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| Edition: | Harper Perennial Modern Classics (Paperback) |
| Author: | |
| Published: | October 2006 |
| Pages: | 288 |
| ISBN 10: | 0060850523 |
| New: | $5.81 (109) |
| Used: | $3.12 (238) |
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The novel begins in London in the "year of our Ford 632" (AD 2540 in the Gregorian Calendar). The planet is united as The World State under a peaceful world government established in the aftermath of an apocalyptic global war in the 21st century. The government has eliminated war, poverty, crime and unhappiness by creating a homogeneous high-tech society across Earth, based on the industrial principles of Henry Ford. Fordism forms the bedrock of the new society, gaining a quasi-religious status and forming the backbone of political and economic ideologies.
Society is rigidly divided into five classes — Alpha, Beta, Gamma, Delta, and Epsilon which can be sub-divided even further into categories such as plus, minus and moron. All members of society are trained to be good consumers to keep the economy strong. All citizens are expected to be involved socially; spending time alone is discouraged and sexual promiscuity is the norm. Recreational drug use has become a pillar of society and all citizens regularly swallow tablets of soma, a narcotic-tranquilizer that makes users mindlessly happy.
A significant aspect of the society is the mechanisation of reproduction. Citizens of the World State do not reproduce naturally; people are taught to view natural reproduction as a primitive act. Instead, all children are created from embryos grown in factories: production of embryos is planned according to the economic capacity of society. For the embryo, the womb is replaced by an artificial life support mechanism referred to as a bottle. Significantly, each individual's destiny is determined long before he or she is "decanted".
Huxley reveals the world through the eyes of the protagonists, Lenina Crowne and Bernard Marx (their names allude to Soviet leader Vladimir Lenin and theorizer of communism Karl Marx). Lenina, a member of the Beta caste, is a laboratory worker in the Central London Hatchery and Conditioning Centre. She is a personification of the new society, happy and "pneumatic" (a compliment in this new society, referring to sexual performance), conformist in her behaviour, fulfilling her function in society, and largely incapable of free thought. Government indoctrination is the source of her worldview. Bernard, an Alpha-Plus psychologist serves as antithesis to her. Despite being a member of the upper caste of alphas, Bernard is intellectually gifted but physically smaller than is typical for an Alpha. This has caused him to be unhappy with his life and to dislike society. In part this can be attributed to the fact that, as shown explicitly in one instance and explained in others, a person's size is directly proportional to his or her caste (e.g. an Alpha should be taller than a Beta); thus, having a smaller stature implies that one belongs to a lower caste. As a result, Bernard Marx feels deeply insecure and is something of a joke to members of his own caste and others for his odd physical appearance and rejection of social norms, such as community events and the taking of soma.
The first half of the novel describes life in the World State and the personalities of Lenina and Bernard. It also introduces the character of Helmholtz Watson, an Alpha-Plus lecturer at the College of Emotional Engineering (Department of Writing). While Bernard's physical defects had isolated him from society, Helmholtz is isolated by his mental and physical excess. This isolation brings Bernard and Helmholtz together and they remain friends throughout the story. Bernard's unacceptable behaviour lands him in trouble with his boss, the Director of Hatcheries and Conditioning, but Bernard manages to secure his permission to visit the Savage reservation in New Mexico where he takes Lenina on a date.
The Reservation and the Savage (Chapters 7–9)
The second part of the novel begins with the visit to the Savage Reservation in New Mexico, where they see Malpais, an ancient society that has been fenced off and ignored by The World State. Malpais may have its origins from the Spanish words mal (bad) and país (country). While in the reservation they encounter Linda, a woman from The World State who, through an accident, came to live as a savage in Malpais, and gave birth to a son named John, the novel's protagonist. While Lenina is disgusted by the dirty, neglected and viviparous society of Malpais, Bernard is fascinated by it and by John, who grew up in the culture of the Zuni Native American tribe and a religion that is a blend of Zuni and Christian beliefs. John, however, is also influenced by his mother's education (she taught him to read) and by his discovery of the works of William Shakespeare, unknown in The World State. Like Bernard, John is an outcast in his society and is eager to see the world outside of Malpais. Bernard agrees to take Linda and John back to London, where he manipulates society's fascination with them to boost his social position.
The Savage Visits The World State (chapters 10–15)
The culture shock which results when the "savage" is brought into the society of the "Brave New World", as he initially calls it, provides a vehicle for Huxley to contrast the values of The World State society with ours and point out the Brave New World society's flaws. The moral point of the book revolves around opposing problems. The first is that in order to ensure continuous and universal happiness, society has to be manipulated, freedom of choice and expression curtailed and intellectual pursuits and emotional expression inhibited. Citizens are happy but John, the Savage, considers this happiness to be artificial and "soulless".
At this point in the story, the Director of the Hatchery and Conditioning Centre, who is angry at Bernard for his apparent unorthodoxy of behavior according to the standards of the World State, wastes no time in verbally denouncing Bernard for his lifestyle choices in front of all of the higher-caste workers at the Centre. This powerful and riveting speech may be interpreted as Huxley's metaphor for the mindset of totalitarian dictatorships, who have no tolerance for anyone whose actions "threaten Society itself". As soon as the Director finishes his tirade, however, Bernard defends himself by presenting the Director with his seemingly-forgotten lover and unknown son, a.k.a. Linda and John, in front of the entire Centre, who see the Director's newly unveiled past as so wildly inappropriate and disgusting that it is comical. This tremendous amount of pressure forces the Director to immediately resign, as he had been exposed as a hypocrite.
Meanwhile, John, who has fallen in love with Lenina, is appalled by the World State and Lenina's promiscuity. While in London, John meets and quickly becomes friends with Helmholtz Watson. They meet often to discuss writing, especially that of Shakespeare, Watson's non-comprehension of which helps put the Fordist society's failings into relief.
When his mother, Linda, dies, John is unable to understand society's reaction to death and reacts violently by attempting to "free" a group of Delta caste menial staff members at the hospital by throwing their daily soma ration out the window. The result is a near riot, to which Bernard and Helmholtz arrive in an attempt to rescue John. Unfortunately the police arrive at the melée and after subduing the crowd with vaporized soma and hypnotic music, they quickly take all three into State custody.
Resolution (Chapters 16–18)
Bernard, Helmholtz and John are brought before Mustapha Mond, the Resident World Controller for Western Europe, as a result of the incident at the hospital. The heated argument that begins between Mustapha and John leads to the decision that John will not be set free because Mustapha considers him an experiment. Bernard and Helmholtz, in a twist of fate, are sent to live in Iceland and the Falkland Islands respectively, one of several island colonies reserved for exiled citizens of the World State, where Helmholtz can become a serious writer and Bernard can live his life in peace. Mond reveals that exile to the islands, used as a frequent threat to prevent unorthodox thinking, is where freethinkers are put, rather than engage in the type of repression expressed in George Orwell's 1984, another dystopian text. Similarly, Mond is introduced in this section reading a paper that shows a more comprehensive understanding of certain matters of science than is healthy for a caste system. Mond censors it—but no action is taken against the author.
In the final chapters, John, the sole remaining main character, attempts to isolate himself from society on the outskirts of London. He is, however, unable to live without lusting for Lenina and constantly punishes himself physically and mentally for these thoughts. This causes him to be harassed by sightseers who are intrigued by the extremely (to them) unusual behaviour. At the very end of the novel, John attacks Lenina as she joins the crowd of onlookers and succumbs to an orgy of drugs and sex. In the morning, horrified by what he has done to Lenina and disgusted by himself, John commits suicide.
Fordism and Society
The World State is built around the principles of Henry Ford, who has become a Messianic figure worshipped by society. The word Lord has been replaced with the similar-sounding Ford. The assembly line process is present in many aspects of life and the symbol "T" has replaced the Christian cross, a reflection of the Model T. Ford's famous phrase "History is bunk" has become The World State's approach to the past.
From birth, members of every class are indoctrinated, by recorded voices repeating slogans while they sleep (called "hypnopædia" in the book) to believe that their own class is best for them. Any residual unhappiness is resolved by an antidepressant, and somewhat hallucinogenic drug, called soma.
Contrary to what modern readers would expect, the biological techniques used to control the populace in Brave New World do not include genetic engineering. Huxley wrote the book in the 1920s, thirty years before Watson and Crick discovered the structure of DNA. Mendel's work with inheritance patterns in peas, however, had been discovered in 1900 and the eugenics movement, based on Darwinian selection, was well established. Huxley's family included a number of prominent biologists including Thomas Huxley, half brother and Nobel Laureate, Andrew Huxley, and brother Julian Huxley who was a biologist and involved in the eugenics movement. In light of this, the fact that Huxley emphasizes conditioning over breeding is notable.
As the science writer Matt Ridley put it, Brave New World describes an "environmental, not a genetic hell." Human embryos and fetuses are conditioned via a carefully designed regimen of chemical (such as exposure to hormones and toxins), thermal (exposure to intense heat or cold, as one's future career would dictate) and other environmental stimuli, although there is an element of selective breeding as well.
