Republic of the Philippines

BICOL UNIVERSITY

Polangui Campus

Academic Year 2020-2021

First Semester

Literary Critical Analysis:

Brave New World (Novel)

By: Aldous Huxley

I. Historical Background

 Brave New World was written between World War I and World War II, the height of
an era of technological optimism in the West. Huxley picked up on such optimism
and created the dystopian world of his novel so as to criticize it. Much of the anxiety
that drives Brave New World can be traced to a widespread belief in technology as a
futuristic remedy for problems caused by disease and war. Unlike his fellow citizens,
Huxley felt that such a reliance was naive, and he decided to challenge these ideas by
imagining them taken to their extremes. Huxley’s life was surrounded by science,
something that likely helped him to produce the science-heavy Brave New World.
His grandfather (Thomas Henry Huxley) was a prominent biologist and an early
advocate of Darwin’s theory of evolution, and his brothers also became scientists.
Aldous too had hoped to pursue a career in the sciences, but a disease left him
partially blind as an adolescent and thus unable to continue on his scientific path.

 After Brave New World’s publication, Huxley was accused of plagiarizing the

novel My by Yevgeny Zamyatin, written in 1920 and published in English as Wein
the United States in 1924. Huxley denied having read the book, and the similarities
between the novels can be seen as an expression of common fears surrounding the
rapid advancement of technology and of the shared opinions of many tech-skeptics
during the early 20th century. Following Brave New Worldcame more dystopian
novels, including, most prominently, George Orwell’s Nineteen Eighty-four (1949).

 The clearest literary influence on Brave New World can be intuited from the title,
which comes from a line in William Shakespeare’s The Tempest, a play preoccupied
with what it means to build a new society. John is himself an echo of the play’s
character Caliban, who is described as a “savage.” Huxley also signals the Bard of
Avon’s influence through John’s education on the reservation, where the curriculum
consists primarily of the works of Shakespeare. Some critics considered Brave New
World to be, ultimately, a futuristic parody of The Tempest.
II. Authorship (Life and Works of the Writer): The Author and His Milieu

 Aldous Huxley, in full Aldous Leonard Huxley, (born July 26, 1894, Godalming,
Surrey, England—died November 22, 1963, Los Angeles, California, U.S.), English
novelist and critic gifted with an acute and far-ranging intelligence whose works are
notable for their wit and pessimistic satire. He remains best known for
one novel, Brave New World (1932), a model for much dystopian science fiction that
followed.
 Aldous Huxley was a grandson of the prominent biologist Thomas Henry
Huxley and was the third child of the biographer and man of letters Leonard Huxley;
his brothers included physiologist Andrew Fielding Huxley and biologist Julian
Huxley. He was educated at Eton, during which time he became partially blind
because of keratitis. He retained enough eyesight to read with difficulty, and he
graduated from Balliol College, Oxford, in 1916. He published his first book in 1916
and worked on the periodical Athenaeum from 1919 to 1921. Thereafter he devoted
himself largely to his own writing and spent much of his time in Italy until the late
1930s, when he settled in California.
 Huxley established himself as a major author with his first two published
novels, Crome Yellow (1921) and Antic Hay (1923); these are witty
and malicious satires on the pretensions of the English literary
and intellectual coteries of his day. Those Barren Leaves (1925) and Point Counter
Point (1928) are works in a similar vein.

III. Characters/Characterization

 John
- The son of the Director and Linda, John is the only major character to have
grown up outside of the World State. The consummate outsider, he has spent
his life alienated from his village on the New Mexico Savage Reservation,
and he finds himself similarly unable to fit in to World State society. His
entire worldview is based on his knowledge of Shakespeare’s plays, which
he can quote with great facility.
 Bernard Marx
- An Alpha male who fails to fit in because of his inferior physical stature. He
holds unorthodox beliefs about sexual relationships, sports, and community
events. His insecurity about his size and status makes him discontented with
the World State. Bernard’s surname recalls Karl Marx, the nineteenth-
century German author best known for writing Capital, a monumental
critique of capitalist society. Unlike his famous namesake, Bernard’s
discontent stems from his frustrated desire to fit into his own society, rather
than from a systematic or philosophical criticism of it. When threatened,
Bernard can be petty and cruel.

 Helmholtz Watson

- An Alpha lecturer at the College of Emotional Engineering, Helmholtz is a

prime example of his caste, but feels that his work is empty and meaningless
and would like to use his writing abilities for something more meaningful.
He and Bernard are friends because they find common ground in their
discontent with the World State, but Helmholtz’s criticisms of the World
State are more philosophical and intellectual than Bernard’s more petty
complaints. As a result, Helmholtz often finds Bernard’s boastfulness and
cowardice tedious.

 Lenina Crowne
- A vaccination worker at the Central London Hatchery and Conditioning
Centre. She is an object of desire for a number of major and minor
characters, including Bernard Marx and John. Her behavior is sometimes
intriguingly unorthodox, which makes her attractive to the reader. For
example, she defies her culture’s conventions by dating one man exclusively
for several months, she is attracted to Bernard—the misfit—and she develops
a violent passion for John the Savage. Ultimately, her values are those of a
conventional World State citizen: her primary means of relating to other
people is through sex, and she is unable to share Bernard’s disaffection or to
comprehend John’s alternate system of values.

 Mustapha Mond
 - The Resident World Controller of Western Europe, one of only ten World
Controllers. He was once an ambitious, young scientist performing illicit
research. When his work was discovered, he was given the choice of going
into exile or training to become a World Controller. He chose to give up
science, and now he censors scientific discoveries and exiles people for
unorthodox beliefs. He also keeps a collection of forbidden literature in his
safe, including Shakespeare and religious writings. The name Mond means
“world,” and Mond is indeed the most powerful character in the world of this
novel.

 Fanny Crowne

- Lenina Crowne’s friend (they have the same last name because only about
ten thousand last names are in use in the World State). Fanny’s role is mainly
to voice the conventional values of her caste and society. Specifically, she
warns Lenina that she should have more men in her life because it looks bad
to concentrate on one man for too long.

 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.

 Linda
- John’s mother, and a Beta. While visiting the New Mexico Savage
Reservation, she became pregnant with the Director’s son. During a storm,
she got lost, suffered a head injury and was left behind. A group of Indians
found her and brought her to their village. Linda could not get an abortion on
the Reservation, and she was too ashamed to return to the World State with a
baby. Her World State–conditioned promiscuity makes her a social outcast.
She is desperate to return to the World State and to soma.

 The Director

- The Director administrates the Central London Hatchery and Conditioning

Centre. He is a threatening figure, with the power to exile Bernard to Iceland.
 But he is secretly vulnerable because he fathered a child (John), a scandalous
and obscene act in the World State.

 The Arch-Community-Songster
- The Arch-Community-Songster is the secular, shallow equivalent of an
archbishop in the World State society.

 Popé

- Popé was Linda’s lover on the New Mexico Savage Reservation. He gave
Linda a copy of The Complete Works of Shakespeare.

 The Warden

- The Warden is the talkative chief administrator for the New Mexico Savage
Reservation. He is an Alpha.

IV. Synopsis

 The novel opens in the year 632 A.F. (which means After Ford, the god of the New
World). All of civilization has been destroyed by a great war. Then there is another
war, the Nine Years War, which ushers in the era of Ford, ensuring stability through
dictatorship. The society depicted in the novel is based on a rigid caste system. The
higher of the five castes enjoy superior tasks, while the lower ones perform menial
roles. Ten Controllers hold all the power in this new world and peace is maintained
by conditioning infant minds and by soothing adults with the tranquilizer, soma. The
population is further controlled through scientific methods; marriage is forbidden,
and children are not born but produced in an embryo factory.

When the novel begins, some students are being given a guided tour through the
London Hatcheries. Henry Foster and Lenina Crowne, two employees of this center,
have been dating each other a little too often, going against state rules. Lenina's
friend Fanny warns her against such promiscuity. As a result, Lenina decides to date
Bernard Marx, who is very intelligent but not quite like the others of his caste.
 Lenina and Bernard decide to go on a vacation to a Savage Reservation in New
Mexico, where people considered unworthy of Utopia are confined. On the
reservation, the inhabitants live in an almost primitive manner. Before Bernard
leaves for his vacation, he is warned by Tomakin, the Director of Hatcheries, about
his non-conformist ways and threatened with exile to Iceland.

Lenina and Bernard accidentally meet Linda and her son, John the Savage, on the
Reservation. Bernard learns from John that long ago Linda had come to the
Reservation with Tomakin, who had abandoned her there. Discovering herself to be
carrying Tomakin's child, she knew that she could not return to Utopia; therefore,
she stayed on the Reservation and raised John. Hearing this story, Bernard goes to
the Controller and gains his permission to take John and his mother back to Utopia.
When Bernard presents the pair to Tomakin, the Director is shattered and resigns
from his position at the Hatcheries, having become an object of ridicule. Bernard no
longer has to worry about being exiled to Iceland.

While living in the custody of Bernard, John becomes the object of everyone's
curiosity and amusement. Bernard at first revels in the attention that he receives
because of the Savage. Things, however, do not go smoothly. John soon grows
repulsed by the ways of the New World and becomes unhappy. Despite his mood,
Lenina finds herself terribly attracted to John and tries to seduce him. John, however,
fights his physical attraction for her and resists her advances.

When his mother dies, John goes crazy. He then tries to convert the Utopians to his
way of thinking. Rebellion results and must be quelled. Bernard and Helmholtz
Watson are blamed for the rebellion. When the two of them are taken to Mustapha
Mond, along with John, Bernard and Helmholtz are exiled. John is retained for
further experimentation. He resists and tries to flee into solitude, but the citizens of
Utopia continue to hound him. In a fit of misery and depression, John commits
suicide.

V. Literary Critical Analysis: Theme, Plot, Conflict

 Dystopia and Totalitarianism

- Brave New World envisions a future totalitarian society in which individual

liberty has been usurped by an all-powerful state. But while other dystopian
novels envision totalitarian measures being carried out through tactics like
surveillance and torture, Brave New World, in contrast, argues that the most
powerful totalitarian state would be one that doesn't suppress and frighten its
citizens, but instead manages to convince its citizens to love their slavery.

 Technology and Control

- Brave New World raises the terrifying prospect that advances in the sciences
of biology and psychology could be transformed by a totalitarian
government into technologies that will change the way that human beings
think and act. Once this happens, the novel suggests, the totalitarian
government will cease to allow the pursuit of actual science, and the truth
that science reveals will be restricted and controlled. 

 The Cost of Happiness

- If someone were given the choice between getting what they wanted and not
getting what they wanted, they'd probably choose the first option every time.
This satisfaction of desire, the person would believe, would make them
happy. In order to maintain its stability, the World State in Brave New
World ensures that all its citizens get exactly what they want all the time. 

 Industrialism and Consumption

- Brave New World criticizes the industrial economic systems of the era in

which it was written by imagining those systems pushed to their logical
extremes. The industrial revolution that began in the second half of the 19th
century and sped up through the 20th allowed for the production of massive
quantities of new goods. 

 Individualism

- All of World State society can be described as an effort to eliminate the

individual from society. That doesn't mean the elimination of all people—it
 means the conditioning of those people so that they don't really think of
themselves as individuals. Individualism, which encompasses an awareness
of one's own opinions and abilities, the joys of personal relationship, and the
accompanying sorrows of loneliness and isolation, is suppressed as
aggressively as possible by the World State in order to maintain stability. 

Summary

 The novel opens in the Central London Hatching and Conditioning Centre, where the

Director of the Hatchery and one of his assistants, Henry Foster, are giving a tour to

a group of boys. The boys learn about the Bokanovsky and Podsnap Processes that

allow the Hatchery to produce thousands of nearly identical human embryos. During

the gestation period the embryos travel in bottles along a conveyor belt through a

factorylike building, and are conditioned to belong to one of five castes: Alpha, Beta,

Gamma, Delta, or Epsilon. The Alpha embryos are destined to become the leaders

and thinkers of the World State. Each of the succeeding castes is conditioned to be

slightly less physically and intellectually impressive. The Epsilons, stunted and

stupefied by oxygen deprivation and chemical treatments, are destined to perform

menial labor. Lenina Crowne, an employee at the factory, describes to the boys how

she vaccinates embryos destined for tropical climates.

The Director then leads the boys to the Nursery, where they observe a group of Delta

infants being reprogrammed to dislike books and flowers. The Director explains that

this conditioning helps to make Deltas docile and eager consumers. He then tells the

boys about the “hypnopaedic” (sleep-teaching) methods used to teach children the

morals of the World State. In a room where older children are napping, a whispering

voice is heard repeating a lesson in “Elementary Class Consciousness.”

Outside, the Director shows the boys hundreds of naked children engaged in sexual

play and games like “Centrifugal Bumble-puppy.” Mustapha Mond, one of the ten

World Controllers, introduces himself to the boys and begins to explain the history
of the World State, focusing on the State’s successful efforts to remove strong

emotions, desires, and human relationships from society. Meanwhile, inside the

Hatchery, Lenina chats in the bathroom with Fanny Crowne about her relationship

with Henry Foster. Fanny chides Lenina for going out with Henry almost exclusively

for four months, and Lenina admits she is attracted to the strange, somewhat funny-

looking Bernard Marx. In another part of the Hatchery, Bernard is enraged when he

overhears a conversation between Henry and the Assistant Predestinator about

“having” Lenina.

After work, Lenina tells Bernard that she would be happy to accompany him on the

trip to the Savage Reservation in New Mexico to which he had invited her. Bernard,

overjoyed but embarrassed, flies a helicopter to meet a friend of his, Helmholtz

Watson. He and Helmholtz discuss their dissatisfaction with the World State.

Bernard is primarily disgruntled because he is too small and weak for his caste;

Helmholtz is unhappy because he is too intelligent for his job writing hypnopaedic

phrases. In the next few days, Bernard asks his superior, the Director, for permission

to visit the Reservation. The Director launches into a story about a visit to the

Reservation he had made with a woman twenty years earlier. During a storm, he tells

Bernard, the woman was lost and never recovered. Finally, he gives Bernard the

permit, and Bernard and Lenina depart for the Reservation, where they get another

permit from the Warden. Before heading into the Reservation, Bernard calls

Helmholtz and learns that the Director has grown weary of what he sees as Bernard’s

difficult and unsocial behavior and is planning to exile Bernard to Iceland when he

returns. Bernard is angry and distraught, but decides to head into the Reservation

anyway.

On the Reservation, Lenina and Bernard are shocked to see its aged and ill residents;

no one in the World State has visible signs of aging. They witness a religious ritual

in which a young man is whipped, and find it abhorrent. After the ritual they meet
John, a fair-skinned young man who is isolated from the rest of the village. John tells

Bernard about his childhood as the son of a woman named Linda who was rescued

by the villagers some twenty years ago. Bernard realizes that Linda is almost

certainly the woman mentioned by the Director. Talking to John, he learns that Linda

was ostracized because of her willingness to sleep with all the men in the village, and

that as a result John was raised in isolation from the rest of the village. John explains

that he learned to read using a book called The Chemical and Bacteriological

Conditioning of the Embryo and The Complete Works of Shakespeare, the latter

given to Linda by one of her lovers, Popé. John tells Bernard that he is eager to see

the “Other Place”—the “brave new world” that his mother has told him so much

about. Bernard invites him to return to the World State with him. John agrees but

insists that Linda be allowed to come as well.

While Lenina, disgusted with the Reservation, takes enough soma to knock her out

for eighteen hours, Bernard flies to Santa Fe where he calls Mustapha Mond and

receives permission to bring John and Linda back to the World State. Meanwhile,

John breaks into the house where Lenina is lying intoxicated and unconscious, and

barely suppresses his desire to touch her. Bernard, Lenina, John, and Linda fly to the

World State, where the Director is waiting to exile Bernard in front of his Alpha

coworkers. But Bernard turns the tables by introducing John and Linda. The shame

of being a “father”—the very word makes the onlookers laugh nervously—causes

the Director to resign, leaving Bernard free to remain in London.

John becomes a hit with London society because of his strange life led on the

Reservation. But while touring the factories and schools of the World State, John

becomes increasingly disturbed by the society that he sees. His sexual attraction to

Lenina remains, but he desires more than simple lust, and he finds himself terribly

confused. In the process, he also confuses Lenina, who wonders why John does not

wish to have sex with her. As the discoverer and guardian of the “Savage,” Bernard

also becomes popular. He quickly takes advantage of his new status, sleeping with
many women and hosting dinner parties with important guests, most of whom dislike

Bernard but are willing to placate him if it means they get to meet John. One night

John refuses to meet the guests, including the Arch-Community Songster, and

Bernard’s social standing plummets.

After Bernard introduces them, John and Helmholtz quickly take to each other. John

reads Helmholtz parts of Romeo and Juliet, but Helmholtz cannot keep himself from

laughing at a serious passage about love, marriage, and parents—ideas that are

ridiculous, almost scatological in World State culture.

Fueled by his strange behavior, Lenina becomes obsessed with John, refusing

Henry’s invitation to see a feely. She takes soma and visits John at Bernard’s

apartment, where she hopes to seduce him. But John responds to her advances with

curses, blows, and lines from Shakespeare. She retreats to the bathroom while he

fields a phone call in which he learns that Linda, who has been on permanent soma-

holiday since her return, is about to die. At the Hospital for the Dying he watches her

die while a group of lower-caste boys receiving their “death conditioning” wonder

why she is so unattractive. The boys are simply curious, but John becomes enraged.

After Linda dies, John meets a group of Delta clones who are receiving their soma

ration. He tries to convince them to revolt, throwing the soma out the window, and a

riot results. Bernard and Helmholtz, hearing of the riot, rush to the scene and come to

John’s aid. After the riot is calmed by police with soma vapor, John, Helmholtz, and

Bernard are arrested and brought to the office of Mustapha Mond.

John and Mond debate the value of the World State’s policies, John arguing that they

dehumanize the residents of the World State and Mond arguing that stability and

happiness are more important than humanity. Mond explains that social stability has

required the sacrifice of art, science, and religion. John protests that, without these

things, human life is not worth living. Bernard reacts wildly when Mond says that he

and Helmholtz will be exiled to distant islands, and he is carried from the room.
 Helmholtz accepts the exile readily, thinking it will give him a chance to write, and

soon follows Bernard out of the room. John and Mond continue their conversation.

They discuss religion and the use of soma to control negative emotions and social

harmony.

John bids Helmholtz and Bernard good-bye. Refused the option of following them to

the islands by Mond, he retreats to a lighthouse in the countryside where he gardens

and attempts to purify himself by self-flagellation. Curious World State citizens soon

catch him in the act, and reporters descend on the lighthouse to film news reports and

a feely. After the feely, hordes of people descend on the lighthouse and demand that

John whip himself. Lenina comes and approaches John with her arms open. John

reacts by brandishing his whip and screaming “Kill it! Kill it!” The intensity of the

scene causes an orgy in which John takes part. The next morning he wakes up and,

overcome with anger and sadness at his submission to World State society, hangs

himself.

Conflict

 The conflict of the novel is developed on the eve of Lenina and Bernard’s trip, when

the Director tells Bernard about his own visit to the Reservation, raising further

questions about how successful the society really is at creating an ideal existence. The

Director describes being separated from the woman he was with, hurting himself, and

having a painful and arduous trip back to the Reservation. The physical and emotional

difficulty of the experience make it one of his most significant memories, and he

admits that he still dreams about it. This recollection introduces the idea that pain is

necessary for meaning, and also foreshadows John and Linda’s relationship to the

Director. At the Reservation, John and Lenina witness several scenes directly

contrasting the two ideas of civilization presented by the novel: the Native American-

like civilization of the Reservation, and the futuristic civilization of World State.
 Unlike in World State, residents of the Reservation grow old, have disease, hunger,

and treat each other with cruelty. At the same time, they create art, experience love

and marriage, and have a powerful religious system.

VI. Philosophy: (National and religious values, cultural beliefs and concepts generated)

 The reception of Brave New World at its publication was primarily negative. Many
were offended by the nature of Huxley’s future, and very few understood the novel’s
philosophical implications. Many schools and libraries all over the world banned the
novel, and even today it remains on lists of censored books. Parents and teachers
argue that the novel’s themes of promiscuity, self-harm, and overall negativity are
not suitable for children. Others, however, are still influenced by the novel’s take
on dystopia, which forces the reader to ponder: In a perfect world with no poverty,
sickness, or sadness, what is society missing? This question and the answers
provided by Huxley in Brave New World are, perhaps, the reason the novel continues
to resonate.

 In the novel “Brave New World,“ a utopian society lives in a world where any kind
of religion as we know it (even Christian and Islamic) was abolished by a World
State Government. Religious rituals and values have been exchanged, and God
reveals himself in absence, “as though he weren't there at all “ (Huxley, Brave New
World). Thanks to the ten World Controllers, not even one of the normal inhabitants
of the 'utopia' knows about God or any religion of the past. The question now is
whether Mustafa Mond was right in saying:

“God isn't compatible with machinery and scientific medicine and universal
happiness.”

 Brave New World is our idea of heaven: genetic manipulation, sexual liberation, the
war against aging, the leisure society” (132). Michel, a molecular biologist, agrees,
arguing that both Huxleys1 believed totally in the kind of society depicted in Brave
New World (1932) and that it was only after the Nazi experiment “poisoned the well”
of the eugenics argument, and after Julian became the director-general of unesco,
that Aldous rewrote his own literary past, claiming that his novel had been a dystopia
all along.

VII. Devices used: (Epical Conventions/Classical Elements/ Artistic Qualities)

 Huxley utilizes symbolism in his novel by depicting Henry Ford as a symbolic

religious figure and deity who resembles Christ. In the World State, technology and
manufacturing are supreme, and Henry Ford's mass production and assembly line
played a significant role in the creation of the World State. Therefore, the
 manufactured citizens view Ford as their god, and the Model-T corresponds to what
the cross means to Christianity.
 Huxley also utilizes metaphors throughout his classic novel. One example of
a metaphor takes place when Huxley compares the citizens of the World State to
bottles after ingesting soma. Huxley writes, Bottled, they crossed the street; bottled,
they took the lift up to Henry’s room on the twenty-eighth floor. And yet, bottled as
she was, and in spite of that second gramme of soma, Lenina did not forget to take all
the contraceptive precautions prescribed by the regulations. (52)

- This metaphor illustrates how citizens of the World State are enclosed and
distant from each other. They lack the ability to develop meaningful
relationships and are completely controlled by society.

 Huxley also utilizes numerous similes throughout the story. Huxley writes that the
Brentford Television Corporation’s factory was "like a small town." At the end of a
daily shift, Huxley writes that the Gamma girls and the Semi-Morons swarmed
around the entrances to the tram-cars "like ants."

VIII. Bibliography

https://www.britannica.com/topic/Brave-New-World
https://www.britannica.com/biography/Aldous-Huxley
https://www.sparknotes.com/lit/bravenew/characters
https://www.litcharts.com/lit/brave-new-world/themes
http://thebestnotes.com/booknotes/brave_new_world_huxley/brave_new_world_study_guide
https://www.enotes.com/homework-help/what-are-some-literary-devices-used-in-the-book-
1892110

Prepared by:
Catherine S. Boarao
BSEd 3 English