Title: Brave New World
Publication Year: 1932
Plot: Brave New World is a dystopian novel by English author Aldous Huxley, written in 1931 and published in 1932. Largely set in a futuristic World State, inhabited by genetically modified citizens and an intelligence-based social hierarchy, the novel anticipates huge scientific advancements in reproductive technology, sleep-learning, psychological manipulation and classical conditioning that are combined to make a dystopian society which is challenged by only a single individual: the story’s protagonist.
Miscellaneous: Brave New World’s title derives from Miranda’s speech in Shakespeare’s The Tempest, Act V, Scene I:
“O Wonder! How Many goodly creatures are here!
How beauteous mankind is! O brave new world,
That has such people in’t”
For this new iteration of Reading Group, I assigned one person to lead the discussion. They are to pick one quote, one scene, and one question and share them with the group. It adds a nice dimension to our group and I’m excited about it going forward.
So the quote was this: “Our Ford used to write about scientific progress. They seemed to have imagined that it could be allowed to go on indefinitely, regardless of everything else. Knowledge was the highest good, truth the supreme value; all the rest was secondary and subordinate. True, ideas were beginning to change even then. Our Ford did himself a great deal to shift the emphasis from truth and beauty to comfort and happiness.” This quote sparked a lot of discussion–are truth and beauty and comfort and happiness at odds with each other? Can we have the truth and be comfortable? Can we be happy and experience an unconditioned life? These are questions that Brave New World brings up.
The readers talked about their current disposition in prison and talked about the conditioning that goes on. One reader mentioned how people fantasize about basic meals they will eat once they are released…but then those meals will become normal and uneventful. The same can be said of some jobs–even your dream job comes with a certain amount of conditioning and can lose their luster after time.
This led into a discussion about free will and determination, and even some nature vs. nurture musing. How free are we? Is our brain conditioned to react certain ways and we aren’t as free as we think? Or does the fact we are diagnosing ourselves and thinking about our thinking indicate we are free and can choose our own destiny. One reader really wanted to talk about the time during which Huxley wrote this novel. It was a decade after WWI and Huxley is talking about a new world order with eugenics and predetermined jobs for everyone to fulfill.
The scene the discussion leader wanted to talk about was the hospital scene where Savage’s mother is dying. He wanted to focus on it because here, the novel really highlights the “non-importance” of individuals in the novel. Savage is experiencing some deep emotions…and his mother is going to be cremated and spread into soil. Savage feels tears and sadness and says Shakespeare can’t even describe what he is feeling. Yet, to the society they live in, they don’t have the emotional capacity to deal with his or interrogate anything.
And the question the leader posed was this: How is the role of science interpreted? Is Huxley offering satire? A utopia? Does he present it as evil? Is it a warning? Now all of these are loaded and we could have talked about them for quite a while. We started with Ford. Instead of people saying “Oh God!” they say things like “Oh for Ford’s sake!” and they cross themselves in a T, after the car. Some readers saw it as a warning, that consumerism and production is going to take the place of God and religion. Some saw it as satire, and Huxley is highlighting quirks in the new world of 1932.
There is a portion of the book where there are bits of dialogue and they are not attributed to certain characters. Yet, a reader can more or less determine who is talking. One reader yelped out, “It’s because we’ve been conditioned in the novel!” I mean, that’s just a great observation. In reading a novel, are authors conditioning us to go along with their story and their writing? It was a great question to chew on as we ended class.
Here is a link to an essay titled Community, Identity, Stability”: The Scientific Society and the Future of Religion in Aldous Huxley’s Brave New World
Next week we’ll be reading Ubik by Philip K. Dick
Until next time,
E.
If you’d like to purchase Brave New World, you can do so here: