Brave New World

Brave New World Summary In the future our society will have undergone a significant change as all human values will be different and the people will live in the Brave New World. It is a world without a family life where babies are produced in bottles and conditioned so that they are satisfied with their lives which have been planned for them from start to finish. The time is measured After Ford(AF). This refers to Henry Ford’s invention of the first automobile. Chapter 1 The Director shows a group of students the Hatchery and Conditioning Centre. The first room is the Fertilising Room in which the first stage of the hatchery process takes place. The ovaries are fertilised and then the foetuses in the incubators are divided into two groups: the Alphas and Betas and the Gammas, Deltas and Epsilons. The first group stays in the incubators whereas the second group’s eggs are multiplied to provide the World State with its less educated servants. The second room is the Bottling Room where the embryo’s are put into bottles which represent the mother’s womb. Then the obedient students, the director and Henry Forster, a scientist, move to the Social Predestination Room in which the embryos are conditioned for their later position in life. Foster and the director explain the students the technological wonders of the BNW. Finally, the group heads towards the Decanting Room and Foster stays behind. Chapter 2 They enter the Nurseries where children are conditioned for their future lives. The students witness the conditioning of babies to fear and dislike nature and books, as they are a Delta group. They also learn about sleep-teaching, where the World State’s propagandistic slogans are drummed into the unconscious minds of the sleeping children. These lessons are repeated very often so that they become part of the children’s personalities. Chapter 3 This is stylistically the most experimental chapter of the novel. The students are brought outdoors to watch children being sexually conditioned to accept and participate in erotic games, without having moral concerns or becoming emotionally attached to the sexual partners. Then Mustapha Mond, one of the 10 World Controllers appears and lectures the students on the evil of family life and the benefits of social security. He quotes Henry Ford: “History is bunk.” However, Mond provides a short overview of BNW’s history, especially why the Nine Years War was a turning point in society as this was the end of life as we know it since the World State was born. Meanwhile, inside the centre Lenina Crown, who also works in the centre, reveals to her friend Fanny an unconventionally monogamous sexual loyalty to Henry Foster, but at the same time admits her attraction to Bernard Marx. Marx is an Alpha-Plus psychologist who is not very attractive, too slim and small and likes to be on his own. A “hatching mistake”-alcohol supposedly got in his blood surrogate is said to be responsible for his “odd” behaviour. Chapter 4 On the same day Lenina tells Bernard that she would like to join him on a holiday to the Savage Reservation in New Mexico. Then she flies of with Henry Foster and Marx leaves to meet his only friend Helmholtz Watson, also an Alpha-Plus who his superiors fear because he is too intelligent. He is an emotional engineer and a successful propaganda writer who, like Bernard, is aware of his individuality. When Bernard leaves Helmholtz he flies to the Community Singery where his Solidarity Group thanks Ford, takes some soma pills and then gets sexually active with the other members since “everyone belongs to everyone else”. Chapter 5 Bernard asks for the director’s permission to go to the reservation. He gets to know that the director once visited the same one years ago and that the girl he had taken with him got lost. The director threatens Bernard to send him to an island if his behaviour does not improve. Chapter 6 Bernard and Lenina travel to the Reservation. They cannot understand the natives’ traditions and are appalled by what they see, e.g. they do not know old age as no one in the civilised world gets old because of the medicine and they do not understand religion or love. They meet John, Linda and the director’s son. For Lenina Linda looks disgusting as she has become fat and ugly.

Chapter 7 John informs Bernard of how his life in the reservation and how he learned how to read and write. He has got a book written by Shakespeare, an author which is forbidden in BNW because his books are old. John also tells Bernard of how he had to suffer because his mother and he were not welcomed in the village since they were so different. Marx sees a possibility of not being sent on an island and decides to take John and Linda back into civilisation. For John Lenina is the most beautiful person in the world. Chapter 8 The following day Bernard, Linda and John come to the Hatchery and Conditioning Centre. The director has to face his son and Linda. As he cannot stand the thought of having a child and seeing such an ugly creature like Linda he flees from the centre and never returns again. Chapter 9 Bernard is now very popular since all the people from the upper-class want to get to know the Savage, John. He is very self-confident and even boasts in front of Helmholtz. Moreover, he is talking to very influential people about his ideas which are critical of the World State. Bernard needs to show John every detail of civilised life, something which John does not approve of since this includes many factories,... Lenina and John are going out with each other, but as John believes in love in an old-fashioned way Lenina does not understand him as she does not know about love. Meanwhile the Savage’s mother is given a lot of soma so no one needs to care about her. Chapter 10 John refuses to see all the important people again which causes problems for Bernard as he had boasted in front of them earlier. He loses all his self-confidence and is very miserable. Bernard and John visit Helmholtz and Bernard apologises for his misbehaviour. His friends forgive him. The Savage and Helmholtz get along very well. John recites from Shakespeare which moves Helmholtz a lot. He seems to be the only person apart from John who understands what Shakespeare is trying to say. Nonetheless, he does not understand the tragedy of e.g. Romeo & Juliet. Chapter 11 Lenina cannot understand what she feels for John because she does not know about love or any comparable emotions. Thus, she believes that she just needs to make love with John and so she enters his apartment. He is appalled by her behaviour and gets violent. Lenina leaves frightened by his reaction and is even more confused. Chapter 12 John enters the hospital of the dying to see his mother, Linda. The staff cannot understand why he is in such a hurry and why he shows feelings for such an old and ugly person. Everyone else looks very young and nice. All the patients are given a lot of soma to make everything as comfortable as possible. A group of children enters the room in order to be death-conditioned so that death is neither sad nor frightening for them. The children crawl onto Linda’s bed to examine her and the Savage gets really angry. When Linda is dying she does not seem to see John but is only talking about Popé, a man she had used to know in the Reservation. John blames himself for her death. Chapter 13 When John wants to leave the hospital he sees a large group of Deltas who are waiting for their soma pills. As Linda had depended on soma John decides to take it away from the Deltas. This causes a riot. Helmholtz is informed about it and together with Bernard he arrives to help the Savage. However, Bernard does not actively take part. The police comes and restores order. Chapter 14 The three of them are brought to the World Controller. Mustapha Mond reveals that he knows about Shakespeare and starts to discuss with John why so many things are forbidden in BNW. The main reason is that so many things are old and therefore no longer good and valuable. They also talk about the reasons why Epsilons and Deltas exist. This is due to the fact that the society needs people who do the work. If one had a factory full of Alphas, people who constantly think, this would not work. Bernard has a nervous break down and is given a lot of soma. He and Helmholtz will be sent to an island where there are more people who know about their individuality. Chapter 15

Mond and John are on their own and their discussion continues. They mainly talk about religion and what people really need. In John’s opinion people need to feel loss and love and should not take soma to forget about their worries. The Controller, on the other hand, explains that if people are conditioned to hate being alone they will never feel miserable. Chapter 16 Helmholtz and Bernard return to Bernard’s flat but the Savage has gone. He moved to a tower in the countryside outside London. He tries to grow his own food and to return to God and beg for mercy. However, the BNW society finds him and they are obsessed by his whip. They ask him to use it after the media had shown how Lenina was hit by the whip as she had asked him why he had not wanted her. The crowd gets more and more excited and start an orgy in the place where John wanted to find himself again. When they return the next day they find John hanging from the stair-rail because he could not stand what he had done. Themes: Manipulation: Takes place in BNW in various forms, to a higher degree than in our world and in a more obvious manner. -

Genetic manipulation: natural selection has become “human selection” (think, is this necessarily unnatural?) Humans are no longer born, they are produced in vitro. All vital physical characteristics of a person are formed according to society’s demand.

-

Complete dogma manipulation: People are taught a peculiar world view and basic morals from birth on (remember, children are no longer raised by families). This is done by “neo-pavlovian” conditioning and sleep teaching (examples: sexuality, emotions, equality, attitude towards death etc.). This teaching fulfils one purpose: to make people pleased throughout their controlled life in order to ensure a stable society. All kinds of negative emotions are either extinguished from childhood on or eliminated by the universal drug SOMA. The unquestioned status of SOMA as a solution to all problems is also part of the conditioning.

-

Manipulation of interests: People in BNW are conditioned to like only certain kinds leisure activities selected by the rulers. These activities are expensive to exercise (e.g. expensive equipment) as the economy should profit.

Another form manipulation in “Brave New World” is the use of language by Aldous Huxley. He depicts his utopia in a very negative light, trying to manipulate the reader’s mind. After all happiness (and is it not what we truly live for?) seems to be much greater in BNW then in our society. Education: In BNW education takes the major part in manipulation on people. Education is reduced to teaching precisely planned-through moral values and, on the other hand, the mental and physical skills required for fulfilling the task one has to accomplish in society. Neo-pavlovian behavioural conditioning is applied to make young children like what is good for the economy. Methods depicted in the story remind of laboratory experiments done with rats. (significant example: the electric shock teaching. Unconditioned Infants were let being attracted to books which evoked their interest. Then, when they touched the books and played with them the nurse activated a shrieking siren and eventually an electric shock. Effect: children hate books because they think they harm them. After several repetitions dislike becomes stored in their unconsciousness where it stays for the rest of the life and is resistant to rational thinking = a phobia.) Furthermore all subjects and activities which would encourage free or critical thinking are abolished and are no longer sought for by the people as this need was also “conditioned away”. Therefore history, cultural history and art are forbidden subjects in BNW. Love & Sexuality: The natural purpose of having sex, namely reproduction, is taken away. Sex has been degraded to yet another form of entertainment. Having children in its initial sense is against the social code. Love is a foreign or meaningless word to most of the society in BNW. Not only love towards a mate but also towards relatives is unknown. Love has been conditioned away.

Drugs: SOMA is a mass produced drug with no side-effects, a narcotic-tranquillizer in tablet form. People are conditioned to understand SOMA as a universal solution to all problems. The kind of high you get depends on the doses, reaching from “a little cheer-up” to a period of up to several days of sleep accompanied by typical, pleasant drug effects. SOMA could be interpreted as a substitute for religion and alcohol, leaving out the disadvantages of both. It is a good means of making people more controllable as they will not seek any other ways of solving problems (questioning the totalitarian system or their life-style etc.) because it is simply by far most convenient to swallow happiness in form of a tablet. Seen from a strictly rational point of view (skipping in our consideration our own conditioned moral values) SOMA’s advantages outweigh its disadvantages. It may therefore sound less surprising to hear that the author, Aldous Huxley was a fan of psychoactive drugs himself. Death & Dying: In the BNW the people do not fear death or associate it with any extraordinary emotions. This is due to bla bla bla conditioning blu blä happiness bla bla stable society (you know this!) Important things to know Means, institutions and forces that determine the individuals’ lives in the BNW society. The Hatchery and Conditioning Centre: - The Fertilising Room: When the foetuses are in the incubators the Alphas and Betas are left alone, but the Gammas, deltas and Epsilons have to undergo Bokanovskification, which means that the eggs are multiplied in order to produce more offsprings from one ova. - The Bottling Room: The embryos are put into bottles which represent the mother’s womb. The various groups receive different substances. - The Social Predestination Room: The embryos are conditioned for their later position in life. For example, future workers in hot countries were trained to enjoy heat. - Sleep-teaching lessons: They are repeated very often while the children are asleep. They are usually rimes which everyone can memorise very easily. There are different sleep- teaching lessons for the various groups. For example, they are trained in Class Consciousness which means that they would not want to be in any other class because they believe their class is the best. This is part of the moral education. - the Nurseries: This is comparable to Pavlov’s experiments with the food, the bell and the production of saliva. The children are shown pictures of flowers in books. As soon as they touch the books they are hurt. The same is repeated with flowers or many other things. The Community Singery: People meet there in their Solidarity Groups. They sing songs together and praise “Our Ford”. Most important is that they take soma pills which make everyone forget their worries and become very happy. Sports and Entertainment facilities: - Cinemas: Here people are shown movies which have been created to give evidence of the perfect BNW. The movies do not contain a very complex story as the writers do not have anything to say. Gulf courses, tennis courts,...: People from the BNW need to participate in a lot of activities so they are never alone. Soma: This is a drug which has been invented to make everyone satisfied with him or herself. There are no side-effects. Main characters D.H.C, Henry Foster, Lenina Crown, Mustapha Mond, Bernard Marx, Helmholtz Watson, John Savage, Linda, Popé Most striking characteristics of the Reservation. The natives are mixing Indian traditions with the Catholic god. They still believe in human sacrifices to ask the gods for help. Contrary to the BNW society the people in the Reservation strictly believe in marriage and love. Moreover, children are actually born and they have real parents.

Which events lead to John’s disillusionment in the BNW? When Lenina comes to John he believes that she has finally understood everything about love, but she only wants to make love with him and “have him”. She is incapable of understanding his reactions and he gets furious and violent which frightens her very much. The scene when John visits the hospital of the dying in which Linda lies and waits for her death definitely has the greatest influence on John concerning his disillusionment. When his mother dies many small children, who are death-conditioned, so that they do not fear death or anything which is related to it, are in the same room. Because of Linda’s ugliness they climb onto her bed to examine her more closely. The children cannot understand why John is so angry with them and why he is crying. Another important scene is when he tries to leave the hospital and he sees a group of Deltas who are waiting to receive soma. They react like a horde of wild animals when they realise that he wants to take away their soma. They even attack him. Human language in BNW Authors and works from earlier times are strictly forbidden because they contain messages which would either be dangerous for the BNW society or which the people would not be able to understand anyway. Therefore, high works of literature like Shakespeare’s plays, etc. got lost. This cannot have had a positive influence on language. Moreover, during the sleep-teaching lessons the children only hear very simple rimes such as “ending is better than mending”. Thus, the human language has been simplified and it is no longer of any importance to be very skilled in talking or anything like this.