Analisi (in inglese) del libro consigliato Brave New World, Aldous Huxley - Esame di letteratura inglese

John, she will be hospitalized and spend her time taking soma until her death.

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The Savages people who lives in the Savage Reservation. They belong to the “past”, meaning that are born

naturally, still live in family with mothers and fathers, suffer from diseases and aging, have language and religion.

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Director of Hatcheries and Conditioning (DHC) Thomas “Tomakin” powerful figure in London and natural father

of John. Not very happy with Bernard’ views toward the World State, warns him that he will be exiled. The situation

changes when Bernard and Lenina are back from New Mexico with Linda and his son. John recognized in him his father

and covered with shame, he obliged to resign.

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Mustapha Mond Alpha Plus. He’s the Resident World Controller of Western Europe (one of the ten Controllers).

He is very educated (reads Shakespeare and the Bible), but cunning and cynical: to maintain the founding principles

“Community, Identity, Stability” and to secure the ultimate utilitarian goal of maximizing happiness, he is against

culture, art, literature and scientific freedom. During a conversation with John, he explains to him why the World State

is it what it is. 

Arch-Community-Songster corresponds to the highest religious authority of the Church of England after the

monarch (Archbishop of Canterbury).

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Darwin Bonaparte photographer and film maker. He secretly records John flogging himself and posts the video,

attracting people and tourists arriving to see him.

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Popé one of the man who exploits Linda sexually. Hated by John, who tries to kill him, gives Linda a book of

Shakespeare’s plays.

OTHER FIGURES

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Henry Ford the World State is inspired by Henry Ford’s assembly line introduced in 1913: mass production,

predictability, disposable goods, consumption and consumerism. He is the Messiah/God of the World State, because

it gave the name to the new era and new calendar. In fact, the “Ford religion” has replaced traditional religion:

 Ford is the Creator of Brave New World society; 2

 AF (=Anno Ford) beginning in [AD] 1908 (=production of the “Ford Model T” in the assembly line);

 Replacement of the Cross symbol with a “T”;

 Celebration of the “Ford Day”;

 Exclamation “Our Ford/By Ford” (=Our Lord/God).

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Thomas Robert Malthus economist of the XIX century. He was the author of Malthusianism, the idea that

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overpopulation causes depletion of human resources, crisis, starvation etc. Also: Malthusianism belt important

accessory worn by women and girls in the novel who are not freemartin (fertile).

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Ivan Petrovich Pavlov Russian phycologist who discovered the conditioning techniques. Members of the World

State are taught by “hypnopedia” to be happy of their class and condition, to admire superior classes and despise the

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lower ones to maintain social stability.

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Reuben Rabinovich fictional character; Huxley imagined that hypnopedia has been discovered when Reuben, a

Polish boy, has casually sleep-learned an English radiophonic speech during the night.

RESUME

The book is set in the World State city of London, AF = 632; the Director of Hatcheries and Conditioning explains how

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the World State works to a group of students visiting the center the society is rigidly pre-determined: men and

women are conceived and engineered through artificial hatching and created as twins using the Bokanosvky and

Podsnap processes to fit into one of the five predetermined classes based on intelligence and labour: Alpha (leaders

and thinkers of the World State, some level of individuality and creativity), Beta, Gamma, Delta, Epsilon (oxygen

deprivation and chemical treatments, takes care of menial labor).

In the World State society everything (art, science, literature, books, new ideas, tradition…) has been sacrificed to

maintain social stability: in fact, through hypnopedia (education during sleep), they learn to be happy of their class

and condition, to admire superior classes and despise the lower ones, so they accept the role society has been given

them without questions; not only, it represents a way of conditioning individuals to be happy. Conditioning people

physically and genetically stabilizes the caste system by creating individuals who are happy to be servants of the

society.

Bernard is an Alpha-Plus specialized in sleep-learning. Not wholly conditioned, he suffers from depression and refuses

common sports, promiscuous sex and soma; he’s not afraid of expressing his views towards the World State, but his

criticism is not shared by the Director, who threatens to exile him for being a heretic. He is friend with Helmholtz

because he shares his dislike for the system, even though he’s aware that Bernard’s criticism has a different basis than

his own. He “loves” Lenina, but also jealous of her because she dates several partners at once (Benito Hoover, Henry

Foster) and loves promiscuous sex (perfect example of citizen happy and full conditioned).

Bernard is intentioned to bring Lenina for a holiday in New Mexico, at the Savage Reservation; when he asks the

permission to the Director, he mentions that he took a trip with a woman there twenty years before, but she got lost

during a storm and has not been found since. Realizing he said too much, he grants him a permit.

Eventually, under Fanny’s pressions, Lenina accepts his invitation. They are welcomed by a dance ritual, but from the

beginning Lenina doesn’t like knowing different cultures and finds them awful, dirty and old. They meet Linda, a

woman who used to live in London but since the shame of the pregnancy prevented her from returning, she gave birth

to John and became a prostitute for the people in the village, who have never accepted them, but still exploit her.

Linda has raised and taught John to read, although they own only a scientific manual and the complete works of

Shakespeare. John uses Shakespeare’s works as a way of living, providing him a language and his own ways to manifest

emotions and reactions. Linda told her story: she got pregnant with the Director during their time and was prevented

to return to the World State. Bernard is willing to use John and Linda’s story as an opportunity to avoid exile and, after

few days, he brings them with him and Lenina to London. 3

When Bernard arrives, the Director tells him his plans to exile him to Iceland because of his heretical behavior, but

when Bernard presents Linda and John, she recognized the Director as John’s father. John falls in front of the Director’s

feet and says, “My Father!”, which makes the workers burst into laughter as the Director rushes from the room. John’s

reaction is built in the way Shakespeare’s character would have reacted. The Director who first wanted to exile Bernard

must resign and feels humiliated.

Along with the main story we have a kind of subplot: the love story between John and Lenina. They both have a

completely different view of love, raised both in a different culture: Lenina loves promiscuous sex, so she wants

everything now and tries to seduce him, but John cannot understand her mechanical unsentimental behavior; he

speaks about marriage, family, and tells her he loves her, but this horrifying Lenina, who is not used to this. Lenina

tries to take off her clothes, but John become furious and terrified, calls her a whore and slaps her; his struggle with

his physical desires shows the moral code that he has been learnt from Shakespeare and from the Savages. When she

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locks herself in the bathroom, Bernard decided to act King Lear’s hate against womenkind there’s a complete

misunderstanding between the two.

Bernard becomes the “custodian” of John who now is a star and is visited/invited by influent people of the leading

class; Bernard becomes famous and he even arranges a party with important people, including the Arch-Community-

Songster, but John refuses to leave his room, leaving Bernard embarrassed and humiliated.

John and Helmholtz get along right way; this arose the jealousy of Bernard. They both share the passion for poetry

and Shakespeare, but when John reads a passage from Romeo and Juliet (Juliet’s parents want her to marry another

man) Helmholtz starts to laugh: he finds funny the fact of having a mother and a father choosing the right man for her

daughter. This shows the different culture and values in which they both have grown: Helmholtz, by the power of

conditioning, is still a product of the World State; his reaction is “normal”. John doesn’t understand his reaction and

his laughter upsets him.

In the meanwhile, Linda is old, ugly, unpleasant and she is excluded from the World State that once was her home.

She is put into a hospital room and spends her time watching tv and taking soma, into a half-awake and half-asleep

state. In the World State, people die at 60 even though they still looking young. Groups of children usually visit the

hospital to be conditioned to accept death without any “traditional” respect for the painful situation. John is informed

that her mother is dying: he rushes to the hospital but Linda dies in front of a crowd of Bokanosvky twins who laugh

at his reaction. John first attacks them, then tries, with the help of Helmholtz, to stop the distribution of a daily ration

of soma to the Delta telling them this it will lead them into slavery. He thinks he can free the workers and so he throws

it out the window, but the police arrive and John, Bernard and Helmholtz are brought before the highest authority,

the “Resident World Controller for Western Europe”, Mustapha Mond. Bernard and Helmholtz are both exiled

respectively to the Falklands Island and to Iceland (the islands are the destination of people exiled for their anti-social

behavior against the law of World State). The only one who’s willing to go is Helmholtz, because he thinks the island

and his people could inspire his writings.

John and Mustapha Mond find themselves into a deep conversation about literature, religion, culture, use of books

etc. Mond illustrates to John the story of the World State and its values and explains him that books are considered

useless and literature is banned because it’s old, and old is prohibited to promote consumerism: citizens always want

new things and won’t be able to understand Shakespeare in the first place, since human emotions, love and passions

do not exist in the World State; everything has been sacrificed to have social stability. Unlike everyone else, Mond is

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allowed to read privilege of the power. John declares he wants God, poetry, freedom, goodness and sin, the “right

to be unhappy” but Mond tells him that these things will lead him to unhappiness; in the World State people are not

free, but constantly happy, because they don’t want what they don’t have, they do not get diseases, they do not age,

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they do not have to take care of one another, they do not have losses no need for religion.