briskly explains the technology of fertilization - the most intimate human activity - as the carefully calculated, sterile procedure to produce identical people. Personal identity - perhaps even humanity itself - is strangled by the demands of community and stability. The Fordian world does not seem so menacing and sinister as Orwell's 1984, but the reader can see even in the first chapter that the cheeriness masks a dark reality. Stability." All the technology, planning, and conditioning of this World State exist solely to support and maintain these ends. In the reader's first glimpse of the dystopia, Huxley drives home the significance of his futuristic world with the motto "Community. The chapter also introduces two workers at the Centre: Henry Foster, who will figure as a minor character in the story and "pneumatic" Lenina Crowne, a major character who will affect the destiny of the novel's protagonist. The conditioning that goes along with this process aims to make the people accept and even like their "inescapable social destiny." That destiny occurs within a Caste System (or social hierarchy) ranging from the handsome and intelligent Alpha Pluses down to the working drone Epsilons. explains the basic operation of the plant - Bokanovsky's Process - in which one fertilized egg produces from 8 to 96 "buds" that will grow into identical human beings. They begin at the Fertilizing Room, move on to the Bottling Room, the Social Predestination Room, and the Decanting Room. ![]() This institution plays an essential role in the artificial reproduction and social conditioning of the world's population.Īs the chapter begins, the Director of the Centre (the D.H.C.) conducts a group of new students, as well as the reader, on a tour of the facility and its operations - a biological version of the assembly line, with test-tube births as the product. He settled in Los Angeles in 1937 and passed away in 1963.The novel opens in the distant future at the Central London Hatchery and Conditioning Centre. In 1932, Huxley published what is considered to be one of the most important novels in 20th century literature: Brave New World. He graduated from Balliol College at Oxford University with a degree in English literature, and spent his early career writing and editing for the literary magazine Oxford Poetry before becoming a professional writer. He wrote nearly fifty books over his lifetime, including fiction and non-fiction, and was nominated for the Nobel Prize in Literature seven times. A father of a student has argued that “the novel’s dystopian setting disallows students from understanding ethical citizenship and morality.”Īldous Huxley was an English writer and philosopher. Brave New World continues to challenged in public schools for obscenity and vulgarity, and being therefore inappropriate for children. In the United States, there were eight separate accounts of censorship in states including Maryland, Missouri, Oklahoma, California, Alabama, Texas, Indiana, and Delaware, all of which occurred in US public schools. Australia quickly followed by censoring the book in the same year. ![]() The novel was first banned in Ireland in 2931 for anti-religion, anti-family, and blasphemous content. The novel asks its readers to question whether it is more important to be happy or to be free.īrave New World was rated #3 on the American Library Association’s 2010 list of most challenged books, but history of controversy extends back to its publication. ![]() Members of the World State are not able to think for themselves, and the characters who do think for themselves are not happy. Happiness is guaranteed through instant satisfactions for desires such as food, sex, drugs, and consumer items, but comes at the expense of freedom and truth. A key question that Brave New World raises is about the trade-off between happiness and freedom. The four return to London, where John becomes famous for being a natural-born “savage.” After his Linda overdoses on soma and dies, John moves away in search of a solitary lifestyle, but eventually chooses to hang himself after being rediscovered by sightseers hoping to watch his bizarre behaviors. They meet Linda, a woman separated from her group years ago who gave birth to a son named John and who raised him at the reservation. In the novel, Bernard Max and Lenina Crowne, take a trip to a savage reservation in New Mexico outside the World State. People are encouraged to have regular and casual sex and to take a drug called soma, which is designed to make them happy. The novel is set in 2540, in a futuristic world known as the “the World State” wherein advanced science and technologies are use to reproduce genetically modified babies that are conditioned to believe in certain moral values and are then raised in strict social castes. ![]() Brave New World is a dystopian novel written by British author Aldous Huxley in 1931.
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