Brave New World Prophetic or Apocalyptic? Prophetic: predictive; presageful or portentous Apocalyptic: predicting or presaging imminent disaster and total/universal destruction

A collision of cultures to shake our beliefs as readers

Brave New World Allusions Allusion: reference to a well-known person, place, idea, or event in history or literature

Since 1900, in any 10-year period, advances in science and technology have overshadowed advancements made during ANY previous 100-year period. Periodic table in 1869 Telephone in 1876 Light bulb in 1879 E=mc2 in 1887 Germ theory of disease in 1890 Radium in 1899 Radio tube in 1905, transmitter in 1914 Insulin in 1922 Sliced bread in 1928 Jet engine in 1937

Predestination Predestination is the act of deciding an individual's fate or destiny. Both the Old and New Testaments contain allusions to God as the Predestinator, but since the World State has eliminated God, this is now the function of government. In the World State each individual has been predestined according to the needs of society.

Concept or Term Predestination – the act of deciding an individual’s fate or destiny for him Communism – (definitions vary) a revolutionary socialist movement to creat a classless, moneyless, and stateless social order structured upon common ownership of the means of production

Concept or Term: Fascism – a form of radical authoritarian nationalism that seeks to unify a nation through a totalitarian state which relies on a vangard party to initiate a revolution to organize the nation Mass production – the production of large amounts of standardized products, especially on assembly lines

Concepts and Terms: Big Business – large-scale, corporate- controlled, financial or business activities Soma – a Vedic ritual drink of importance among the early Indo-Iranians; many praised its energizing qualities. Much speculation concerning what is most likely to have been the identity of the original plant

Concepts and Terms: Hypnopaedia – sleep-teaching; attempting to convey information to a sleeping person typically by playing a sound recording to them while they sleep

Brave New World by Aldous Huxley Written in 1931; Published in 1932 Huxley was born in 1894 in England. After living through the Great War (WWI), he watched Europe struggle to balance human individuality with a desire for government control to solve the problems of disease, poverty, and political instability.

Brave New World and Shakespeare’s The Tempest “Brave New World” is uttered by the character of Miranda in Shakespeare’s play, The Tempest ( ). The character of Miranda, raised on an isolated island, sees other people for the first time and exclaims, “O brave new world!” Ironically, the people Miranda sees are drunken sailors, hardly the best of humanity.

Idiom – “It’s a brave new world.” A new period in history resulting from major changes in society, especially technolgical; a future world or society experiencing positive and negative effects from major changes Idiom - A speech form or an expression of a given language that is peculiar to itself grammatically or cannot be understood from the individual meanings of its elements, as in keep tabs on

Aldous Huxley (1894 to 1962) Developed a condition limiting his vision which left him unable to fulfill his goal of being a scientist or fighting on the front during WWI After turning to writing his brilliant dialogue, cynicism, and social criticism made him a very popular writer Traveled widely after WWI; urged man to live as the ancient Greeks did

Aldous Huxley (1894 to 1963) The shift in the dependence of man on the state rather then the individual concerned him greatly Huxley grew up in a time of rigid class structure Huxley’s father was a renowned biologist and his mother’s family included several authors and educators

Lenina A variation of Lenin -- Vladimir Lenin, the Russian Socialist, who had a tremendous influence in the formation of the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics, the present-day Russia. “Vanguard party” rules over the masses

Fanny Kaplan Russian revolutionary and attempted assassin of Lenin

Ford An important figure in the formation of the World State. His utilization of the mass-production technique influenced social, political, and economic life. In Huxley's Utopia, the life, work, and teachings of Ford are the sources of inspiration and truth. Even time is reckoned according to Ford.

Sigmund Freud (1856 to 1939) In BNW, people are conditioned by others telling them who they should be in their dreams. They experience sleep teaching to show them to which class they belong. Another basic part of Freud’s theories is the avoidance of sexuality. If this is the case, people become sick, for example with neuroses. In Brave New World, these theses are adopted: people are supposed to satisfy their sexuality with lots of different partners. They are to be promiscuous.

Bernard Marx Marx is an obvious reference to Karl Marx, a German Socialist, whose best-known work, Das Kapital, expresses his belief that the fundamental factor in the development of society is the method of production and exchange. Karl Marx called religion the opium of the people; in Huxley's Brave New World, soma is substituted for religion.

Neopavlovian Conditioning Conditioning is defined as the training of an individual to respond to a stimulus in a particular way. The Russian scientist Ivan Pavlov conducted experiments to determine how this conditioning takes place. In Brave New World individuals are conditioned to think, act, feel, believe, and respond the way the government wants them to.

Benito Hoover Benito Hoover combines the names of two men who wielded tremendous power at the time Huxley was writing Brave New World: Benito Mussolini, the Italian dictator, and Herbert Hoover, the American President.

The Malthusian belt: Thomas Malthus This English political economist believed that unless the population diminished, in time the means of life would be inadequate. Improvements in agriculture, he predicted, would never keep up with expanding population, and increases in the standard of living would be impossible. In the World State, mandatory birth-control regulates the growth of population.

John B. Watson (Helmholtz Watson) The Little Albert experiment was a case study showing empirical evidence of classical conditioning in humans. It was conducted in 1920 by John B. Watson at Johns Hopkins

Mustapha Kemal Ataturk (Mustapha Mond) Mustafa Kemal Atatürk was the president of Turkey, having just founded it from scratch. He wanted to transform the Ottoman Empire into a modern, secular, European nation-state.

Huxley’s warning! Huxley realized that these advances, which were welcomed as progress, were full of danger. Man had built higher than he could climb; man had unleashed power he was unable to control.

Brave New World is Huxley's warning; it is his attempt to make man realize that since knowledge is power, he who controls and uses knowledge wields the power. Science and technology should be the servants of man -- man should not adapted and enslaved to them. Brave New World is a description of our lives as they could be in the none-too-distant future.

International political scene Bolshevik Revolution in Russia, the dictatorship of Mussolini in Italy, and the Nazi Party movement in Germany. Concerned about threats to man's freedom and independence, Huxley realized that communism and fascism place the state above the individual and demand total allegiance to a cause.

Economic changes A time of more and bigger factories, more manufactured goods, the advent of mass- produced automobiles Big business used and misused the individual -- man became important as a producer and a consumer.

Societal changes More people were moving to the cities  change in attitude and point of view. As "one of the crowd," the individual is not responsible for himself or for anybody else. Huxley carries this loss of individuality one step further in his projection of Bokanovskified groups of identical twins performing identical tasks.