NOTE: Free essay sample provided on this page should be used for references or sample purposes only. The sample essay is available to anyone, so any direct quoting without mentioning the source will be considered plagiarism by schools, colleges and universities that use plagiarism detection software. To get a completely brand-new, plagiarism-free essay, please use our essay writing service.
One click instant price quote
Brave New World by Aldous Huxley The author Aldous Leonard Huxley was born in Surrey, England, on July 26, 1894, third son of Dr. Leonard Huxley and Julia Arnold. He is the grandson of T. H. Huxley, the scientist. Aldous Huxley was educated at Eton, which he left at seventeen owing to an affliction of the eyes which left him practically blind for two or three years.
This event presented him from becoming a doctor, for which he was grateful later on. The book Brave New World was written in 1932. Interpretation of the book I will now describe the major points of the book and try to give my interpretation thereof. I may quote some passages of the book where I find it interesting and informative.
The story takes place in the future. In a World state, which is governed by 10 World controllers. One of them is Mustapha Mond, who appears in the book. This brave new world is basically nothing but worldwide servitude. The world controllers are the only ones, who know what is really going on. Not even the high scientists in the hatchery and conditioning centre in London know anything conclusive about the world as it used to be.
Bernard Marx for example, an alpha-plus caste member, who is an individualist in some ways, cant help laughing about the Shakespeare plays, that John reads. He finds them indecent and dumb. The controllers on the other hand, know exactly where they are leading the world to. Is this new world a form of tyranny then? I think not. Because the state, the word controler's are aiming at is not fear of the authority and terror, but nothing other than total stability.
The controllers don t have to do very much to maintain this state, they can take it for granted (as long as they can stop individualists like Bernard Marx, before they can infect others with their ideals of personal freedom). So, in many ways, the world controllers are conservative. The fact, that the story takes place in the year 632 after Ford, the founder of the new system, proves that. We all know that progress is made family nowadays. Some things that are described as utopia in the book, written in 1932, are already reality. For example the televisions in almost every room and the synthetic music.
Contrastingly in the book, very little has changed in the last 600 years. Which in this case seems realistic. Change doesn t fit well with stability. The founder of the new system, Ford, seems to be very important.
His name appears very regularly, but not in the sense of a political revolutionary. It appears like the word god does in our language: My Ford, Ford, no! etc. Also the new calender is based on his birth, which automatically reminds me of Christianity. He found out, that family life, love and hate are the origin of wars, social problems and instability. If you love only one person, you soon can become extreme.
Mustapha Mond, one of the world controllers gives us an example: Think of water under pressure in a pipe. They thought of it. I pierce it once, said the Controller. what a jet! He pierced it twenty times.
There were twenty piddling little fountains. He also says: No wonder these poor pre-moderns were mad and wicked and miserable. Their world didn t allow them to take things easily, didn t allow them to be sane, virtuous, happy. What with mothers and lovers, what with the prohibitions they were not conditioned to obey, what with the temptations and the lonely remorse's, what with all the diseases and the endless isolating pain, what with the uncertainties and the poverty- they were forced to feel strongly. And feeling strongly (and strongly, what was more in solitude, in hopelessly individual isolation), how could they be stable? The state of social stability is based on one single fact: everyone is happy.
So the key to a functional system of servitude is making the slaves like it. If anyone is unhappy, rebels will soon develope. But if there is no unhappiness, there are no rebels. To make certain, that the people won t feel unsatisfied or unhappy, they are conditioned to like their unescapable social destiny. One method of conditioning small children is the shock therapy. If a delta-caste child picks up a book, alarm bells start sounding and sirens she shrilly.
Nobody will ever have to worry about these children reading books, that they shouldn t. Another way of conditioning children in class-consciousness, elementary sex and other subjects is hypnopaedia. Sleepteaching. While the child is asleep a tape recorder speaks sentences which influence it s subconsciousness.
An example of a beta class-consciousness tape: Alpha children wear grey. They work much harder than we do, because they re so frightfully clever. I m really awfully glad I m a Beta because I don t work so hard. And then we are much better than the Gammas and Deltas. Gammas are stupid.
They all wear green, and Delta children wear khaki. Oh no, I don t want to play with Delta children. And Epsilons are still worse. They re too stupid to be able to read or write. Besides they wear black, which is such a beastly colour.
I m so glad I m a Beta. The key to a successful enduring system is keeping the next generation calm. Children are conditioned not to love. If you love, you feel strongly, like Mustapha Mond says.
So you don t let the children have parents. Logically you don t let anyone have children either. Children grow from a fertilized egg in a sterile bottle. You can even start the conditioning process while they are still in it.
Immunize future miners who work in the tropics against the sleeping sickness, before they re born and you will avoid many problems. And if you want 40 workers for the same job in a factory, you can make the egg divide and have 40 adults in the end, all identical, all the same. Stability. There are no such things as marriage, pregnancy, or raising your own children anymore. 2 / 3 of all females cannot have children, because they are sterile, called Freemartins. The others take Anti -Baby pills of some kind. Sexual promiscuity is part of the society.
Everybody belongs to everybody. Loving one person is indecent. Twenty piddling little fountains are better than one jet. Another problem would be, having the same humans, working in very different jobs.
But even that problem is solved in the book, by having created five different castes, educated separately and conditioned to be proud of their personal caste. The caste system reminds me of the former Apartheid policies in South Africa. Only, that there were only two castes there. Black and white, with the difference, that in South Africa, the black people wasn t happy with their situation.
The Epsilons are they were conditioned to. Another quality of the new stability is, that all languages are dead, except english. As we can see in our own country here and today, speaking different languages make us different and there s always a barrier between two languages. So everything is perfect, or isn t it? Wouldn t we all find stability absolutely boring? People still need to be able to break out of the nine-to-five workdays.
So soma, a new drug was invented. It s effects are similar to the effects of LSD, but there are no back flashes, headaches or any other side effects. No other drug is being used anymore. The drug is an easy and chep way to keep everyone calm and happy. And since the drug has no side effects, nobody will be harmed. And they didn t forget to condition the people to find it unnatural not to take it.
Concerning to book as a whole What has brought the world to the point it has reached in the book, was the last, the ultimate revolution. It didn t take place on a battlefield, in the government building or beneath a guillotine, but in the minds of the people and in the minds of all the following generations as well. I think this is the most frightening picture of a future system. Humans are treated like machines or just a chemical process which can be easily controlled. I think Aldous Huxley has drawn a good picture of the future. Only a few years after he wrote his book as a warning, a part of his frightening vision became reality.
In the middle of Europe books were burned (Delta Children don t read books). Races and confessions were treated differently. Jeremy das Seine was written in big letters over the entrance of a concentration camp (Everybody is conditioned to like his unescapable social destiny). Logically none of the facts of the book correspond totally to how the world in today s reality, after all this book is basically science-fiction. But the fact, that building a institution like the hatchery and conditioning centre is not impossible anymore is frightening. Clone technology has advanced, even cloning humans is no longer a fiction.
Having 40 workers doing 40 times the same job in a factory might become reality. All things considered it looks as though Utopia is very close to us now from a technical point of view. The horror may be upon us within a single century. That is if we don t kill ourselves in the meanwhile. I guess we only have two alternatives to choose from: either a number of militarized totalitarianism's, having as their roots the rules of terror (like Robespierre), or else one worldwide totalitarian welfare-tyranny like in Brave New World resulting from fast technological progress and development, under the need of efficiency and stability.
Summary (in Stichworten, f r Vortrag) The story begins in the central London Hatchery and Conditioning Centre in the year 632 a. F. You will find out what the F stands for in a little while. Over the main entrance the World State s motto COMMUNITY, IDENTITY, STABILITY is written. The director and Mr. Foster guide a troop of newly arrived students through the centre.
Fertilizing room: incubators: contain the eggs (are all checked for abnormalities) fertilization: container is immersed in a warm bouillon containing spermatozoa. alphas, betas back to incubators before being bottled gammas, deltas, epsilons undergo Bokanovsky s Process bokanovskified eggs divide (8 to 96 adults) up to 17 thousand. bottling room: eggs are transferred from test tube to bottles then, bottles are labelled (heredity, date ot fertilization, membership of Bokanovsky group. ) no longer anonymous, but named the procession marched slowly on into the social predestination room: predestinates send figures to fertilizers who give them the Embryos they ask for. bottles are predestined in detail. Embryo store: -Embryos are placed on a moving rack as they develop. alphas, betas, gammas, deltas and epsilons are treated differently (oxygen, alcohol in blood) conditioning for future miners, who work in the tropics immunization against sleeping sickness all are conditioned to like their unescapable social destiny The students go upstairs with the director to the Infant nurseries and neo-pavlovian conditioning rooms: children are conditioned to like certain things and hate others.
example: -a bokanovsky group of 8 month old babies dressed in khaki (the delta-caste uniform color. Books to play with are lying around. As soon as they start playing with them sirens shriek shrilly alarm bells sound, children start crying. deltas are not supposed to read books. Another way of conditioning children is hypnopaedia. While the children are sleeping, a tape recorder of some kind is running.
The tape is full of sentences that should condition the children in class consciousness elementary sex and lots of other things. Example: beta-class consciousness tape The story takes place in the future. In a World state, which is governed by 10 World controllers. -the founder of this new world is Ford. The F in 632 a.
F stands for Ford. The new calendar is based on him. -He found out that family life, love and hate are the origin of wars social problems and instability. If you love only one person, you soon can become extreme. Mustapha Mond, one of the world controllers gives us an example s. 40 / 1 vor lesen! -All languages are dead except english. -castes (erkl ren) everybody is happy now-Nobody drinks alcohol anymore. The only drug used is soma. It s effects are similar to the effects of LSD, but there are no back flashes, headaches or any other side effects.
Throughout the book you can feel how important this drug is for the people. And it s unnatural not to take it. -no marriage, no pregnancy, no children of your own. 2 / 3 of females cannot have Children, because they are sterile, called Freemartins. The others take anti -Baby pills of some kind. Sex is practiced with more than one partner. Everybody belongs to everybody. The Story: -Lenina and Fanny are friends, they work at the hatchery and conditioning centre in London. -Lenina has been going out with Henry Foster for four months now and she hasn t had anyone else in that time.
Fanny sais that it isn t good for her to only have one partner and since Henry sees other girls all the time, she should start dating other people too. -Lenina tells Fanny that she wants to go to a savage reservation with Bernard Marx-Fanny doesn t think that s a good idea, she doesn t like Bernard. He s an alpha-plus but he s short. He s the same size as gammas. She thinks, that someone might have accidentally poured some alcohol in his blood surrogate while he was still in the bottle. -Bernard Marx knows the current gossip about the alcohol in his blood surrogate. He knows that he is different. He envies Helmholtz Watson, a beta and inventor of hypnopaedic rhymes, who is taller than him has more girls and is better in sports. -But Watson isn t happy either.
Writing hypnopaedic rhymes doesn t satisfy him. Once he sais: I m thinking of a queer feeling I sometimes get, a feeling that I have something important to say and the power to say it only I don t know what it is, and I can take any use of the power. What the two men share is the knowledge that they are individuals. Lenina thinks about what Fanny said and she isn t sure if she still wants to go to the reservation with Bernard. Although she likes him in some ways, she thinks he s quit odd. He refuses to take soma and thinks about freedom in a strange way. - However she goes to the savage reservation with Bernard, mostly, because she wants to see a reservation.
Only about half a dozen people in the centre have ever got the permission to visit a reservation before. She knows, that this is the only chance for her to ever see one. -A savage reservation is a place, that hadn t been civilized, because of the climate, the bad earth or another reason. In These reservations, no english is spoken women still get pregnant, there is no such thing as soma, but people still drink alcohol. -A lot of things are totally different in the reservation of New Mexico, and Lenina misses her soma. She can t believe, that children here had mothers and fathers and brothers and sisters. Everything is so dirty and insanitary. -Suddenly a savage walks up to Lenina and Bernard and asks them if they are from outside, from civilisation.
Lenina and Bernard can t believe how good his english is. John, the savage tells them, that his mother Linda was form outside the reservation. She once visited it, just like Bernard and Lenina, together with the director of the hatchery and conditioning centre and got lost. -He leads them to his mother Linda. She tells them, that the director of the centre is John s father. -Since there is no abortion centre in the reservation, she had no choice, but to give birth to John. She couldn t go back to civilization, because of him. The disgrace would have been to much for her.
So she stayed. -She had a lot of problems with the savages, and the other kids wouldn t play with John. She had sex with married men. she didn t know what marriage is. -Bernard decides to take both Linda and John back to civilization. Words: hatchery Ausbr tung conditioning in einen bestimmen Zust and bringen fertilize berichten immerse touched in heredity Erblichkeit caste Kate founder Gr nder insanitary unhygienic abortion centre Abtreibungsklinik Persons: The Director Mustapha Mond Fanny Lenina Henry Foster Bernard Marx Helmholtz Watson Linda John
Free research essays on topics related to: mustapha mond, brave new world, aldous huxley, bernard marx, story takes place
Research essay sample on Story Takes Place Brave New World
