Approfondimento: BRAVE NEW WORLD Flashcards
When is Brave New World set?
it’s set in 2540 or we could say 632 AF (After Ford), 632 years after Henry Ford invented the assembly line and introduced his model T.
Where does it start?
The novel starts at the Central London Hatchery and Conditioning Centre. Children are created outside of the womb, the embryos are created through chemicals and hormones, according to the caste they belong to.
How are the chemicals selected?
Higher classes get hormones to perfect them whereas the lower classes get hormones that make them imperfect. They are divided from alpha (upper classes), to Epsilon (lower classes).
Who are the characters?
Bernard Marx, an alpha, with his love interest Lenina Crowe, his Boss (the director) and finally John, the director’s illegitimate son and her mother Linda.
What happens?
Bernard and Lenina, travel to a “savage reservation,” where the Director supposedly lost a female companion some years ago. When the two arrive, they see people living there engaging in unfamiliar rituals. They also meet Linda and John, the lost family mentioned by the Director. The director threatens Marx to send him away for his behavior, so Marx decides to bring the two home with him.
Why does the Director resign?
He has to resign because he had a son naturally, which was illegal.
What happens to John and Linda?
Linda dies because of her addiction to soma, a drug that erases fear and sadness. John gets angrier and angrier with society and isolates himself in a lighthouse.
How does the novel end?
John starts whipping himself, stared by a bunch of people who had gathered near the lighthouse. The next morning he kills himself because he realizes his complicity in the system.
When was the novel written?
The novel was written between WW1 and WW2, an era characterized by huge scientific progress.
What did Huxley criticize?
He criticizes the technological optimism brought between WW1 and WW2, he sets his novel in a dystopian future where everything is controlled by science. Many writers shared his fear.
Shakespeare’s influence?
Brand New World comes from a line from The Tempest. Also, John reminds of Caliban who was considered a savage. Plus John’s education was based on the works of Shakespeare.
How is it a prophetic book in the short term?
Haxley anticipates the nazi eugenetic, their attempt to create an arian master race, erasing inferior and undesirable races.
How is it a prophetic book in the long term?
In the long term it anticipates the genetic manipulation of modern technology and human cloning.
How’s BNW society?
Everything is controlled by science: the way humans are created to how they’re supposed to behave. All institutions connected to man’s free will are suppressed and children are conditioned starting from a young age.
