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"Maybe this world is another planet's
hell."
ALDOUS HUXLEY
1894 - 1963
"If we could sniff or swallow something that would, for five or six hours each day, abolish our solitude as individuals, atone us with our fellows in a glowing exaltation of affection and make life in all its aspects seem not only worth living, but divinely beautiful and significant, and if this heavenly, world-transfiguring drug were of such a kind that we could wake up next morning with a clear head and an undamaged constitution-then, it seems to me, all our problems (and not merely the one small problem of discovering a novel pleasure) would be wholly solved and earth would become paradise."
ALDOUS HUXLEY"Two thousand pharmacologists and bio-chemists were subsidized. Six years later it was being produced commercially. The perfect drug. Euphoric, narcotic, pleasantly hallucinant. All the advantages of Christianity and alcohol; none of their defects. Take a holiday from reality whenever you like, and come back without so much as a headache or a mythology. Stability was practically assured."
ALDOUS HUXLEY ( Brave New World )"What fun it would be if one didn't have to think about happiness!"
World Controller Mustapha Mond ( Brave New World )
Aldous Huxley was born in 1894 in England to two very aristocratic parents, Leonard and Julia Huxley. Huxley’s family possessed both scientific and literary fame throughout Europe. Indeed young Aldous had much to live up to. As a teenager, Huxley was enrolled in Eton, the legendary university. Soon he developed a bizarre eye disease which left him blind for over two years. Needless to say, this event dramatically changed Huxley, who decided to be a writer instead of a medical doctor. He reminisces, "...I should infallibly have killed myself in the much more strenuous profession of medicine." However, Huxley was no stranger to work, even in the literary world. The great author had an incredibly productive writing career for nearly four decades, concluding at the time of his death in November of 1963.
Huxley lived and wrote in Italy for much of his early adult life. He contributed to many literary magazines, including Vogue, but soon was forced to flee to America in 1937 to escape Hitler and the Nazis. As Huxley grew as an author, his writing became increasingly serious. He struggled to determine man’s role in society and to find the meaning of his perception. With his most famous work, Brave New World, Huxley proved to be decades ahead of his time. Indeed it would take years for the literary community to finally accept his work for what it was. Eventually Huxley emigrated to the United States where he lived the rest of his days in sunny southern California. As he grew older, Huxley began to experiment with LSD, a mind altering drug he found to be particularly useful for attaining spiritual perception. His later books reflected this interest in man’s relationship with the spiritual world.
Huxley will go down in history as being one the most famous of the contemporary writers, often writing misconstrued pieces far ahead of their time.
Brave new world
brave new world
CHARACTER PROFILES
D.H.C.: director of the hatchery; gives the students a tour of the facility
Mustapha Mond: resident controller of Western Europe; one of the ten world controllers; also lectures the students on the past and present state of earth; tells the Savage that the civilized world has decided to take happiness in exchange for freedom, art and religion
Bernard Marx: Alpha plus successful psychologist who has an inferiority complex due to his small height; feels isolated from rest of society; doesn’t believe in the promiscuous nature of his society; exhibits characteristics of man before Ford
Lenina Crowne: Woman who tries to persuade Bernard to take her to the reservation; always seems to unzipping her clothes
Fanny Crowne: works in the bottling room; friend of Lenina who pressures her to be more traditionally promiscuous
Benito Hoover: notoriously good-natured, always kind to others, always offering sex-hormone chewing gum
Helmholtz Watson: emotional engineer, friend of Bernard, also an outcast but due to his great physical beauty and muscular strength and mental excess; later Bernard is jealous of him when he and the Savage become friends; eventually sent to the Falkland Islands when he exhibits too much independence
Director: man who threatens Bernard with Iceland but then has to eat his words when Bernard returns with Linda and his son the Savage
Linda: conditioned woman raised in civilization but left by accident in the Reservation by the Director years before; has son, John, who grows up as a half-breed
John, the Savage: son of Linda and the Director; returns to civilization to attack it; demands freedom and isolation in exchange for happiness
Mitsima: Indian tribal elder who acts as a father to John and teaches him the Indian way
METAPHOR ANALYSIS
Caste System— people in Brave New World are genetically divided into five Greek letter categories. The best and brightest intellectuals are Alphas while the Epsilons are the manual laborers with little need for intelligence. The other castes fill jobs somewhere in between.
Alphas: Wear grey; these are the intellectuals of society. Some examples of professions can be World Controllers (Alpha double Plus), Directors of Hatcheries, and Wardens. Bernard, a psychologist, is also an Alpha.
Betas: Mulberry colored; these persons are somewhat intelligent and often work as mechanics.
Gammas: Wear green; often work as machine minders/manipulators, butlers, and other semi-thought-provoking jobs.
Deltas: Wear khaki, helicopter attendants, cold pressers, screw-cutters, package packers; are mass produced and have no individuality.
Epsilons: Wear black, can’t read or write, Sewage Workers, liftmen, foundry-workers, carriers, semi-morons.
THEME ANALYSIS
Brave New World presents a startling view of the future which on the surface appears almost comical. Yet humor was not the intention of Aldous Huxley when he wrote the book in the early 1930's. Indeed Huxley’s real message is very dark. His idea that in centuries to come, a one-world government will rise to power, stripping people’s freedom, is not new. In fact there are hosts of books dedicated to this topic. What makes Huxley’s interpretation different is the fact that his fictional society not only lives in this totalitarian government, but embraces it like mindless robots.
Soma, not nuclear bombs, is the weapon of choice for the World Controllers in Brave New World. These men have realized that fear and intimidation have only limited power; after all, these tactics simply build up resentment in the minds of the oppressed. Subconscious persuasion and mind-altering drugs, on the other hand, appear to have no side effects. Add to this the method of genetic engineering, and soon almost all "pre-Ford" problems have been wiped out permanently.
The caste system of this brave new world is equally ingenious. Free from the burdens and tensions of a capitalistic system which separates people into social classes by natural selection, this dictatorship government is only required to determine the correct number of Alphas, Betas, etc., all the way down the totem pole. There is no class warfare because greed, the basic ingredient of capitalism, has been eliminated. Even Deltas and Epsilons are content to do their manual labor. This contentment arises both from the genetic engineering and the extensive conditioning each individual goes through in childhood.
Freedom (as well as art and religion which are results of freedom) in this society has been sacrificed for what Mustapha Mond calls happiness. Indeed almost all of Huxley’s characters, save Bernard and the Savage, are content to take their soma ration, go to the feelies (the superficial substitute for actual life), and live their mindless, grey lives. The overwhelming color throughout Brave New World is grey. Everything and everyone seems dull to the reader, except perhaps the Savage, who is the only bright color in the novel. This grey happiness is the ultimate goal of the World Controllers like Mond.
Yet Mond has incorrectly associated lack of pain with happiness. Only the Savage knows that true happiness comes from the knowledge that one has value. He alludes to this when he describes his childhood in the Reservation where the only time he was happy was after he had completed a project with his own two hands. This, not soma, gave him the self-confidence to find happiness. The Savage knows his own value is as an individual, not a member of a collective.
Other characters in Brave New World, however, have no concept of self-worth. This results in their inability to find the happiness known to the Savage and the rest of the pre-Ford world which lives in the Reservation. True happiness is a consequence of freedom, not slavery. No slave can experience happiness until he is free. Yes, any slave can experience the contentment of a full belly and a full supply of instant gratification, but this doesn’t lead to happiness.
Bernard suffers throughout the book, being caught between both worlds. Although he has been conditioned to accept his servitude, he is constantly longing for freedom. He sees this freedom in the Savage, and envies him for possessing the inner happiness— genuine happiness— which Bernard’s society outlaws. Huxley uses Bernard to exemplify this struggle between freedom and slavery. Huxley argues that a genuine, free life requires suffering and pain. Men without anguish are men without souls. Huxley’s future describes a world without pain and a world without soul.
ANALYSIS
Huxley’s first chapter begins with a chilling laboratory tour. Even the first paragraph seems a bit overpowering with the nonchalant reference to the "World State." Obviously the setting is in the future (A.F. 632); all of earth is dominated by a one-world government.
The Hatchery Director’s opening remarks should by themselves leave the reader a little perplexed. He lectures his students on the evil of generalities, saying "Not philosophers but fretsawyers and stamp collectors compose the backbone of society." Obviously public sentiment has changed from today’s common beliefs that philosophy is a very important undertaking.
The Director proceeds to lead the obedient students through the lab, pointing out incubators and other technological apparatus designed to fertilize and grow human fetuses. As the students furiously jot down what he says, "straight from the horse’s mouth," the Director tells them about how sperm and ova are removed from the human body. He points out casually, "the operation undergone voluntarily for the good of Society, not to mention the fact that it carries a bonus amounting to six months’ salary." Soon he begins to outline the Bokanovsky Process— the process by which many multiples of babies are genetically generated from one original cell. While the Alphas and Betas, the higher castes, are kept from this process, the lower castes of Gammas, Deltas and Epsilons are further multiplied, thereby diluting their intelligence. This system, he brags, "is one of the major instruments of social stability." He and another man even seem to joke about having a friendly competition with other regions of the world for the most organisms hatched from a single ovary. Obviously there is strict population control through the centralized government. Even the "specimen’s" gender is predetermined.
There is also a caste system. Some of the embryos are purposefully given oxygen shortages to deliver them mental birth defects. These specimens, the Deltas and Epsilons, will do manual labor while the Alphas and Betas have leadership positions. "In Epsilons," Mr. Foster points out, "we don’t need human intelligence."
Next there is conditioning. Many of the embryos are made to like the heat by conditioning them with cold temperatures. It’s evident that the people have no freedom, but must submit to the will of the World Controllers. The Director adds, "All conditioning aims at that: making people like their unescapable social destiny." Obviously this system has far surpassed communism and any other totalitarian-like societies for ultimate power. The government has used technology and science, not threats and bribes, to control its population.
Huxley’s second chapter details the incredible and sickening methods used to condition small babies. Dozens of toddlers are put in the sunlight, immersed in countless books and flowers when suddenly bells and sirens sound and electrical shocks penetrate their tiny bodies. These lower caste members, future factory workers, are made to hate books, since this would prove to be unnecessary and wasteful to their line of work. Flowers are also shunned since factory workers need to be content with their urban environments. Any yearning to visit the countryside would hurt productivity.
Next, the first reference to Ford is made. Obviously this society uses it to replace God. The Director and others seem to worship him as God. Proof that this society takes place in the future is seen when the Director says that French and German are dead languages. Even the term parent is considered backward and outdated. This is because modern science has made everyone a test-tube baby. Government is its parents.
Finally, sleep-teaching hypnosis is used to give subliminal messages to the growing children. They are conditioned to love their own caste and despise all others through the constant repetition of key words and phrases. Some Beta babies are told, "I don’t want to play with Delta Children. And Epsilons are still worse. They’re too stupid to be able to read or write..." The Director boasts that hypnopaedia, "words without reason," is "the greatest moralizing and socializing force of all time."
The third chapter changes the setting of the tour from inside the hatchery to outside on the lawn, where hundreds of small children play games and engage in other less innocent activities in the bushes. The Director, who instructs not only his students but also the readers, speaks about the need for "consumption." He asserts, "Imagine the folly of allowing people to play elaborate games which do nothing whatever to increase consumption. It’s madness. Nowadays the Controllers won’t approve of any new game unless it can be shown that it requires at least as much apparatus as the most complicated of existing games." Here again, it’s made known that the government, not individuals, decides what activities everyone will participate in. In this case, only complicated games which require a lot of building material are allowed in order to keep the manufacturing sector of the economy going. The "ending is better than mending" slogan is also consistent with this theme.
Yet the major shock to the reader is a result of the frivolous tone used when referring to the "erotic play" of the small children. One small boy is even punished when he is hesitant to join in. The Director quickly tells the students a little background on erotic play. He says that before and even a while after Ford was on earth, promiscuity was suppressed. All the students think this is extraordinarily funny. Today, he says, the norm is that everyone engages in this kind of activity.
Soon Mustapha Mond, one of the ten world controllers, makes a surprise appearance to the delight of the D.H.C. The Controller tells the students that history is bunk and explains the reasoning behind the banning of prehistoric books like the Bible. He says that rebellion and sadness are a result of such thinking, and any kind of suffering is not permitted in this brave new world. Mond also speaks about the outdated concept of "family." This word, now seemingly dirty and forbidden, is spoken in an almost vulgar tone. Soon he mockingly imitates a mother cuddling and breast-feeding her baby to the horror of the students who don’t even understand the concept of a mother. At the same time in a different scene, Lenina and Fanny talk about taking their Pregnancy Substitute. Obviously science has found a way to deal with their human urges. The "Feelies" are another way for them to satisfy their sexual desires without paying the consequences of a baby.
While Fanny rebukes Lenina for only "having" Henry Foster for over four months, the Controller lectures the students on the virtues of the new system, where "every one belongs to every one else." Again Mond returns to the old world, explaining its problems with instability caused by Christianity, an outlawed and condemned backward religion. He also condemns liberty, saying it was the "liberty to be inefficient and miserable." He lectures, "they were forced to feel strongly. And feeling strongly, how could they be stable?" Obviously in Brave New World all feelings are dulled out and modified with Soma, the hallucinogenic drug with all the benefits of alcohol and Christianity without their side effects.
Soon Mond explains the need for having such stringent control of the population. He compares the revolution of wheels to the population count, saying, "Wheels must turn steadily, but cannot turn untended. There must be men to tend them, men as steady as the wheels upon their axles, sane men, obedient men, stable in their contentment."
Eventually Bernard Marx, the Alpha Plus too short for his caste (due to a mistake in his creation), is introduced and characterized. He is an outcast and a rebel. He doesn’t believe in the promiscuity of society and exhibits many characteristics of the pre-Ford era. Obviously he is not well liked.
Soon Mond details the beginning of their brave new world, explaining about how the Nine Year’s War signaled an economic collapse and the rise of the one world government. Henry Ford’s Model T was chosen to represent and signal the start of this new era. The automobile is chosen by Huxley because it is the ultimate symbol of man’s efficiency, not God’s. And the new world is a tribute to man’s power, not God’s. Even the sign of the cross is distorted in this sacrilegious new world. "All crosses had their tops cut and became T’s."
This chapter begins with Lenina asking Bernard if he will take her to New Mexico with him on his trip to the Reservation. Bernard is embarrassed when she asks him in public, and tries his best to avoid the question. Later, it’s made known that Bernard really does like her but is too afraid to ask her to go out with him. Bernard still suffers much humiliation from his short, Gamma-like stature. This makes it difficult for others to respect Bernard, since sleep-teaching hypnosis makes them automatically associate height with caste level. Huxley explains, "The mockery made him feel an outsider; and feeling an outsider he behaved like one, which increased the prejudice against him and intensified the contempt and hostility aroused by his physical defects."
Soon Bernard meets Helmholtz, the emotional engineer and long-time friend who also experiences alienation from society, not due to his physical inferiority, but due to both his physical and mental superiority. Like Bernard, Helmholtz feels as though his life is not quite complete, as if there’s something else he requires. Helmholtz tries to explain this to Bernard, saying, "Did you ever feel as though you had something inside you that was only waiting for you to give it a chance to come out? Some sort of extra power that you aren’t using— you know, like all the water that goes down the falls instead of through the turbines?"
Bernard isn’t sure what he means exactly, but Helmholtz seems to be on the brink of something big. The two seem to be fighting the same war on different fronts.
The first part of chapter five is dedicated to the everyday affairs of Lenina and Henry. They fly around in Henry’s helicopter for awhile, passing the crematorium. To them, it is not a sad place at all, but actually one of hope and joy. Henry asserts happily, "Fine to think we can go on being socially useful even after we’re dead. Making plants grow." Obviously the two have been conditioned to the point that their individuality means nothing compared to the collective. It isn’t even a remorseful time when someone dies. Lenina echoes his sentiments saying, "Yes, everybody’s happy now." Mentally drained with soma, it’s no wonder everything seems so mellow all of the time. Huxley describes the substance as "raising a quite impenetrable wall between the actual universe and their minds."
Part two of the chapter details the events of Bernard’s Solidarity Service, which he attends every two weeks. This service is similar to a church service yet much more cult-like in its nature. There are a lot of parallels to the pre-Ford era. The President (instead of the minister) gives not the sign of the cross, but the sign of the T. Soon a distorted kind of communion is had by all, while the twelve participants chant, "We long to die, for when we end, our larger life has begun." Obviously this is a collectivist type ceremony intended to mold the spirits of people together.
Throughout the service Bernard pretends to fit in, yet actually he continues to feel isolated from the rest of the group. He even yells, "He’s coming," to make it seem as though he’s really feeling the presence of Ford, yet he feels nothing inside. Soon the quasi-religious ceremony is brought to a climax when everyone begins to chant, "orgy porgy." Finally after the service is over, everyone feels refreshed and rejuvenated, feeling completely perfect in every way. Obviously this perfectness eliminates the need for Christianity in this new world. Still, however, Bernard feels left out. "He was as miserably isolated now as he had been when the service began— more isolated by reason of his unreplenished emptiness, his dead satiety."
Huxley’s sixth chapter begins with Lenina wondering about Bernard. Huxley admits, "she had wondered more than once whether she shouldn’t change her mind about the New Mexico holiday..." Yet eventually Lenina realizes that this is a chance of a lifetime— a chance to see an actual Reservation, a place where undeveloped humans live.
Soon Lenina and Bernard meet again, and decide to go flying. Lenina wants Bernard to take soma to curtail his poor attitude, but he refuses, saying, "I’d rather be myself and nasty. Not somebody else, however jolly." This again shows Bernard’s "odd" sense of individuality. Eventually Bernard begins to ask Lenina about her thoughts on freedom, yet she is too conditioned to understand him. He asks, "But wouldn’t you like to be free to be happy in some other way, Lenina?" She, however, feels uncomfortable when he speaks about individuality and wants to go home. Later, when Bernard regrets sleeping with her so easily, he calls her an adult intellectually but an infant "where feelings and desire are concerned." Bernard feels frustrated that he can’t share his passion for life with anyone.
Part two of the chapter details Bernard’s visit to the Director where he plans to get his permit to visit New Mexico signed. The Director willingly signs it, but then tells Bernard a seemingly unimportant story about how when he was younger he too went to Mexico with a woman. Unfortunately, the woman was lost there, and the Director had to return without her. Quickly embarrassed by his personal reminiscence, the Director warns Bernard that he will be sent to Iceland if he doesn’t stop misbehaving (being alone, and such). Yet Bernard doesn’t feel at all frightened by this reprimand, but elated. Huxley narrates, "He felt strong enough to meet and overcome affliction, strong enough to face even Iceland."
Part three marks the beginning of the trip to the New Mexico reservation. The Warden tries to warn Lenina about the wild Reservation, saying, "remember that, in the Reservation, children still are born, yes actually born, revolting as that may seem." Unfortunately Lenina is too drugged with soma to comprehend what he’s saying and never heeds the warning. Bernard, however, is looking forward to their arrival in the Reservation and away from the world he loathes. Huxley admits, "he had even longed for affliction."
This chapter marks the beginning of Bernard’s and Lenina’s experience in the Reservation. After seeing an old man slowly walking down a ladder, Lenina is drastically repulsed, asking Bernard what is wrong with him. He responds by saying nothing is wrong with him; he’s just old and decrepit. Bernard continues, explaining why they don’t see this is their world, "We keep their internal secretions artificially balanced at a youthful equilibrium." Obviously the modern world has ended not only disease and suffering, but also old age.
Next, the tourists see a bizarre Christian/Indian religious ceremony and are captivated by the blood sacrifices and references to the cross instead of the T. Bernard is fascinated by this while Lenina is repulsed, taking more soma to dull her senses.
The rest of the chapter really composes the core of the passage. It makes the connection between the Director’s idle comments about the Reservation and the new characters Bernard and Lenina find there over twenty years later. They meet Linda, the woman left by accident by the Director, and John, her son. Linda describes the incident by saying she was walking in the mountains when she fell and hit her head. Finally some natives found her and brought her back to the village where she had and then raised her new son, John. Bernard realizes that bringing them back to civilization could bring humiliation to the Director (after all, he’d be called a father) and bring himself instant fame by showing the Savage (John) to people for personal favors.
Outside, Bernard and John are walking and talking about the Savage’s past. Bernard seems almost overcome with the situation, saying, "So hard for me to realize, to reconstruct. As though we were living on different planets, in different centuries."
The rest of the chapter describes the childhood upbringing of John, Linda’s son. It is a bit confusing since John has a hard time articulating his experiences— he just tells his distinct memories to Bernard. At first Linda did not want him as a son. In her world, being a mother was dirty so she had a difficult time resigning herself to the fact that she now had a son.
John recalls that his happiest times were when Linda would tell him about her world, with the flying helicopters and the soma, though she wasn’t able to answer most of his questions about the world (since she only knew her specific job knowledge and nothing else; John had to turn to the tribal elders to answer these types of questions). On the reservation, Linda soon became addicted to pescal, Indian alcohol, despite it’s damaging side-effects. She also had several run-ins with the Indian wives after sleeping with their husbands. She, of course raised in civilization where ‘everyone belonged to everyone else,’ wasn’t accustomed to their backwards vows of marital faithfulness.
On one occasion, John even tried to kill Pope, the man Linda was sleeping with. Armed with his new knowledge of Shakespeare (which he had recently been given to read), the Savage tried to kill the man with a knife, but failed miserably. Another experience is revealed when John tells Bernard about his meetings with Mitsima, the Indian elder who acts as a father to John.
Yet the most dramatic memory is when at age sixteen he follows the other Indian boys out into the wilderness in the "becoming a man" ceremony. But soon John is laughed at by the other boys and told to go home, being the son of the "she-dog." This humiliates John, who decides to engage in his own ceremony of self-sacrifice and manhood. He fasts and tortures himself like the other boys, and even tries to emphasize with Christ on the cross, but he does this by himself. This story interests Bernard, who also feels like an outcast in his world, and the two both emphasize with each other’s suffering. Soon Bernard invites John and Linda home with him, seeing the opportunity to capitalize on them and get back at the Director.
Huxley’s ninth chapter is rather uneventful. While Lenina is on soma holiday to recover from her traumatic experiences over the last few days, Bernard makes all the necessary arrangements for their return trip with John and Linda. While the Savage waits for Bernard to return, he sees Lenina sleeping on the bed and thinks about how beautiful she is. Yet he knows that it would be wrong for him to take advantage of her and quickly flees in embarrassment.
This tenth chapter begins with the Director and Henry Foster preparing for the arrival of Bernard, after which the Director plans to send him to Iceland. The Director justifies his actions, saying, "Unorthodoxy threatens more than the life of a mere individual; it strikes at Society itself." Later, in front of Bernard and the whole crowd gathered in the room he asserts, "For this reason I propose to dismiss him, to dismiss him with ignominy from the post he has held in this Centre; I propose forthwith to apply for his transference to a Sub-Centre of the lowest order and, that his punishment may serve the best interest of Society..."
Soon the Director asks Bernard if there’s any reason why he shouldn’t be dismissed; he is surprised when Bernard responds in the affirmative and quickly leads Linda and John into the room. The Director is astonished and embarrassed while the rest of the crowd thinks that the whole matter is extremely hilarious. When Linda (now old and fat) cries to the Director, saying she has had his son, a hush falls over the crowd. The Director immediately resigns his post and Bernard is at least temporarily saved from Iceland.
Huxley’s eleventh chapter highlights both the aftermath of the scene in the Hatchery and the new life that Bernard, the Savage, and Linda will all live. First, Huxley speaks about the public’s growing fascination with the Savage, who they find physically attractive but also interesting in regards to his quaint ideas. Linda, on the other hand is not sought after, since her physical age-induced ugliness is extremely disgusting to the highly conditioned masses. Anyway, Linda is not after public attention. "The return to civilization was for her the return to soma...," writes the author. Linda lays in bed twenty-four hours a day, taking heavy doses of soma to escape her ugly reality. John is at first concerned that all the soma will shorten her life, but eventually he is forced to give in. Dr. Shaw tries to persuade him, saying, "Every soma-holiday is a bit of what our ancestors used to call eternity."
On a happier note, Bernard is now perfectly satisfied with his new life as friend of the popular savage. Huxley admits, "Bernard now found himself, for the first time in his life, treated not merely normally, but as a person of outstanding importance...Bernard felt positively gigantic." He goes on to say that Bernard could have his pick of the women and is respected by even his superiors. Unfortunately, however, this popularity forces him to cut ties with Helmholtz, at least temporarily, when Bernard thinks he’s envious of his new position.
Soon, as Bernard attempts to make the Savage civilized as part of his experiment, he realizes that John won’t take soma and is very distressed about the condition of Linda. Obviously the Savage hasn’t been conditioned like the others to disregard death as something unimportant; also, somehow he knows the effects of soma and doesn’t want to have them himself.
Later, when the Savage asks a librarian if she has Shakespeare, Dr. Gaffney responds, "Our library contains only books of reference. If our young people need distraction, they can get it at the feelies. We don’t encourage them to indulge in any solitary amusements."
The rest of the chapter is devoted to the interaction between Lenina and the Savage. After going to the feelies together (an experience the Savage considers dirty and immoral), Lenina hopes to get the Savage into bed with her. But he refuses according to his moral system from the Reservation, to her amazement and disappointment.
This twelveth chapter begins with Bernard’s attempt to make the Savage (who is reading Romeo and Juliet) leave his room and come down to the party which Bernard has created— a dinner where the most important dignitaries have been invited in order to see the fascinating Savage. But to Bernard’s agony and anger, the Savage refuses to leave, swearing at him in words only his Indian language can express. Huxley narrates, "What should have been the crowning moment of Bernard’s whole career had turned out to be the moment of greatest humiliation."
When Bernard returns to give the bad news to his guests, he finds that their polite respect for him is gone instantly. It’s at this moment Bernard realizes that nobody has been kind to him because of his own merits, but simply due to his access to the Savage.
In another scene, Mustapha Mond, the world controller, is reading a new science book requiring his approval to be published. The Controller rejects the book, citing its dangerous ideas. He maintains, "...so far as the present social order is concerned, [the book is] dangerous and potentially subversive."
Soon Bernard, having no other friends anymore, apologizes to Helmholtz and asks to be friends again. Helmholtz agrees and soon Bernard, Helmholtz and the Savage start to hang out together frequently. Huxley narrates, "Helmholtz and the Savage took to one another at once. So cordially indeed that Bernard felt a sharp pang of jealousy." Again, Bernard feels alienation and isolation.
Soon the Savage and Helmholtz begin a series of intellectual discussions and readings. When the Savage shows Romeo and Juliet to Helmholtz, Helmholtz finds it extremely comical; he can’t understand why there is so much tension and controversy regarding a man wanting a woman. In modern culture, he says, the two would just have each other and wouldn’t think twice. This troubles the Savage, who continues to cling to the old moral system of the Indian/Christian tradition.
Huxley’s thirteenth chapter continues the struggle between Lenina and the Savage: Lenina trying to seduce him and the Savage trying to resist her advances. Fanny, Lenina’s friend and changing partner, doesn’t understand her obsession with the Savage, telling her she can have any of millions of men. Yet still, Lenina feels a strange attraction to the Savage.
Finally, Lenina decides to be bold, so she barges into the Savage’s room and begins to take her clothes off, hoping to seduce the Savage. But John thinks he has to prove himself worthy, something Lenina doesn’t understand, and resists her lustful pleas. "In Malpais," he says, "people get married." This of course is incomprehensible to Lenina who has been conditioned to one night stands. She doesn’t understand his attempt at chivalry. The Savage even tries to quote Shakespeare, saying, "the strongest suggestion our worser genius can, shall never melt mine honour into lust."
Soon the Savage begins to react violently to her advances, forcing Lenina to take refuge in the bathroom. Finally, when the Savage leaves the room, she stealthily sneaks out of the bathroom and back to her own room.
This fourteenth chapter details the events surrounding Linda’s inevitable death and the Savages guilt-ridden visit to the Hospital where she is dying. The nurses at the hospital can’t understand his apparent grief at the loss of his mother. Huxley even admits that they usually don’t get many visitors there. This is because no one cares about death in this society; it’s nothing more than one individual among an endless mass.
When the Savage finally reaches Linda’s bed, he finds were drugged out on soma and he can’t communicate with her. At this time the Savage feels a blur of different emotions— guilt, sadness, loneliness. He feels that the only person who ever meant anything to him in the world is leaving and soon he will have to face the world alone. Huxley narrates, "He squeezed her limp hand almost with violence, as though he would force her to come back from this dream of ignoble pleasures, from these base and hateful memories— back into the present, back into reality; the appalling present, the awful reality— but sublime, but significant, but desperately important precisely because of the imminence of that made them so fearful."
Soon a Bokanovsky Group of Deltas who are being death conditioned surround the Savage and his dying mother. The Savage is outraged at the lack of respect for Linda and soon begins pushing the children and yelling at the nurses, despite their protests that his behavior will harm their death conditioning.
The Savage, at the beginning of this fifteenth chapter, sees a line-up of the Delta workers of the Park Lane Hospital for the Dying. The hundreds of workers with only a few different faces between them are waiting obediently for their daily ration of soma. This too, enrages the Savage, who begins to take out all his frustration here. John can’t stand their willing servitude and thinks to himself, "Linda had been a slave, Linda had died; others should live in freedom, and the world be made beautiful. A reparation, a duty. And suddenly it was luminously clear to the Savage what he must do; it was as though a shutter had been opened, a curtain drawn back." It’s at this point that the Savage realizes his reason for coming to this strange world: he will make it free.
Soon the Savage abruptly interrupts the soma distribution and gets everyone’s attention. He asks them if they like being slaves and babies. Next he tells them that they can be free and begins to throw their packets of soma, which he calls poison, out the window. But the Deltas are too stupid to understand his oratory and soon begin charging him, demanding their soma. Soon a fight ensues, and Helmholtz quickly comes to the Savage’s aid against the mass of Deltas.
Eventually the battle is broken up when police come and spray everyone with soma-gas, and play "Anti-Riot Speech Number Two." The Savage, Helmholtz, and Bernard are taken into custody to see the Controller.
Huxley’s sixteenth chapter begins a long series of discussions between Mustapha Mond and the Savage. Although these chapters are mostly dialogue, they make up the core ideology of the novel and are crucial to understanding its meaning. When the Savage asks the Controller why many of the old books like Othello are prohibited, Mond answers, "Because our world is not the same as Othello’s world... you can’t make tragedies without social instability. The world’s stable now. People are happy; they get what they want, and they never want what they can’t get... You’ve got to choose between happiness and what people used to call high art. We’ve sacrificed the high art."
Later, when the Savage asks why everyone isn’t made into an Alpha Double-Plus, the Controller responds by telling him a story about how an experiment was done on an island where everyone was an Alpha. Eventually almost everyone died because none of the Alphas were willing to do Epsilon work; they weren’t the least bit tolerant of authority. Then he goes on to say that the perfect population has a variety of castes to do different work. Society functions best this way.
Finally Mond sends Bernard to Iceland and Helmholtz to the Falkland Islands. "Happiness," he says, "has to be paid for. You’re paying for it..."
Huxley’s seventeenth chapter continues the discussion between the Savage and the Controller. First, Mond admits that not only science and art have been sacrificed for happiness, but also religion. The Controller continues, saying that although he personally believes in God, his society no longer needs God anymore. He justifies this by noting the everlasting youth of people in the society. With youth, good health, and constant happiness, there is no need for God, he says. Mond follows up by quoting a philosopher. "‘You can only be independent of God while you’ve got youth and prosperity; independence won’t take you safely to the end.’ Well, we’ve now got youth and prosperity right up to the end. What follows? Evidently, that we can be independent of God...God isn’t compatible with machinery and scientific medicine and universal happiness. You must make your choice."
When the Savage asserts that it’s natural to believe in God, Mond agrees but says it’s only natural to believe when one’s alone. In modern society, men are prevented from being alone and therefore prevented from believing in God.
The Savage soon becomes frustrated by the argument, tired of Mond’s continual references to the utopian world of soma which seems so fake to him. He asserts that society would have more character if it did have some tears once in a while. He closes by admitting, "I don’t want comfort. I want God, I want poetry; I want real danger, I want freedom, I want goodness. I want sin."
The last chapter paints a hopeless portrait of the future for the Savage, and indeed mankind in general. The Savage chooses to live as a hermit, alone in a deserted area where only an old lighthouse remains. It’s this location where the Savage plans to purify himself and "to escape further contamination by the filth of civilized life." He does this by carrying out a traditional Reservation religious ceremony in which he calls on God for forgiveness for his lust for Lenina and lack of concern for Linda’s troubled death. Soon the Savage begins to beat himself with a whip, punishing himself for the world’s transgressions.
At first, he is undisturbed and left to live in peace, but soon inquisitive visitors find him, wondering what on earth he’s doing. Soon noisy reporters camp out on the land in order to make a feely about him. Huxley admits, "Pain was a fascinating horror."
Eventually the Savage becomes so disgusted with the whole situation he retreats to the lighthouse, hoping to find solitude. When eager reporters follow him inside, they find his corpse hanging on the stairway. Despite his best efforts to change it, it seems the world will never know the same freedom he has grown to love. Now that world has convinced him that it’s pointless to live. The system has overcome this individual, in spite of his liberty-seeking intentions.
brave new world
brave new world
revisited
Some useful sites -
http://www.utoronto.ca/utopia/ (Centre of Utopian Studies)
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