopian novels of H. G. Wells, A Modern Utopia (1905) and Men Like Gods (1923). Wells' hopeful vision of the future's possibilities gave Huxley the idea to begin writing a parody of the novel, which was Brave New World. Huxley wrote in a letter to Mrs. Arthur Goldsmith, an 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." Huxley tried to provide a frightening vision of the future. Huxley referred to Brave New World as a "negative utopia", influenced by Wells' own The Sleeper Awakes (dealing with subjects like corporate tyranny and behavioral conditioning) and the works of D. H. Lawrence.

Reading sesh tonight boys? My place. 7 o'clock.

"But I don't want comfort. I want God, I want poetry, I want real danger, I want freedom, I want goodness. I want sin."

This quote is from John, the directors son, who refused to take soma and wants people to feel pain and emotion and not be taken over by society. 

Soma

Soma is an allusion to a ritualistic drink. Soma is the best tool the government has for controlling its population. It sedates, calms, and distracts a person from realizing that there's actually something wrong.

Epsilon

Epsilon is the fifth in the series of the system. Epsilon is the lowest class in society, used to indicate that the given quantity is small/close to zero. 

The Motto

"Community, identity, stability". This is the Utopian motto stated on the Arch on the building where the babies are essentially 'produced'. 

Brave New World Cover

Brave New World

By: Aldous Huxley

Having fun reading 👍