Riassunto esame Letteratura inglese, Prof. Zuccato Edoardo, libro consigliato Brave New World, Aldous Huxley

THEMES

1. Totalitarian Society

Brave New World is a benevolent dictatorship. There is no war, poverty or crime, but all aspects of

the population are controlled: number of people, social class, and intellectual ability are all carefully

regulated. There is a rigid control of reproduction through technological and medical intervention,

including the surgical removal of ovaries, the Bokanovsky’s Process, and hypnopaedic condition-

ing. Even history is controlled and rewritten to meet the needs of the party. Knowledge of the past

has been banned by the Controllers to prevent invidious comparisons with the present, as stability

must be maintained at all costs.

It is important to recognize the distinction between science and technology. The State uses science

as a means to build technology that can create a happy, superficial world, but it censors and limits

science when it searches for truth, a threat to the State’s control. The State’s focus on happiness and

stability means that it uses the results of scientific research but does not support science itself.

Although the World State most obviously controls its members by conditioning them and gratifying

their desires, there are hints that stability is maintained through methods that are still more sinister.

Bernard’s sudden fear that someone is listening to his heretical conversation with Helmholtz sug-

gests a totalitarian aspect of the World State. Outside work hours, World State citizens attend strictly

regulated, scheduled social activities and never spend any time alone. The lack of time for reflection

keeps them occupied and docile. Bernard’s fear shows that he is aware of the unwritten but poten-

tially serious consequences of his heretical beliefs.

2. Consumerism

The World State is an extreme version of our society’s economic values, in which individual hap-

piness is defined as the ability to satisfy needs, and society’s success is equated with economic

growth and prosperity.

There are some crucial concepts regarding this:

• Mass production, homogeneity and predictability.

• Human as disposable goods.

• Consumption and consumerism: “Ending is better than mending”.

3. Truth

Brave New World is full of characters who do everything they can to avoid facing the truth about their

own situations. The almost universal use of the drug soma is probably the most pervasive example

of such willful self-delusion.

From Mond’s discussion with John, there are two main types of truth that the World State seeks to

eliminate: 5

• Scientific, or empirical truth.

• “Human” truths, such as love, friendship, and personal connection.

4. Entertainment

In Brave New World, happiness derives from consuming mass-produced goods, sports such as Ob-

stacle Golf, promiscuous sex, “the feelies”, and soma. Soma provides a mindless, inauthentic happi-

ness”, an escape from the reality in which people are not free.

CHAPTERS & ANALYSIS

Chapters 1-2-3

Huxley’s Brave New World can be seen as a critique of the overenthusiastic embrace of new scien-

tific discoveries: human cloning and prenatal conditioning. In the novel, Mr. Foster explained one

of the processes through which the embryos are modified:

Reducing the number of revolutions per minute. The surrogate goes round slower; therefore,

passes through the lung at longer intervals; therefore, gives the embryo less oxygen. Nothing

like oxygen-shortage for keeping an embryo below par.

The starting date for the calendar is Henry Ford’s introduction of the Model T (1908), a cheap and

efficient car produced by the assembly line system. Therefore, Fordism, inspired by Ford’s assem-

bly line, is represented by the creation/hatching of human beings. In the book, the author criticizes

Fordism as a social and philosophical lifestyle based on consumerism and worships of a laic reli-

gion based on profit. Traditionally, Christianity is represented by a cross. The author mocks this by

substituting the crossing with the T sign performed as a ritual sign among the higher classes. The

almost religious regard in which the World State holds technology is apparent from the start.

One theme emphasized repeatedly in this first chapter is the similarity between the production of

humans in the hatchery and the production of consumer goods on an assembly line. Everything

about human reproduction is technologically managed to maximize efficiency and profit. Follow-

ing the rule of supply and demand, the Predestinators project how many members of each caste

will be needed, and the Hatchery produces human beings according to those figures.

One of the keys of mass production is that every part is identical and interchangeable; in the Hatch-

ery, human beings are standardized by the production of thousands of brothers and sisters in mul-

tiple groups of identical twins using the Bokanovsky and Podsnap’ processes, which guarantee an-

onymity and mechanization. Members of the higher castes are decanted one by one, without any

artificial intervention. Thus, the higher castes retain at least some level of the individuality and cre-

ativity that is denied completely to the lower castes.

Huxley is prophetic about some experiments on genetic modification which are happening nowa-

days. In nature, each mammal has its own time of pregnancy, in the World State it’s all preestablished.

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The key concept is social stability: “identity, community, stability” through the use of hypnopedia,

the education during sleep, which is a way of conditioning classes to be happy and despise the

other classes, except for the Epsilons, who appreciate the upper classes. As the Director says, “social

stability” is the highest social goal, and through predestination and rigorous conditioning, individ-

uals accept their given roles in society without question.

The caste structure is created and maintained using specific tools, and technology allows the Alpha

caste to solidify and justify the unequal distribution of power and status. Conditioning individuals

genetically, physically, and psychologically stabilizes the caste system by creating servants who love

and fully accept their servility. The satirical tone of the text makes it clear that, though social stability

may sound like an admirable goal, it can be used for the wrong reasons toward the wrong ends.

Chapters 4-5-6

These chapters are characterized by the interchange between Lenina and Fanny/Mustapha and

the students. The topics of discussion between Lenina and Fanny are sexual.

In this chapter, we meet Bernard Marx, one of the leading figures, an Alpha Plus who is quite dan-

gerous because of his features: he is in fact an individualist, a lonely person who doesn’t enjoy the

company of his fellows or the complicated games. Eventually he will be exiled, guilty of being a kind

of heretic. Helmholtz, Bernard’s friends who works in Persuasion, will be considered heretic as well.

Bernard finds the courage to invite Lenina to see the savage’s reservation, and since she has been

quite monogamous in the last period, she accepts.

At the beginning there are two moments of entertainment:

1. Lenina and Henry go to the Westminster Abbey cabaret to hear “sexofonists” play. The song

they sing reflects the cultural view of love: “bottle of mine, it’s you I’ve always wanted”. Iron-

ical and grotesque part.

2. Bernard attends the solidarity service in the Fordson Community Singery. He meets twelve

people in a solidarity circle around a table, men-women-men-women, which could be a ref-

erence to the Apostles and King Arthur’s knights, who take soma tablets as an additional

reference to the bread in the last Supper. Together they perform a sort of ritual that involves

personal annihilation and unity, emphasized by soma and beating of the drums.

The whole ritual is a parody of religious functions. At the end of the ritual, the people mum-

ble “orgy porgy”, a kind of demythologization of the whole ritual in an ironical frame, and

there’s a mention of a negro dove, a typical symbol of the Holy spirit. Here its symbolism is

inverted, first because of its color, second because there’s nothing sacred in the ritual.

Bernard goes to get the Director’s permission to visit the Reservation. When the Director presents

the permit, he mentions that he took a trip there with a woman twenty years before. She was lost

during a storm and has not been seen since. He tried to look for her, but eventually he gave up and

admits that he didn’t feel any bad feeling. When Bernard says that he must have suffered a terrible

shock, the Director immediately realizes that he has been revealing too much of his personal life, so

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he criticizes Bernard for his antisocial behavior and threatens to exile him to Iceland if his impropri-

ety persists. Bernard leaves the office feeling proud of being considered a rebel.

During his journey to Malpais, he meets with the savages. Bernard is one of the few people allowed

to visit the reserves as a psychologist. The journey reminds how the civilized populations go to ex-

plore other countries expecting to find every comfort. The warden describes the savages with disdain

and explains the rules in the reservation: it is impossible to leave the reservation as there are electri-

fied fences, and children in the reservation are born, not distillated.

In this chapter we meet Helmholtz, who has the exact opposite of Bernard’s problem. Whereas Ber-

nard is too small and strange for his caste, Helmholtz is, if anything, too perfect. His success with

women, in his career, and in every other aspect of his life has led him to believe that there must be

something more to life than high-tech sports, easy sex, and repetitive slogans. He talks to Bernard

because Bernard shares his dislike for the system, but he is aware that Bernard’s dislike has a differ-

ent basis than his own.

Chapters 7-8

From the start, Lenina doesn’t like the meeting with a different culture. Indians are represented with

the typical Indian outfit, such as feathers, bracelets, necklaces of bones and Lenina finds them awful,

dirty, and old, which is weird since in the Modern state no people gets old. Then they see two women

breastfeeding, and Bernard reacts with irony rather than disgust.

The visitors are welcomed by a dance ritual. The beating of the drums reminds of the Solidarity

service, but here it has a completely different meaning, as the aim of the savages is get the benevo-

lence of the gods, something Lenina and Bernard don’t understand.

And then, the protagonist arrives. His language surprises Bernard and Lenina, and it’s because he

uses Shakespeare’s English. That’s quite ironical that in the savage country there’s a man that knows

Shakespeare’s work by heart. He’s one of a kind. John introduces himself and describes himself, the

discrimination he has received from other people in the pueblo and so on. Then Linda is mentioned:

she is a Beta, exa