Huxley, Brave New World

Translation of Epigraph by Nicolas Berdiaeff (20th century Russian philosopher):

Utopias appear much more realizable than formerly was believed. And we are currently faced with another anguishing question: How to avoid their final production? . . . Utopias are feasible. Life goes towards utopias. And perhaps a new century will start it, a century when the intellectuals and the cultivated classes will dream about the means of avoiding utopias and about returning to a non-utopian society, less ‘perfect’ and more free (trans. W. C. Nielsen).

TIMELINE

- Pfitzner and Kawaguchi devise ectogenesis (47)

- parliament passes law against sleep teaching

- Nine Years’ War in A. F. 141

- Great Economic Collapse (48)

- Simple Life Movement (49-50)

- British Museum Massacre (50)

- Campaign against the Past suppresses all books written before A. F. 150 (51)

- Crosses replaced with Ts (52)

- World State with 10 World Controllers

- A. F. 178: 2,000 pharmacologists and bio-chemists subsidized to make soma

- Present day of book = A. F. 632


Group Discussion Day 1


1. Why do utopias deconstruct conventional family structures?


2. What do We, and so far Brave New World, say about scientific progress? Does science necessarily lead to a better lifestyle according to Zamyatin and Huxley?


Group Discussion Day 2: Choose 3/4 questions and discuss in groups of 2-4 people:

1. Do you find Bernard Marx believable? How is it that in a society that is so carefully planned, Bernard Marx is such an outsider?

2. What does the motif of water mean? (cf. 41/46, 69/72, 81/82)

3. Why does Huxley choose Shakespeare as the cornerstone of John's education?

4. As dehumanizing and oppressive as Huxley's utopia is, the alternative in the “savage reserve” is in many ways worse—dirty, violent, unhealthy, cruel, uncomfortable. What point is Huxley making about human nature and the nature of human communities? Is his vision totally negative—or does the book hold out some shred of hope, some alternative mode that fosters both freedom and community?

Group Discussion Day 3


1. Could anything like Brave New World really happen? Has it happened in some form that we don’t fully recognize?



Group Discussion Day 5


1. Toward the end of the book, the Controller Mustapha Mond sums up the benefits of living in the “brave new world” Utopia: “The world’s stable now. People are happy; they get what they want, and they never want what they can’t get.” It sounds like perfection, and yet the world Mond describes is deeply, intentionally horrifying. Why? What exactly is so bad about this society of the future? Is there anything good about it, anything we could learn from and try to adapt to our own uses?


2. In many ways, the main characters of the book are cartoon figures—Helmholtz Watson the alienated superman, Bernard Marx the cowardly, hypocritical intellectual, Mustapha Mond the cynical all-knowing leader, John the doomed idealist. Discuss the book as an allegory and elaborate on what each character stands for.

Comparative Questions:

3. In which society, the One State of We or Huxley’s World State, do women fare better? Why or why not?


4. Compare R in We to Helmholtz Watson in Brave New World. Are Zamyatin and Huxley suggesting that great literature depends on great suffering? Why or why not?


5. In We and Brave New World, civilized societies are defined in opposition to their uncivilized neighbors beyond the Green Wall and on the Reservation. To civilize, according to Dictionary.com, means “to raise from barbarism to an enlightened stage of development; bring out of a primitive or savage state.” In what ways do Zamyatin and Huxley suggest that technology has a reverse effect on society, leading to barbarism and savagery? Or, is technology in these two novels the absolute path to an enlightened stage of development? Why or why not? 


6. In the futuristic worlds of We and Brave New World, humans have apparently evolved beyond their “animalistic” biology. In what ways do Zamyatin and Huxley try to disprove or prove this statement? According to Zamyatin and Huxley, is the most “evolved” human someone who denies and moves beyond her biology or someone who is in touch with the human organism?


7. We and Brave New World satirize utopian visions of a post-apocalyptic future. A utopia, as we learned with Francis Bacon, is simultaneously “no place” and “good place” (eutopia). What do Zamyatin and Bacon suggest is wrong with building places with so-called perfect legal, political, and social structures? Why can’t utopias work (or can they)?



Allusions in Brave New World

Hamlet: "Nay, but to live / In the rank sweat of an enseamed bed, / Stew'd in corruption, honeying and making love / Over the nasty sty . . . " (3.4.95; Huxley 123/131, ch. 8)

Hamlet: "When he is drunk asleep, or in his rage / Or in the incestuous pleasure of his bed . . . " (3.3.90; Huxley 124/133)

The Tempest: "[Miranda:] Oh brave new world that has such people in it" (V.i; Huxley 130/139 and 148/160)

Troilus and Cressida: "Her eyes, her hair, her cheek, her gait, her voice; / Handlest in thy discourse O! that her hand, / In whose comparison all whites are ink / Writing their own reproach; to whose soft seizure / The cygnet's down is harsh . . . " (1.1; 134/144, ch. 9).

Romeo and Juliet: "On the white wonder of dear Juliet's hand, may seize / And steal immortal blessing from her lips, / Who, even in pure and vestal modesty, / Still blush, as thinking their own kisses sin" (3.3; 134/144).

Antony and Cleopatra: "Eternity was in our lips and eyes" (1.3.36; Huxley 143/155/ch. 11)

Othello (157171/end of ch. 11)

Romeo and Juliet: "Oh! she doth teach the torches to burn bright. / It seems she hangs upon the cheek of night, / Like a rich jewel in an Ethiop's ear; / Beauty too rich for use, for earth too dear . . . " (1.5; 163/178). 

"The Phoenix and the Turtle" (a poem): "Let the bird of loudest lay / On the sole Arabian tree, / Herald sad and trumpet be . . . / Property was thus appal'd / That the self was not the same; / Single nature's double name / Neither two nor one was call'd / Reason in itself confounded / Saw division grow together . . . " (167/183).

Romeo and Juliet: "Is there no pity sitting in the clouds, / That sees into the bottom of my grief? / O sweet my mother, cast me not away: / Delay this marriage for a month, a week; / Or, if you do not, make the bridal bed / In that dim monument where Tybalt lies . . . " (3.5.198-203; 168/184).



Outside Links:

Aldous Huxley on video (1959)


Comprehensive online links: http://somaweb.org/ (see plagiarism warning at bottom of page!!)



Works Cited:

Daston, Lorraine J., and Peter Galison. Objectivity. Zone Books, 2010. Print.

Huxley, Aldous. Brave New World. NY: Harper Collins, 1998. Print.
 

Wendy C. Nielsen, "Brave New World," March 2006