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Brave New World

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Brave New World, First edition cover
Brave New World, First edition cover

Brave New World is a 1932 novel by Aldous Huxley. Set in the London of AD 2540 (632 A.F. in the book), the novel anticipates developments in reproductive technology, biological engineering, and sleep-learning that combine to change society. Huxley answers this book with a reassessment in an essay, Brave New World Revisited (1958), and with his final work, a novel titled Island (1962), both summarized below.

Contents

[edit] Specifications

[edit] Background

The world the novel describes is a dystopia, presented satirically: humanity lives in a carefree, healthy, and technologically advanced society; however, art, science, religion, and all other forms of human expression have been sacrificed to create this "Brave New World". Warfare and poverty have been eliminated and everyone is permanently happy due to government-provided conditioning and drugs. The irony is that all of these things have been achieved by eliminating many things that humans consider to be central to their identity - family, culture, art, literature, science, religion (other than idolization of "our Ford", Henry Ford, who is seen as the father of their society), and philosophy. It is also a hedonistic society, deriving pleasure from promiscuous sex and drug use, in the form of soma, a powerful psychotropic rationed by the government that is taken to escape pain and bad memories through hallucinatory fantasies, referred to as "Holidays". Additionally, social stability has been achieved and is maintained via deliberately engineered and rigidly enforced social stratification.

Brave New World is Huxley's most famous novel. The ironic title comes from Miranda's speech in Shakespeare's The Tempest, Act V, Scene I:

"O wonder!
How many goodly creatures are there here!
How beauteous mankind is!
O brave new world
That hath such people in't!"

Aldous Huxley wrote Brave New World in 1932 while he was living in France and England (a British writer, he moved to California in 1937). By this time, Huxley had already established himself as a writer and social satirist. He was a contributor to Vanity Fair and Vogue magazines, had published a collection of his poetry (The Burning Wheel, 1916) and four successful satirical novels: Crome Yellow in 1921, Antic Hay in 1923, Those Barren Leaves in 1925 and Point Counter Point in 1928. Brave New World was Huxley's fifth novel and first attempt at a dystopian work.

Brave New World was inspired by the H. G. Wells' Utopian novel Men Like Gods. Wells' optimistic vision of the future gave Huxley the idea to begin writing a parody of the novel, which became Brave New World. Contrary to the most popular optimist utopian novels of the time, Huxley sought to provide a frightening vision of the future. Huxley referred to Brave New World as a "negative utopia" (see dystopia), somewhat influenced by Wells' own The Sleeper Awakes and the works of D. H. Lawrence. Yevgeny Zamyatin's novel We, completed ten years before in 1921, has been suggested as an influence, but Huxley stated that he had not known of the book at the time.

Huxley visited the newly-opened and technologically-advanced Brunner and Mond plant, part of Imperial Chemical Industries, or ICI, Billingham and gives a fine and detailed account of the processes he saw. The introduction to the most recent print of Brave New World states that Huxley was inspired to write the classic novel by this Billingham visit.

Although the novel is set in the future, it contains contemporary issues of the early 20th century. The Industrial Revolution was bringing about massive changes to the world. Mass production had made cars, telephones and radios relatively cheap and widely available throughout the developed world. The Russian Revolution of 1917 and the first World War (1914-1918) were resonating throughout the world. Many characters in the story are named after influential people of the time, for example, Benito Hoover and Bernard Marx.

Huxley was able to use the setting and characters from his futuristic fantasy to express widely held opinions, particularly the fear of losing individual identity in the fast-paced world of the future. An early trip to the United States gave Brave New World much of its character. Not only was Huxley outraged by the culture of youth, commercial cheeriness, sexual promiscuity, and inward-looking nature of many Americans,[1] he also found a book by Henry Ford on the boat to America. There was a fear of Americanisation in Europe, so to see America firsthand, as well as read the ideas and plans of one of its foremost citizens, spurred Huxley to write Brave New World with America in mind. The "feelies" are his response to the "talkie" motion pictures, and the sex-hormone chewing gum is parody of the ubiquitous chewing gum, which was something of a symbol of America at that time. In an article in the May 4, 1935 issue of Illustrated London News, G. K. Chesterton explained that Huxley was revolting against the "Age of Utopias" - a time, mostly before World War I, inspired by what H. G. Wells and George Bernard Shaw were writing about socialism and a World State.

"After the Age of Utopias came what we may call the American Age, lasting as long as the Boom. Men like Ford or Mond seemed to many to have solved the social riddle and made capitalism the common good. But it was not native to us; it went with a buoyant, not to say blatant optimism, which is not our negligent or negative optimism. Much more than Victorian righteousness, or even Victorian self-righteousness, that optimism has driven people into pessimism. For the Slump brought even more disillusionment than the War. A new bitterness, and a new bewilderment, ran through all social life, and was reflected in all literature and art. It was contemptuous, not only of the old Capitalism, but of the old Socialism. Brave New World is more of a revolt against Utopia than against Victoria."

Brave New World received nearly universal criticism from contemporary critics, although his work was later embraced. Even the few sympathetics tended to temper their praises with disparaging remarks.[2]

[edit] Related works

  • The Scientific Outlook by philosopher Bertrand Russell. When Brave New World was released, Russell thought that Huxley's book was based on his book The Scientific Outlook that had been released in previous year. Russell contacted his own publisher and asked whether or not he should do something about this apparent plagiarism. His publisher advised him not to, and Russell followed this advice.
  • The 1921 novel Men Like Gods by H.G. Wells. A utopian novel that was a source of inspiration for Brave New World.
  • The 1985 book Amusing Ourselves to Death: Public Discourse in the Age of Show Business by Neil Postman alludes to how television is goading modern Western culture to be like what we see in Brave New World, where people are not so much denied human rights like free speech, but are rather conditioned not to care.
  • Kurt Vonnegut said that in writing Player Piano (1952) he "cheerfully ripped off the plot of Brave New World, whose plot had been cheerfully ripped off from Eugene Zamiatin's We."[3]
  • Brazilian rock singer Pitty's debut album, released in 2003, is called Admirável Chip Novo (Brave New Chip).

[edit] Adaptations

  • Brave New World (radio broadcast) CBS Radio Workshop (January 27 and February 3 1956)
  • Brave New World (TV) (1980)
  • Schöne Neue Welt (Rock Musical) Roland Meier/Stefan Wurz, Kulturhaus Osterfeld Pforzheim, Germany, 1994
  • Brave New World (film) (1998)
  • Brave New World (stage adaptation) Brendon Burns, Solent Peoples Theatre 2003
  • Schöne Neue Welt (Musical) GRIPS Theater Berlin, Germany, 2006

[edit] Publications

  • Brave New World
  • Brave New World Revisited
  • Brave New World and Brave New World Revisited
    • Aldous Huxley (with a foreword by Christopher Hitchens); Harper Perennial Modern Classics, 2005; ISBN 0-06-077609-9
  • Brave New World & Brave New World Revisited
    • Aldous Huxley (with an introduction by Margaret Atwood); Vintage Canada Edition, 2007; ISBN 978-0-307-35655-0
  • Huxley's Brave New World (Cliffs Notes)
  • Spark Notes Brave New World
  • Aldous Huxley's Brave New World (Barron's Book Notes)
    • Anthony Astrachan, Anthony Astrakhan; Barrons Educational Series, November 1984; ISBN 0-8120-3405-8

Also publications for NSW HSC Students.

[edit] See also

[edit] References

  1. ^ The Vintage Classics edition of Brave New World.
  2. ^ Huxley, Aldous. Brave New World. Harper Perennial Modern Classics; Reprint edition (October 17, 2006), P.S. "About the Book."
  3. ^ Playboy Magazine interview with Kurt Vonnegut, Jr., July 1973.

[edit] Bibliography

  • Huxley, Aldous, 1894-1963 (1998). Brave New World, First Perennial Classics ed., New York: Harper Collins Publishers. ISBN 0-06-092987-1
  • Huxley, Aldous, 1894-1963 (2005). Brave New World and Brave New World Revisited, First Perennial Classics ed., New York: Harper Collins Publishers. ISBN 0-06-077609-9
  • Huxley, Aldous, 1894-1963 (2000). Brave New World Revisited, First Perennial Classics ed., New York: Harper Collins Publishers. ISBN 0-06-095551-1
  • Postman, Neil (1985). Amusing Ourselves to Death: Public Discourse in the Age of Show Business, USA: Penguin USA. ISBN 0-670-80454-1
  • Higgins, Charles & Higgins, Regina (2000). Cliff Notes on Huxley's Brave New World. New York: Wiley Publishing. ISBN 0-7645-8583-5
  • http://www.huxley.net/

[edit] External links

Retrieved from "http://www.wikifirsteditions.com/Brave_New_World"
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