La Novela del Mes

Notes on the Novel of the Month

Longman literature

Brave New World
by Aldous Huxley

Into the neatly programmed "Brave New World" of test-tube babies and drug-controlled happiness, misfit Bernard Marx brings the innocent Savage...
Aldous Huxley's famous vision of the future is also a chilling and witty comment on the present.

Huxley's Life

Aldous Huxley was born in Surrey in 1894 into an upper-middle class family, both his parents were teachers at private schools. Aldous was brought up among people who studied, taught, discussed and wrote about a wide variety of different and often difficult topics.

In 1908 Huxley went to Eton College, but he had to leave in 1911 when an eye infection left him almost blind. Gradually his eyesight was restored and he wento to Oxford University and then back to Eton, this time as a teacher. Later he married Maria Nys, a Belgian.

His first novel, Crome Yellow, was published in 1921. His first commercially successful novel was Point Counter Point published in 1928. Brave New World was written in 1931 in Sanary, near Toulon in the South of France. He completed the work in four months.

In 1937 he moved to Los Angeles where his wrinting began to show an increased interest in Eastern philosophy and religion. He died of cancer in 1963.

The issues of Brave New World.

Utopia

In Huxley's Brave New World the leaders of the World State have created a form of utopian society: they have attempted to engineer a perfect world where everynoe is happy and there is no financial o social insecurity. The word Utopia, is made up of two Greek words meaning no place and good place. This contradiction itself suggests that the perfect world is an impossible ideal. The epigraph chosen by Huxley for the novel implies that any attempt by those in authority to create a perfect world is dangerous and that Utopias should be avoided. The Foreword, expresses the same concern. Huxley did not believe that a perfect state, peopled by gifted, tolerant and intelligent people would be possible.

Conformity and Consumption

Year Zero in the history of the Brave New World is 1908, the year in which Henry Ford launched the Model-T, the first mass-produced car. So important is mass production that the name Ford has replaced God in the Brave New World vocabulary, and the same system of manufacture is applied not just to consumer goods but to the production of human beings. The more identical humans that can be produced, the more successful and efficient is their society.

Henry Ford was a hero to many Americans. His Model-T was designed to be cheap enough for those with only a modest income and it was such a great success that Ford had to devise a new system of production to meet the demand. His answer was to build a huge factory in Detroit with four assembly floors linked together by lifts, chutes and conveyer belts which moved continuously. By 1912 the assembly line systemnhad been installed with each worker assigned to a single, simple and endlessly repeated task. In the folowing yearproduction of the Model-T rose from 78.000 to almost 250.000

But as production figures rose, workers' morale sank. The hours were long and the pay meagre. So Ford completely revolutionised the working day, introducing a pattern of three eight-hour shifts and doubling his workers' pay to five dollars a day. Ford also introduced a Sociological Department to his factory to influence the way his men led their lives. In fact, the Ford workers'pay was dependent on their meeting certain standards of behaviour laid down by their emloyer.

People in Huxley's novel are controlled and conditioned to conform to different but very limited patterns of behaviour according to their jobs. They must conform and they must also consume, because the world economy depends on this combination.

Science and Technology

Huxley's main concern about the future and the central issue of his novel was the way in which those in power might allow science and technology to be applied to our daily lives. In 1946, when Brave New World was about to be made into a film, and there was renewed interest in the book, Huxley added a Foreword, commenting on his ideas in the light of recent and current events. In 1946 the Second World War has just ended - two atomic bombs had been dropped on Japanese cities - and Europe was being divided amongst the victors.

A summary of the Foreword

Looking back at his novel, Huxley saw that in Brave New World he had offered two extreme worlds, two kinds of madness; the insanity of a Britain dominated by science and technology and the lunacy of the primitive Savage Reservation. Theoretically there is a solution in which science and technology are harnessed to help people genuinely, and where their spirits are free. In such a world we would not be encouraged to seek instant hapiness, but we would do what was best for us all in the longer term.

The development of nuclear weapons shows that brilliant people have not combined to solve the world's problems.

Huxley considers his novel as prophecy of the future. He argues that true revolution can only happen when it takes place in the minds and bodies of individuals rather than in political systems.

Amazon.com

http://www.amazon.com/Brave-New-World-Aldous-Huxley/dp/0060929871/ref=pd_bbs_sr_1/104-4795229-3982317?ie=UTF8&s=books&qid=1182204143&sr=8-1