The quote at the beginning of the novel is from Nikolai Berdyaev (1874-1948) a Russian who was a Christian philosopher. Berdyaev became a Marxist in his youth and then began writing on Christianity – he was saved from the Bolshevik Revolution because of his earlier leanings, but broke with them in 1917 over totalitarianism, although he was not a Czarist. He was interrogated, but apparently, according to Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn, he argued so effectively against Bolshevism, that they let him go! He was exiled, rather than imprisoned, and eventually wound up in Paris. Translate this for Extra Credit.
Les utopies apparaissent comme bien plus réalisables qu’on ne le croyait autrefois. Et nous nous trouvons actuellement devant une question bien autrement angoissante: comment éviter leur réalisation définitive ?… Les utopies sont réalisables. La vie marche vers les utopies. Et peut-être un siècle nouveau commence-t-il, un siècle où les intellectuels et la classe cultivée rêveront aux moyens d’éviter les utopies et de retourner à une société non utopique moins « parfaite » et plus libre.
Also Extra Credit: Cite the source of the book's title.
Letter from Huxley to George Orwell on the publication of his dystopic novel, 1984 in 1949
Whether in actual fact the policy of the boot-on-the-face can go on indefinitely seems doubtful. My own belief is that the ruling oligarchy will find less arduous and wasteful ways of governing and of satisfying its lust for power, and these ways will resemble those which I described in Brave New World.
Within the next generation I believe that the world's rulers will discover that infant conditioning and narco-hypnosis are more efficient, as instruments of government, than clubs and prisons, and that the lust for power can be just as completely satisfied by suggesting people into loving their servitude as by flogging and kicking them into obedience. In other words, I feel that the nightmare of Nineteen Eighty-Four is destined to modulate into the nightmare of a world having more resemblance to that which I imagined in Brave New World. The change will be brought about as a result of a felt need for increased efficiency. Meanwhile, of course, there may be a large scale biological and atomic war — in which case we shall have nightmares of other and scarcely imaginable kinds.
Thank you once again for the book.
Yours sincerely,
Brave New World: Synopsis
The book begins in the year 2540 AD, or 632 AF (This 632 years after the first Model-T was produced on an assembly line in 1908). We are on a tour of a reproductive lab where all the humans are created to do the job most suited for them. There are Alphas, Beta, Gammas, Deltas and Epsilons for the most menial labors. We have reached the “end of history” – the world is a place where most people are mind-numbed enough not to notice how meaningless it all is.
You might notice that the characters in this book have interesting names, and perhaps recognize some of them. Go online in our most modern world that allows you to sate your curiosity – while you still have any – to find out explanations for the characters' names. For the most part, they are named for philosophers, artists, scientists or political theorists who for the most part, were interested in studying the progress of humanity or creating a utopian society: Bernard Marx is named for both Bernard Shaw (perhaps) and Karl Marx. Lenina is named for Vladimir Lenin. You might like Smoop’s version of explaining the names.
The story mostly follows Bernard, who is a less-than-perfect Alpha male who works as a psychologist at the hatcheries where vast human clones are created and psychologically manipulated through behaviorist training so that they will function in society and be content enough: They chant mantras such as: Everyone works for everyone else. A gramme is better than a damn. Orgy-Porgy gives release. Everyone, even a lowly Epsilon, is important. Everyone belongs to everyone else. Never put off until tomorrow what you can have today. Bernard, however, is not content. He had too much alcohol in his decanting, he is – unlike everyone else – discontent, and he has serious questions about the society which is supposed to be perfect.
For example, he is uncomfortable not being perfect. He doesn’t want to share Lenina sexually, and he is not enthusiastic about soma or the uninspiring propaganda or pornography that passes for art. (For example, Feelies and bland, nationalistic songs written by the Arch Songster.) Bernard’s boss, The Director of Hatcheries is getting ready to exile him to one of the “islands” in the world that remain isolated from the rest of the planet for people like him so he can’t do harm with his griping. His only friend is the perfect Alpha, Helmholtz Watson, who teaches at the College of Emotional Engineering, who as an aspiring writer, finds Bernard amusing.
Lenina is having her own small bit of rebellion when she dates Henry Foster too many times and isn't promiscuous enough to suit the social norms of this world where no one belongs to just one person. Does she need a pregnancy surrogate? or perhaps, just a soma trip. She should have absorbed this in the hatchery, where all pubescent children learn that is is good to be promiscuous: Everyone belongs to everyone else.
Bernard takes Lenina on a vacation to the Savage Reservation – something more interesting for Bernard than Lenina, who is immediately disgusted by the dirt and rituals. They meet John and his mother Linda, both outcasts of the society because Linda used to live in the modern society, but was lost in the reservation while on vacation with the Director – and accidentally got pregnant. Unable to get an abortion, and too ashamed to go back home because “mother” and “father” are obscenities there, she remained. Her free-love lifestyle gets her in trouble, and she is both hated and used by men. One man, Pope, gives her mescal and peyote to help her along. She is desperate to get back to civilization and soma. He also gives her The Complete Works of Shakespeare for John to read. Linda also has some scientific books on growing embryos from her days as a lab technician, similar to the job Lenina holds. Also similar to Linda, Lenina is not a “Freemartin” or sterile female and as such needs to use a contraption called a Malthusian Belt to keep from getting pregnant.
John, on the other hand, has taken in the culture of the Savage Reservation and wants to go through the violent rituals to become a man. His ideas of romance are shaped by the violent ways the men on the reservation treat his sexually open mother – and Shakespeare.
John and Linda come back to civilization – and the Director is humiliated into allowing Bernard to avoid exile, and to present John as – what? – a zoo specimen to their society. Linda in the meantime, who has not had the benefit of medicine, dental care or plastic surgery, is considered hideously ugly. She decides to go on a one-way soma trip and winds up in the Hospital of the Dying.
John and Lenina in the meantime, have develops the hots for each other. However, Lenina’s conditioning for unfettered sex and John’s more romantic notions about love make them dangerously incompatible. It gets really confusing for both of them.
John is less than enthusiastic about being hauled around as a specimen so Bernard can feel better about himself, and refuses to oblige. When he finds out his mother is overdosing on soma by choice, he goes to see her and is stunned to find that euthanasia is considered honorable. He is horrified to see young children gawking at his dying mother, lost in a soma trip, and gets violent. A riot starts when he tries to talk a group of Deltas out of taking their free rounds of soma to liberate them, and he, Bernard and Helmholtz are arrested and brought to the World Leader Mustapha Mond. Bernard and Helmholtz are sent off to exile in Iceland and the Falklands, respectively, but John is ordered to stay in Civilization, to continue the experiment.
Mustapha, a brilliant man who was once a scientific rebel, was given the choice of exile or world leadership. He tells John about the recent wars that almost destroyed humanity. (Note: This book was published in 1932, at a time when the horror of World War I was still fresh in people’s minds, and the Great Depression was just getting started.) He possesses a lot of censored literature, and the Bible, which fascinate John, but he assures him that such things just serve to enrage people and make them unhappy and dissatisfied. He has come to believe that social stability matters more than things like family and religion, and striving for innovations.
John goes off to live by himself in a light house, attempting to connect spiritually with himself and his world. He is hounded by the press and people who come to stare at him and mock him. Violence breaks out when Lenina comes to seduce him and he begins to whip her. Everyone else joins in and the police quell everyone with soma gas – an orgy ensues, and in the morning, John hangs himself.
Huxley wrote Brave New World Revisited in 1958, and thought that overpopulation, drugs and rampant consumerism sold through subliminal ads were going to bring about this dystopia sooner than he thought. It might already be here.
Aldous, Huxley. "Letters of Note: 1984 v. Brave New World." Letters of Note: 1984 v. Brave New World. TinyLetter, Oct. 2013. Web. 20 Apr. 2015. <http://www.lettersofnote.com/2012/03/1984-v-brave-new-world.html>
