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This article is about the novel. For other uses, see Brave New World (disambiguation).
Brave New World
First edition cover
AuthorAldous Huxley
Cover artistLeslie Holland
LanguageEnglish
GenreScience fiction, dystopian fiction
Published1932 (Chatto & Windus)
Publication placeUnited Kingdom
Pages311 (1932 ed.)
63,766 words[1]
OCLC20156268

Brave New World is a dystopian novel written in 1931 by English author Aldous Huxley, and published in 1932. Largely set in a futuristic World State of genetically modified citizens and an intelligence-based social hierarchy, the novel anticipates huge scientific developments in reproductive technology, sleep-learning, psychological manipulation, and classical conditioning that are combined to make a utopian society that goes challenged only by a single outsider. Huxley followed this book with a reassessment in an essay, Brave New World Revisited (1958), and with Island (1962), his final novel.

In 1999, the Modern Library ranked Brave New World fifth on its list of the 100 best English-language novels of the 20th century.[2] 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",[3] and the novel was listed at number 87 on the BBC's survey The Big Read.[4]

Title

Brave New World's title derives from Miranda's speech in William Shakespeare's The Tempest, Act V, Scene I:[5]

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[6]

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[7] 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.[8] 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.

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).[9] Wells's hopeful vision of the future's possibilities gave Huxley the idea to begin writing a parody of the novel, 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."[10] Unlike the most popular optimist 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 novel We by Yevgeny Zamyatin.[11] However, in a 1962 letter to Christopher Collins, Huxley says that he wrote Brave New World long before he had heard of We.[12] According to We translator Natasha Randall, Orwell believed that Huxley was lying.[13] The scientific futurism in Brave New World is believed to be cribbed from Daedalus by J. B. S. Haldane.[14]

Huxley hailed Billingham as a "triumphant embodiment" of the principles of planning, an "ordered universe in the midst of the larger world of planless incoherence".[15]

The events of the Depression in Britain 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.[15] 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.[15]

Huxley used the setting and characters in his science fiction novel to express widely held opinions, 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. Not only was Huxley outraged by the culture of youth, commercial cheeriness and sexual promiscuity, and the inward-looking nature of many Americans,[16] 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.[17]

Plot

The novel opens in the World State city of London in AF 632 (AD 2540 in the Gregorian calendar), where citizens are engineered through artificial wombs and childhood indoctrination programs 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 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 aging 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, especially the tragedies of 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 'the powerful, happiness-producing drug 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-fueled 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

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.

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.

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 their 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 but will use 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 the World State). 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" – 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 Fertilizing 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.

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.[18]

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",[19] and "Sperm Whale's Love-life".[19] He has already made a name for himself[20] but still seeks more. He renews his fame by filming the savage, John, in his newest release "The Savage of Surrey".[21] His name alludes to Charles Darwin and Napoleon Bonaparte.

Others

  • Freemartins: These women 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 behaviour 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 also attempts to kill him. 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.

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.[speculation?]
  • 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, beyond its role in procreation. (It is also strongly implied that citizens of the World State believe Freud and Ford to be the same person.)[22]
  • 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 Russian-Jewish 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.

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.[23]

Critical reception

Upon publication, Rebecca West praised Brave New World as "The most accomplished novel Huxley has yet written",[24] Joseph Needham lauded it as "Mr. Huxley's remarkable book",[25] and Bertrand Russell also praised it, stating, "Mr. Aldous Huxley has shown his usual masterly skill in Brave New World."[26]

However, Brave New World also received negative responses from other contemporary critics, although his work was later embraced.[27]

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.[28]

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."[29]

In 1999, the Modern Library ranked Brave New World fifth on its list of the 100 best English-language novels of the 20th century.[30] 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",[31] and the novel was listed at number 87 on the BBC's survey The Big Read.[32]

Fordism and society

Main article: World State in Brave New World

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". 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.[citation needed]

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 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.

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.[33]

Brave New World Revisited

First UK edition

Brave New World Revisited (Harper & Brothers, US, 1958; Chatto & Windus, UK, 1959),[34] 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 known as a counterpart to his most famous work.

Censorship/banning instances, accusation of plagiarism

The American Library Association ranks Brave New World as No. 52 on their list of most challenged books.[35][36]


The following list includes some notable 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.[37][38]
  • 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.[39]
  • The book was banned in India in 1967, with Huxley accused of being a "pornographer".[40]
  • In 1980, it was removed from classrooms in Miller, Missouri among other challenges.[41]
  • 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).[42] 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."[43]
  • 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".[44]

Previous

  • The First Men in the Moon (1901) by H. G. Wells. A lunar population lives in a single harmonious society, where the offspring starts life in small containers. There it is decided what kind of caste they will belong to for the rest of their existence, and their development at this stage is influenced to make sure they fit their caste perfectly.
  • Crome Yellow (1921) by Aldous Huxley. Looking forward to Brave New World, this earlier novel has Mr Scogan, a believer in "the goddess of Applied Science", looking forward optimistically to "the next few centuries" when "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."
  • Men Like Gods (1923) by H. G. Wells is a utopian novel that was a source of inspiration for Huxley's novel. Wells' earlier work, A Modern Utopia included the notion of a world state exiling dissidents to islands, where they would be free to live in ways unacceptable for the rest of the world.
  • The Scientific Outlook (1931) by philosopher Bertrand Russell. When Brave New World was released, Russell thought that Huxley's book was based on his book The Scientific Outlook, released the previous year. Russell contacted his own publisher and asked whether he should do something about this "apparent plagiarism". His publisher advised him not to, and Russell followed this advice.[45]

Following

  • Nineteen Eighty-Four (1949) by George Orwell. The two novels are often compared and sometimes regarded as the greatest works depicting dystopias propagandized as "perfect" societies.
  • 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."[46]
  • Fahrenheit 451 (1953) by Ray Bradbury
  • Walden Two (1948) by B. F. Skinner. Skinner was a Harvard psychologist who put his formal research in Operant Conditioning and Behaviorism into fictional practice by creating a utopian society based on these scientific principles.
  • THX 1138 (1971) the George Lucas film, depicts a dystopian future in which the populace is partially controlled through use of drugs.

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

Film

Future adaptation

In 2009, Ridley Scott and Leonardo DiCaprio announced that they would collaborate on a new adaptation of the book.[49] However, as of 2013, the project has been on hold while Scott has been involved with other projects.[50]

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.[51]

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
  • 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)
  • Spark Notes Brave New World
  • Aldous Huxley's Brave New World (Barron's Book Notes)
    • Anthony Astrachan, Anthony Astrakhan; Barrons Educational Series, November 1984; ISBN 0-8120-3405-8

See also

References

Notes

  1. ^ "Brave New World Book Details". AR BookFinder. Retrieved 28 November 2016.
  2. ^ "100 Best Novels". Random House. 1999. Retrieved 23 June 2007. This ranking was by the Modern Library Editorial Board of authors.
  3. ^ McCrum, Robert (12 October 2003). "100 greatest novels of all time". London: Guardian. Retrieved 10 October 2012.
  4. ^ "BBC – The Big Read". BBC. April 2003, Retrieved 26 October 2012
  5. ^ Anon. "Brave New World". In Our Time. British Broadcasting Corporation. Retrieved 9 April 2009.
  6. ^ Bate, Jonathan; Rasmussen, Eric (2007). William Shakespeare: Complete Works. The Royal Shakespeare Company. Chief Associate Editor: Héloïse Sénéchal. Macmillan Publishers Ltd. p. 47. ISBN 978-0-230-00350-7.
  7. ^ see e.g. 'Leibniz', by Nicholas Jolley (Routledge, 2005)[page needed]
  8. ^ Gilles Iltis, Université Nancy II, http://www.sanary.com/a-huxley-in-sanary-1-introduction.html
  9. ^ Aldous Huxley, Letters of Aldous Huxley, ed. by Grover Smith (New York and Evanston: Harper & Row, 1969), p. 348: "I am writing a novel about the future—on the horror of the Wellsian Utopia and a revolt against it. Very difficult. I have hardly enough imagination to deal with such a subject. But it is none the less interesting work" (letter to Mrs. Kethevan Roberts, 18 May 1931).
  10. ^ Heje, Johan (2002). "Aldous Huxley". In Harris-Fain, Darren (ed.). British Fantasy and Science-Fiction Writers, 1918–1960. Detroit: Gale Group. p. 100. ISBN 0-7876-5249-0.
  11. ^ George Orwell: Review, Tribune, 4 January 1946.
  12. ^ Russell, Robert (1999). Zamiatin's We. Bristol: Bristol Classical Press. p. 13. ISBN 978-1-85399-393-0.
  13. ^ "Leonard Lopate Show". WNYC. 18 August 2006. Archived from the original on 5 April 2011. {{cite news}}: Unknown parameter |deadurl= ignored (|url-status= suggested) (help) (radio interview with We translator Natasha Randall)
  14. ^ Disturbing the Universe, Chapter 15, Freeman Dyson, Basic Books, 1976
  15. ^ a b c Introduction by David Bradshaw. p. xxii. Huxley, Aldous. "Brave New World". Random House, 2007
  16. ^ The Vintage Classics edition of Brave New World.[page needed]
  17. ^ Bradshaw, David. Introduction. Brave New World. By Aldous Huxley. London: Vintage, 2004. p. viii. Print.
  18. ^ Huxley, Aldous (1932). Brave New World. New York: Harper & Brothers. p. 101. ISBN 978-0-06-085052-4.
  19. ^ a b Huxley, Aldous (1932). Brave New World. New York: Harper & Brothers. p. 253. ISBN 978-0-06-085052-4.
  20. ^ Huxley, Aldous (1932). Brave New World. New York: Harper & Brothers. p. 252. ISBN 978-0-06-085052-4.
  21. ^ Huxley, Aldous (1932). Brave New World. New York: Harper & Brothers. p. 254. ISBN 978-0-06-085052-4.
  22. ^ chapter 3, "Our Ford-or Our Freud, as, for some inscrutable reason, he chose to call himself whenever he spoke of psychological matters–Our Freud had been the first to reveal the appalling dangers of family life"
  23. ^ Meckier, Jerome (2006). "Onomastic Satire: Names and Naming in Brave New World". In Firchow, Peter Edgerly; Nugel, Bernfried (eds.). Aldous Huxley: modern satirical novelist of ideas. Lit Verlag. pp. 187ff. ISBN 3-8258-9668-4. OCLC 71165436. {{cite book}}: |access-date= requires |url= (help); External link in |chapterurl= (help); Unknown parameter |chapterurl= ignored (|chapter-url= suggested) (help)
  24. ^ Daily Telegraph, 5 February 1932. Reprinted in Donald Watt, “Aldous Huxley: The Critical Heritage. London; Routledge, 2013 ISBN 1136209697 (pp. 197–201).
  25. ^ Scrutiny, May 1932 . Reprinted in Watt, (pp. 202–205).
  26. ^ The New Leader, 11 March 1932. Reprinted in Watt, (pp. 210–13).
  27. ^ Huxley, Aldous. Brave New World. Harper Perennial Modern Classics; Reprint edition (17 October 2006), P.S. Edition, ISBN 978-0-06-085052-4  — "About the Book." — "Too Far Ahead of Its Time? The Contemporary Response to Brave New World (1932)" p. 8-11
  28. ^ G.K. Chesterton, review in The Illustrated London News, 4 May 1935
  29. ^ Ludwig von Mises (1944). Bureaucracy, New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, p 110
  30. ^ "100 Best Novels". Random House. 1999. Retrieved 23 June 2007. This ranking was by the Modern Library Editorial Board of authors.
  31. ^ McCrum, Robert (12 October 2003). "100 greatest novels of all time". London: Guardian. Retrieved 10 October 2012.
  32. ^ "BBC – The Big Read". BBC. April 2003, Retrieved 26 October 2012
  33. ^ Christopher Hitchens, "Goodbye to All That: Why Americans Are Not Taught History." Harper's Magazine. November 1998, pp. 37–47.
  34. ^ "Brave New World Revisited – HUXLEY, Aldous | Between the Covers Rare Books". Betweenthecovers.com. Archived from the original on 9 June 2011. Retrieved 1 June 2010. {{cite web}}: Unknown parameter |deadurl= ignored (|url-status= suggested) (help)
  35. ^ "The 100 Most Frequently Challenged Books of 1990–2000". American Library Association. Retrieved 27 July 2012.
  36. ^ "Top ten frequently challenged books lists of the 21st century". ala.org.
  37. ^ "Banned Books". Classiclit.about.com. 2 November 2009. Retrieved 1 June 2010.
  38. ^ "Banned Books". pcc.edu. Archived from the original on 2 June 2010. Retrieved 11 June 2010. {{cite web}}: Unknown parameter |deadurl= ignored (|url-status= suggested) (help)
  39. ^ Karolides, Nicholas J.; Bald, Margaret; Sova, Dawn B. (2011). 120 Banned Books: Censorship Histories of World Literature (Second ed.). Checkmark Books. p. 472. ISBN 978-0-8160-8232-2. In 1965, a teacher of English in Maryland claimed that the local school board had violated his First Amendment rights by firing him after he assigned Brave New World as a required reading in his class. The district court ruled against the teacher in Parker v. Board of Education, 237 F. Supp. 222 (D.Md) and refused his request for reinstatement in the teaching position. When the case was later heard by the circuit court, Parker v. Board of Education, 348 F.2d 464 (4th Cir. 1965), the presiding judge affirmed the ruling of the lower court and included in the determination the opinion that the nontenured status of the teacher accounted for the firing and not the assignment of a particular book.
  40. ^ Sharma, Partap (1975). Razdan, C. K. (ed.). Bare breasts and Bare Bottoms: Anatomy of Film Censorship in India. Bombay: Jaico Publishing House. pp. 21–22.
  41. ^ "Top 10 Most Famous Banned Books Of All Time - Writers House". Writers House. 22 May 2016. Retrieved 31 May 2016.
  42. ^ Smuszkiewicz, Antoni (1982). Zaczarowana gra (in Polish). Poznań: Wydawn. Poznanskie. OCLC 251929765.[page needed]
  43. ^ Nowiny Literackie" 1948 No. 4, p 7
  44. ^ Playboy interview with Kurt Vonnegut, Jr. Archived 10 February 2009 at the Wayback Machine, July 1973.
  45. ^ Russell, Bertrand; Slater, John G. (1996). The Collected Papers of Bertrand Russell, Vol. 10 – A Fresh Look at Empiricism, 1927–42. Assistance of Peter Köllner. Routledge. p. xxii. ISBN 978-0-415-09408-5. Retrieved 17 September 2008.
  46. ^ "Interview with Kurt Vonnegut, Jr". Playboy. July 1973. Archived from the original on 10 February 2009. {{cite journal}}: Unknown parameter |deadurl= ignored (|url-status= suggested) (help)
  47. ^ "Forgotten Actors: Charlotte Lawrence". Forgottenactors.blogspot.ca. 4 December 2012. Retrieved 11 August 2016.
  48. ^ Jones, Josh (20 November 2014). "Hear Aldous Huxley Read Brave New World. Plus 84 Classic Radio Dramas from CBS Radio Workshop (1956-57)". Open Culture. Retrieved 11 August 2016.
  49. ^ "Leonardo DiCaprio And Ridley Scott Team For "Brave New World" Adaptation". Filmofilia. 9 August 2009.
  50. ^ Ben Child (1 November 2013). "Prometheus sequel script ready to go, says Ridley Scott". The Guardian.
  51. ^ Goldberg, Lesley (5 May 2015). "Steven Spielberg's Amblin, Syfy Adapting Classic Novel 'Brave New World' (Exclusive)". The Hollywood Reporter.

Bibliography

Template:Bibliowiki

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