Brave New World Study Guide Packet
's, published in 1932, is a dystopian novel set six hundred years in the future. The novel envisions a world that, in its quest for social stability and peace, has created a society devoid of emotion, love, beauty, and true relationships.
Monday 26 Formative 1 due Review packet and calendar Brave New World. Assessments: Daily reading quizzes Theme questions from packet Literary. When the Director gives his new students a tour of the Hatchery at the beginning of Brave New World, it is made immediately clear that the students are all boys.
Huxley's novel is chiefly a critique of the socialist policies that states had begun to advocate in the early twentieth century. Huxley, by 1932, had observed the increasing tendency of Western government to intrude upon people's lives. This intrusion, he believed, limited the expression of freedom and beauty that is integral to the human character. Through Brave New World and his other writings, he suggested that beauty is a result of pain and that society's desire to eliminate pain limits society's ability to thrive culturally and emotionally. Many readers initially found this difficult to accept, living as they did in the aftermath of World War I, when a lack of societal control had caused a war that inflicted great pain and death on an entire continent. The novel also comments on humanity's indiscriminate belief in progress and science.
Huxley had himself desired a scientific career before the near blindness that he suffered during childhood kept him from such pursuits. The Western world, Huxley believed, placed too much emphasis on scientific progress at the expense of a love for beauty and art. His novel attempts to show how such science, when taken too far, can limit the flourishing of human thought. In World War I, humanity had seen the great destruction that technology such as bombs, planes, and machine guns could cause. Huxley believed that the possibility for such destruction did not only belong to weapons of war but to other scientific advancements as well. The reaction of society to the book ranged from acclaim to outrage.
Wells, a famous writer of science fiction and dystopian literature, panned the book as alarmist. Other critics challenged Huxley's depictions of religion and ritual as well as his views of sexuality and drug use.
The novel's stark depictions of sexuality and cruelty meant that it continues to incite controversy over whether or not it is an appropriate book for all ages and audiences. Nevertheless, as a social critique, Brave New World takes credit with Orwell's 1984 for advancing a new genre of literature that fuses science fiction, political allegory, and literary ambition.
How To Cite in MLA Format Smith, J.N. Davis, Lane ed.
'Brave New World Study Guide'. GradeSaver, 6 January 2010 Web.
Bernard is criticized by the Director for not acting “infantile” enough. Discuss how and why the World State infantilizes its citizens. The World State infantilizes its citizens by allowing them instant gratification and denying them responsibility. It assigns every citizen to a caste and a particular social function before birth, it encourages its citizens to use soma regularly and to seek instant sexual gratification, and it conditions its citizens to have no identity independent of the World State. John compares the dependence of Delta workers on soma to a prolonged childhood. Their reaction to John’s call to revolution resembles a childhood temper tantrum. The lifelong process of conditioning socializes the citizens into infantile dependence on the State through the lures of pleasure, security, and happiness.
Like children, they are never allowed to make independent moral choices. Instead, these choices are made for them through conditioned, blind obedience to the World State’s moral laws. All of this occurs in the name of stability. Infantilization is implemented through scientific discoveries in human psychology, such as Pavlovian theory and hypnopaedia. Discuss the relation between the sexes in the World State.
How do men and women interact? Who holds the power in social situations, in the workplace, and in the government?
Brave New World Study Questions
When the Director gives his new students a tour of the Hatchery at the beginning of Brave New World, it is made immediately clear that the students are all boys. This is the first of many hints that women occupy positions of inferior power and status in the World State. Another clue comes soon after, when we learn that in order to retain the State’s control over reproduction, many of the female fetuses are sterilized—but none of the male fetuses are. The Malthusian belt, containing regulation contraceptives, is another example of the burden placed on women to avoid pregnancies.
In sexual relations, men and women seem to be equally promiscuous and equally free to initiate contact. Lenina is just as ready as Bernard to capitalize on the fame brought through association with John by spending time with as many partners as possible.
But in work situations and in the government men are undeniably in charge. Assuming that Lenina and Fanny are Beta females, there are very few Alpha women in the novel and none about whom we learn anything significant. The people in positions of power—in propaganda (Bernard, Helmholtz), in the Hatchery (the Director, Henry), and in the government (Mustapha Mond)—are all male. In the social realm the relations between the sexes are liberalized, but in the realms of work and politics the power remains squarely in the hands of men.
It is an open question whether this state of affairs is part of the satirical target of Brave New World or whether it simply reflects the culture in which the novel was written. In what ways does the World State treat people like commodities? The Predestinators estimate the need for various members of each caste, and the Hatchery produces human beings to match their mathematical figures. This directly follows the economic rules of supply and demand. Through the Podsnap and Bokanovsky Processes, the lower castes are mass-produced on assembly lines to satisfy the needs of a market, just like any other standardized manufactured good. Linda’s doctor and Bernard are content to allow Linda to abuse soma even though they know it will eventually kill her. The doctor explains to John that it is better for her to die as quickly and quietly as possible now that she cannot perform any economically productive work.
The doctor voices the World State’s belief that human beings are things meant to be “used up until they wear out.” Just as with manufactured goods, when people get old and worn out, they are thrown away. With respect to sexual pleasure, World State citizens are conditioned to view themselves, and others, as commodities to be consumed like any other manufactured good. As Bernard says, Henry and the Predestinator view Lenina as a “bit of meat,” and Lenina thinks of herself “as meat.”.