Brave New World Key facts and Summary

Brave New World (1932) 

ALDOUS HUXLEY (1894-1963) 

About author 

Name: Aldous Huxley 

Birthplace: In the village of Godalming, Surrey, England. 

Birth time: July 26, 1894. 

Death place: California 

Death time: November 22, 1963 

Cause of death: Cancer  

Father’s name: Leonard Huxley 

Mother’s name: Julia Arnold 

Writer’s wife name: Maria 

Career of Aldous Huxley 

From 1919 to 1921, Huxley worked as an editor on the London journal Athenaeum. 

Huxley also contributed to Vanity Fair and Vogue before devoting himself entirely to his own fiction and essay writing in 1924. 

Literary works: 

The Burning Wheel (1916) his first published poet, at early twenties. 

Satire  

Crome Yellow (1921) and Antic Hay (1923), his first two novels.   

Point Counter Point (1928), a novel.  

Brave New World (1932) a popular novel.  

Mysticism  

Eyeless in Gaza (1936)  

After Many a Summer Dies the Swan (1939) 

The Perennial Philosophy (1945) and The Doors of Perception (1954). A satire and mysticism. 

Fictional classics  

Jane Eyre, Pride and Prejudice, and Alice in Wonderland  

Ape and Essence (1948) 

With Grey Eminence (1941) 

The Devils of Loudon (1952) 

Huxley’s last novel, Island (1962)  

Honors and Awards 

Huxley won the James Tait Black Memorial Prize for fiction from the University of Edinburgh in 1939 for his novel After Many a Summer Dies the Swan. 

In 1959, he received the Award of Merit and Gold Medal from the American Academy and Institute of Arts and Letters and accepted an honorary Doctor of Letters degree from the University of California. 

He also received the Companion of Literature from the British Royal Society of Literature. 

Key facts: Brave New World (1932) 

Full title: Brave New World. 

Author: Aldous Huxley 

Type of work: Novel 

Pages: 311 (1932 ed.) 63,766 words 

Genre:  utopian novel, Science fiction, dystopian fiction. 

Cover artist: Leslie Holland 

Country: England 

Composition time: In 1931 

Published: Chatto & Windus was a publisher of books in London, founded in the Victorian era. 

Published date: In 1932 

Language: English 

Place setting: England, Savage Reservation in New Mexico. 

Tense: Past 

Narrator: The third person is omniscient. The narrator often describes words of “objective” description, such as speech or thought patterns of a particular character, using a technique commonly known as “free indirect quotation”.  

Point Of View: Described in the third person, mainly from the point of view of Bernard or John, but also from the point of view of Lenina, Helmholtz Watson and Mustapha Mond. 

Tone: Initially bitter and isolated; Later frustrated and sympathetic. 

Climax: In the 15th chapter in the Hospital John incites a riot. 

Protagonists:  Bernard Marx, Helmholtz Watson, and John. 

Antagonist: Mustapha Mond. 

Falling Action: Chapter 18, where John isolates himself in the lighthouse and punishes himself; it ends with an orgy and her suicide. 

Prediction: The director’s memory of his reservation trip foretells his relationship with John and Linder; Bernard’s insecurity and dissatisfaction foreshadowed his exile; John’s eagerness to sacrifice himself is a precursor to his suicide. 

Themes: The use of technology to control society, the inconsistency of happiness and truth, the question of freedom, Class-conflict, Sex, Dystopia 

Symbol: Drug Soma symbolizes the use of instant satisfaction to control the population of a world state. It also symbolizes the powerful impact of science and technology in society. 

Motifs: Alienation, sex, Shakespeare. 

Moral lesson: One must not forget the basics of what makes a person improve and enhance his life using science and technology. 

Characters 

John the Savage  

1. The son of the Director and Linda. 

2. The only main character growing up outside of the World State. 

3. New Mexico has spent his life isolated from his village in the Savage Reservation and he feels similarly incapable of fitting himself into world state society. 

4. Central protagonist. 

5. He first entered the story because he was interested in participating in Indian religious rites. 

6. The central character of the novel because rejected both ‘barbaric’ Indian culture and ‘civilized’ world state culture. 

7. John’s rejection of the shallow happiness of the world state, his inability to reconcile his love and desire for Lenina, and even his suicide all reflect Shakespeare’s themes. 

8. John’s participation in the final belle and his suicide at the end of the novel can be seen as a result of the insanity caused by the fundamental conflict between his values ​​and the realities of the world around him. 

Bernard Marx 

1. One of the central characters in the novel ‘Brave New World’. 

2. An alpha male who fails to fit due to his inferior physical size. 

3. Her unconventional beliefs about sex, sports and community events, and her insecurity about her size and status make her dissatisfied with the world. 

4. Bernard’s nickname is reminiscent of the nineteenth-century German writer Karl Marx, best known for writing capitalist memoirs of capitalist society. 

5. Bernard Marx is the central figure in the novel until his preservation and public acquaintance. 

6. Bernard’s first appearance in the novel was highly ironic. 

7. He is not exactly a hero; He is still interesting to the reader because he is human. 

8. Before and before the reservation trip Bernard is lonely, insecure and isolated. 

9. John and Helmholtz sympathize with him because they agree that the world needs to be criticized and they admit that Bernard is trapped in a body where his conditioning does not suit him, but they do not respect him. 

Helmholtz Watson  

1. An Alpha Lecturer in the College of Emotional Engineering. 

2. He and Bernard were friends. 

3. Often finds Bernard’s arrogant and cowardly fatigue. 

4. She can see and feel how she is being suppressed by the shallow culture in which she lives. 

5. Similar Helmholtz and John Spirit; Both are love poems, and both are intelligent and critical of world kingdoms. But there is a huge cultural gap between them. 

6. The conversation between Helmholtz and John highlights that even the most reflective and intelligent member of the world state is defined by the culture in which he is raised. 

Lenina Crowne 

1. A vaccination worker at the Central London Hatchery and Conditioning Center. 

2. It is a matter of longing for several big and small characters, including Bernard Marx and John. 

3. Her behavior is sometimes interestingly unreasonable, which makes Her interesting to the reader. 

4. Her values ​​are those of a citizen of a conventional world state. 

5. Her primary way of relating to other people is through sex and she is unable to share Bernard’s frustrations or realize John’s alternative arrangements. 

Mustapha Mond 

1. One of the few important characters in Huxley’s novel ‘Brave New World’. 

2. Resident World Controller of Western Europe, one of the ten world controllers. 

3. Ambitious, young scientists are doing illegal research. 

4. Science has chosen to give up and now he censors scientific discoveries and exiles, people, for obsolete beliefs. 

5. The name Mond means “world” and Mond is actually the most powerful character in the world in this novel. 

6. The most powerful and intelligent proponent of the world state. 

7. An inverted figure. 

8. John, Bernard and Helmholtz have presented a great opponent. 

Fanny Crowne 

1. Friend of Lenina Crown. 

2. Fanny’s role is mainly to convey the conventional values of his caste and society. 

3. Lenina warns that she needs to have more men in her life because it feels bad to focus on one for too long. 

N.B. (“Crowne”, they have the same last name because only about ten thousand last names are in use in the World State.) 

Henry Foster 

1. A fair-haired, blue-eyed, imperfect-compiled scientist and a model citizen at London Hatchery. 

2. Skillful, pleasant and cooperative, his hard work and foolish involvement in spending leisure time. 

3. Lenina Crowne has been dating Henry Foster for four months. 

4. Huxley uses the character to explain how hatcheries work and how the average citizen should behave. 

Benito Hoover 

1. The name Hoover comes from US President Herbert Hoover. 

2. The name Benito comes from the Italian fascist dictator Benito Mussolini. 

3. Henry Foster’s friend and colleague. 

4. One of the many men Benito wants to have sex with Lenina Crown. 

5. Like many others, Benito brought gifts to Bernard. 

Linda 

1. John’s mother and a beta. 

2. Became pregnant by the Director while inspecting the New Mexico Savage Reservation. 

3. A group of Indians found him and brought him to their village. 

4. She was too ashamed to return to the World State with a child. 

5. sHe was desperate to return to the World State and Soma. 

The Director of Hatcheries and Conditioning 

1. Likes to listen to himself. 

2. Visiting students enjoy the guided tours of the hatchery very much. 

3. Like many intelligent Alphas, the director also secretly thought about life outside of society over which he has so much control. 

4. John’s mother Linda was carrying the director’s child. 

5. John calls him father so his reputation is irreparably damaged. 

Pope  

1. An Indian man. 

2. Linda forms a bond; she slept with him regularly despite her feelings. 

3. Pope John was imagined by jealousy and hatred. 

Themes 

Brave New World is a parody of Huxley’s future omnivorous society, where the trends of Huxley’s day are finally taken. When an outsider is confronted with this world, he cannot accept its values and chooses to die rather than try to adapt to this “brave new world”. 

The question of freedom 

One of the biggest themes in Brave New World is the question of freedom. Most of the characters in the world in the novel are unable to feel anything emotionally or emotionally other than the officially accepted concepts and values. There is no room for social or intellectual differences or rebellion and those who are separated are either mentally rehabilitated or if they appear too untrained, are sent to quarantine areas away from the general population. 

In addition to freedom, the inhabitants of the brave new world have become extremely depressed, losing love in addition to physical means. The idea of ​​sensitive involvement is completely foreign to the controlled people living in this book. Savage brought in from outside and who is a member of a more primitive society and still feels emotionally involved, is also quickly defeated. In addition to love, feelings, in general, have been reduced to a minimal level, which makes the new world, which is brave in the general fear of new ideas or any idea, the perfect people for the new mass society. Huxley’s examples here are somewhat heavy-handed but keep their word. This society is sterilized in all senses of sound. 

Class-conflict 

Another important theme of the novel is class conflict. As a result of the conditioning, Huxley’s future world arrangement came to an end. The controllers decided that there should be five social classes from the superior, more intelligent and physically attractive Alphas – the most desirable and intellectually demanding job for those who do the least desired work to the inferior, mentally deficient, and physically obsolete Epsilon. 

Different class members not only look physically different but also wear different colors to make sure no one makes a mistake for a different group member. Here, Huxley points out the shallowness in our own society: members of different social classes wear different clothes to join their own class. Only John Savage will really see the man because he was undoubtedly not conditioned to adopt a strict classified structure. Thus, the controller and the director represent the arrogant hypocrisy of the ruling class. 

Individualism  

The third most important broad theme in Brave New World is individualism, as it is a loss for individual traits that make society so deadly. One of Huxley’s main fears about science was that it made life physically more bearable and that humans have food, animal comfort, and things that would make them more uniform in character. And the emphasis on what science can produce, especially mind-boggling drugs and time-consuming entertainment, can omit the significance of all these elements that made a human difference. 

The use of technology to control society 

Another serious theme of Brave New World is the use of technology to monitoring society. The novel warns of the dangers of giving the state control over new and powerful technologies. An example of this theme is the strict control of reproduction through technical and therapeutic interventions, including surgical removal of the ovaries, the Bokanovsky procedure, and hypnopaedic conditioning. Another is the creation of complex entertainment machines that produce both innocuous leisure and high levels of cost and production that are the foundation of world state stability. Soma is the third example of the medical-biological and psychological technologies that Brave New World is most critical of. 

It is urgent to distinguish between science and technology. The state has talked about progress and science, what it really means is not the advancement of technology, scientific exploration and experimental growth. The state’s focus on happiness and stability means that it uses the results of scientific research as much as it contributes to control technologies but does not support science. 

Sex 

Sex is also a repeated theme in the novel. By the standards of coeval society, Huxley has a very unusual attitude towards the sex of the inhabitants of the future world. At the heart of the world state’s population control is its strict control over sexually transmitted diseases and reproductive rights. Reproductive rights are regulated by an authoritarian system that disinfects about two-thirds of women, requires contraceptive use for the rest, and surgically removes the ovaries when new ones need to be produced. John has been persecuted by an outsider because of his desire for Lenina and his inability to return love like hers. 

Dystopia 

This novel depicts a dystopia where an omnipotent state controls the behavior of its people in order to maintain its own stability and power. The energy in Brave New World is driven by technological interventions that begin before birth and end before death, and in reality, change what people want. The brave New World government has made citizens so happy and full of high standards that they don’t care about their personal freedom. The consequence of state control in the brave New World is the loss of dignity, morality, values ​​, and, in short, humanity. 

Summary 

Brave New World is set in the fictional year of A.F 632. In this fictional world, A.F. means “After Ford”, which translates to 632 years after the first Model T car was invented.  

Ford in “After Ford” represents Henry Ford, the first American to make automobiles entirely by mass production methods such as conveyor belts and specialized labor. Ford is considered a god among the people of this fictional world known as the World State. 

Just as people in our own society believe in the power of spirituality to place orders, people in the world believe in technology as a social system. 

The novel begins at the Hatching and Conditioning Center in central London, where the hatchery’s director and one of his assistants, Henry Foster, is touring with a group of boys. The boys can learn about Bokanovsky and Podsnap Processes that allow hatcheries to produce almost thousands of identical human embryos. During the generation period, the embryos travel through the conveyor belt through a factory, and conditioned to include in one of five characters: Alpha, Beta, Gamma, Delta and Epsilon. Alpha embryos are destined as World State leaders and intellectuals. Each of the succeeding castes is somewhat less than physically and intellectually impressive. Each of the succeeding castes is somewhat less than physically and intellectually impressive. Stunned by oxygen deprivation and chemical treatment, stupid Epsilons are destined to perform manual labor. Lenina Crowne, a factory worker, described to the boys how she vaccinated fetuses destined for the tropical climate. 

The director then takes the boys to the nursery, where they see a group of Delta children being reprogrammed to dislike books and flowers. The director explained that this conditioner helps Deltas to create enemies and interested customers. He would then tell the boys about the “hypnopaedic” (sleep-teaching) method used to teach the morals of the world state. In the room where the older children are hanging, the lesson of “early class awareness” is repeated and whispered. 

Outside, the director shows boys hundreds of naked boys playing sex games and playing games like Centrifugal Bumble-poppies. Mustafa Mond, one of the ten world Controllers, began to explain the history of the world state by introducing himself to the boys and focusing on the state’s successful efforts to remove strong emotions, aspirations and human relationships from society. Meanwhile, inside the hatchery, Lenina talks about her relationship with Henry Foster to Fenny Crown in the bathroom. Fanny scolded Lenina for traveling with Henry almost exclusively for four months, and Lenina admits that she was attracted to the strange, but funny-looking Bernard Marx. In another part of the hatchery, while Henry and his assistant Predestinator were having a conversation about Lenin’s presence, Bernard became angry.  

After work, Lenina told Bernard that she would be happy to accompany him on a trip to Savage Reservation in New Mexico, where he invited her. Bernard is happy but embarrassed, flying a helicopter to meet one of his friends, Helmholtz Watson. He and Helmholtz discussed their dissatisfaction with the world state. Bernard is largely dissatisfied because he is too small and helpless for his breed; Helmholtz is dissatisfied because he is too smart to write job hypnopaedic phrases. Over the next few days, Bernard asked his superior director for permission to make a reservation trip. The director begins a story about a reservation he visited twenty years ago with a woman. During a storm, he told Bernard, the woman was lost and never recovered. Eventually, he gave permission to Bernard, and Bernard and Lenina set off for the reservation, where they received permission from the warden. Before going to the reservation, you can call Bernard Helmholtz to find out that the director is tired of what he sees as Bernard’s difficult and unusual behavior, and that he plans to deport Bernard to Iceland when he returns. Bernard is angry and restless but decides to go to the reservation anyway.  

At the reservation, Lenina and Bernard are surprised to see her elderly and all the inhabitants, with no sign of grayness in any of the World states. They testify to a religious ritual in which a young man is whipped and it seems disgusting. After the formalities, they meet John, a fair-skinned young man who is isolated from the rest of the village, John tells Bernard about his bar childhood the son of a woman named Linda who was rescued by villagers about twenty years ago. Bernard realized that Linda was almost certainly the woman the Director mentioned. Talking to John, he learns that Linda was evicted for wanting to sleep with all the men in the village, and as a result, John was isolated from the rest of the village. 

John explains that he learned to read using a book called The Chemical and Bacteriological Conditioning of the Embryo and the Complete Works of Shakespeare, the latter of which has given to Linda one of her lovers, Pope. 

John told Bernard that he was interested in seeing the ‘brave new world’ or ‘other places’, about which his mother had told him so much. Bernard invites him back to the World State with him. John agreed but insisted that Linda be allowed to come as well. 

When Lenina, dissatisfied with the reservation, took soma for eighteen hours enough to knock her out, Bernard fled to Santa Fe where he called Mustafa Mond and was allowed to bring John and Linda back to the world state. Meanwhile, John enters the room where Lenina is intoxicated and unconscious, and the desire to touch her is rarely suppressed. Lenina, John and Linda travel to the World State, where the director awaits the exilement of Bernard in front of his Alpha colleagues. But Bernard turned the tables with identities, John and Linda. The embarrassment of being a “father” – a word that makes viewers laugh in frustration – led to the director’s resignation, leaving Bernard free to stay in London. 

John became a hit in London society because his peculiar life led to Reservation. But as he visits the factories and schools of the World State, John becomes progressively annoyed by the society he sees. His sexual allure to Lenina still remains, but he wants more than his usual desires and he finds himself terribly confused. In the process, he also confuses Lenina, who wonders why John doesn’t want to have sex with her. Bernard also became popular as the inventor and guardian of the “Savage”. He quickly took advantage of his new status, sleeping with many women and hosting dinner parties with important guests, most of whom disliked Bernard but agreed to congratulate him if they could meet John. One night John refused to meet with guests, including the Arch-Community songster and plummets of Bernard’s social position.  

John and Helmholtz can see each other quickly after Bernard introduces them. John has read Helmholtz parts of Romeo and Juliet, but Helmholtz cannot restrain himself from laughing at serious paragraphs about the concepts of love, marriage, and parenthood, which are ridiculous in the World State culture, almost isolated.  

Lenina, overwhelmed by his peculiar behavior, became obsessed with John, refusing Henry’s invitation to return. She takes Soma to see John at Bernard’s apartment, where she hopes to seduce him. But John responds to his advance with Shakespeare’s curses, blows and lines. She retreated to the bathroom when he made a phone call when he learned that Linda had been on permanent soma-vacation since her return, almost dying. At the hospital for death, he sees his death, when a group of lower-caste boys was taking their ‘death conditioning’, which is why he became so desperate. The boys are just curious, but John gets angry. After Linder’s death, John meets Delta clones who are taking their soma distribution. He attempts to seduce them to revolt, dropping the window on Soma and convincing them of the outcome of the riot. Upon hearing of the riot, Bernard and Helmholtz rushed to the scene and came to John’s aid. After calming the riot police with soma steam, John, Helmholtz and Bernard were arrested and brought to Mostafa Monde’s office. 

John and Mond argued about the value of World State policy, arguing that they disrespect the world state and Mond residents, arguing that status and happiness are more important than humanity. Mond explains that social stability requires the abandonment of art, science, and religion. John protested that human life is not worth living without these things. Bernard responded brutally when Mond said he and Helmholtz would be deported to a distant island, and that he would be carried away from home. Helmholtz accepted emigration easily, thinking it would give him a chance to write and would soon follow Bernard out of the house. John and Mond continue their conversation. They discuss the use of religion and mon to control negative emotions and social harmony.  

John evokes Helmholtz and Bernard farewell. Rejecting the choice of following them to the islands by Mond, he goes back to a lighthouse in the countryside where he gardens and tries to purify himself by becoming self-reliant. Curious World State citizens soon caught up with him in the performance, and reporters landed on the lighthouse to report the film and a freebie. After being exhausted, the people come down to the prison lighthouse and demand that John be whipped. Lenina came to John with open arms. John responds with the brandship of his whip and shouts ‘Kill it! Kill him! ‘ The strength of the scene is the cause of an orgy where John takes part. The next morning he woke up and hung himself up with anger and sadness as he submitted his submission to the World State Society.