Aldous Huxley

(1894 – 1963)
 Background
Charles Darwin (19th century naturalist)

-Aldous Leonard Huxley was born

in 1894 in Surrey, England

-He came from a family of

distinguished scientists and
writers.
Matthew Arnold (Victorian poet and critic)

-His grandfather was Thomas

Henry Huxley, the great
proponent of evolution known
as “Darwin’s bulldog” and his
mother was the niece of
Matthew Arnold
 Growing Up
-1910, he developed a serious eye disease that left him
temporarily blind

-1913, he partially regained his sight and entered Oxford

University.

-1915, he developed relationships with T.S. Eliot and

Bertrand Russell.

-1918, he was denied military service by the British army

and began teaching at Eton.

-Huxley was not a successful teacher and decided to

become a journalist.
 1920s: Writing and Travelling
-In the 1920s, Huxley wrote
multiple novels including:
Crome Yellow (1921)
Antic Hay (1923)
Those Barren Leaves (1925)
Point Counter Point (1928)

-In 1923, Huxley and his

wife and son moved to
Europe, where they
traveled widely in France,
Spain, and Italy.
 1930s: Brave New World and California
-1930, Huxley and his family moved to southern
France and Huxley writes Brave New World (1932).

-During the 1930s, Huxley became increasingly

concerned about the state of European civilization
as fascism rose in Italy, Spain, and Germany, he
openly expressed himself as a pacifist and became
increasingly interested in mysticism and Eastern
philosophy.

-1937, Huxley moved to California and during

WWII worked in Hollywood.
1940s and 1950s: Eastern Religion and LSD
-Huxley pursued his
religious and mystical
interests in California
and associated with
Buddhist and Hindu
groups.
-In the 1950s, Huxley
experimented with
hallucinogenic drugs
such as LSD and
mescaline, which he
wrote about in The Doors
of Perception (1954)
Huxley died of cancer on November 22, 1963,
the same day as John F. Kennedy and C.S. Lewis.

You’ll be free child once you have died

From the shackles of language and measurable time.
Bright Eyes
Brave New World
 William Shakespeare’s The Tempest
Miranda cries out, "O
wonder! / How many
goodly creatures are there
here! / How beauteous
mankind is! / O brave
new world, / That has
such people in't!"
The novel was written in the early 1930s, a time of massive
industrialization, coupled with severe economic depression and
the rise of fascism.

The novel is a vision of T.S. Eliot’s The Waste Land, of a world

without authentic belief and spiritual values.

The novel was a dystopia that depicted a nightmarish vision of the

future in which science and technology are used to suppress
human freedom.

The ability of Brave New World to become more relevant as time

passes accounts for its continual popularity.
 Utopia
Plato’s Republic (380 B.C.)
Sir Thomas More’s Utopia (1516 A.D.)
Utopia: A fictional or theoretical society with an ideal social and
political system.
The English word utopia is a pun on the Greek outopia meaning
“no place” and eutopia meaning “good place.”
A utopia is a hypothetical place that does NOT actually exist.
The concept of “utopia” can be used as a model or standard to
compare present society to.
 Dystopia
A dystopia is the opposite of a utopia; it is often a
utopia gone sour, an imaginary place or state where
everything is as bad as it could possibly be.

Dystopian novels usually resemble contemporary

society and are seen as a warning against what
society could become.

Writers use them as cautionary tales, in which

humankind is put into a society that may look
inviting on the surface, but in reality is a nightmare.
Imagine there's no countries
It isn't hard to do
Nothing to kill or die for
And no religion, too

Imagine all the people

Living life in peace

You may say I'm a dreamer

But I'm not the only one
I hope someday you will join us
And the world will be as one
In 2004, A Perfect Circle recorded
Imagine no possessions their version of John Lennon’s
I wonder if you can “Imagine” to coincide with the
No need for greed or hunger
presidential election.
A brotherhood of man

Imagine all the people

Sharing all the world Ironically, Lennon’s vision is very
similar to the society of Huxley’s
You may say I'm a dreamer Brave New World (a dystopia).
But I'm not the only one
I hope someday you will join us
And the world will live as one
At first, the society of Brave New
World seems like a utopia:
humanity is carefree, healthy,
and technologically advanced.

Warfare and poverty have been

eliminated, and everyone is
permanently happy.

However, all of these things have

been achieved by eliminating
family, cultural diversity, art,
literature, science, religion, and
philosophy.
 Cultural Background
Huxley traveled to America and was outraged by how
commercial the society was and how selfish many of the
people were.
His sentiments were shared and there was a strong fear in
Europe of worldwide “Americanization.”
 Historical Background

Industrial Revolution gives birth to “modern

industrial society.”

Technological innovation enables unprecedented

destruction of life and property during WWI.

Great Depression creates conditions ripe for

fascism in Western Europe.

Totalitarianism was on the rise in both communist

and capitalist countries.
Some political scientists have proposed that democracy can
gradually change to an authoritarian if not totalitarian
state. This can occur when the state and corporate
decision makers have come to work together so closely
that the interests of the two are almost indistinguishable.
This can only happen if the population shows
disinterest, is distracted from the changes or is
voluntarily obedient.
 Huxley’s Brave New World and Orwell’s 1984
Goals Methods Theme

1984
Everyone thinks the same Force, spying, Totalitarian control
and is united against an surveillance, of the individual.
external enemy. and secret police.
Repression of personal
desires is channeled into
support of the State.

Brave New World

Happiness. No war, Dictate what people Totalitarian production

no poverty, and no want by pre- of the “individual.”

repression of sexual determining their
and material desires. options for happiness.
Instant gratification. Consumerism.
 Brave New World
In Brave New World human beings are produced by
technological and psychological interventions that start
before birth and last until death, and actually determine
an individual’s identity and desires.
How is an individual’s identity and desires determined?
Huxley was influenced by the previously established caste system in
Hinduism, which was abolished in 1949.

The caste system in Brave New World includes 5 major castes named after Greek
letters
Alphas (Α)– highest, grey
Betas (Β)- bottle green/mulberry
Gammas (Γ)- leaf green
Deltas (Δ)- khaki
Epsilons (Ε)– lowest, black

There are differences between the castes, which include physical appearance,
intelligence, type of employment, standard of living, and specific prejudices.

In Brave New World, everyone is socialized according to their caste

and “individuals” do NOT desire to be in a different caste.
 How are the castes created?
Based on Henry Ford’s “assembly line,” human beings
are made in laboratories to increase efficiency.

“Bokanovsky’s Process” is the fertilization process used

to create Gammas, Deltas, and Epsilons.

The process divides fertilized eggs to produce identical

twins. The process produces up to 96 embryos, but 72
is the average.

“Bokanovsky’s Process” is the primary instrument of

social stability in Brave New World.
 Caste Identity Formation
Ivan Pavlov: Russian physiologist and psychologist who
developed classical conditioning.

Conditioning: A process of behavior modification by which a

subject comes to associate a desired behavior with a previously
unrelated stimulus.

Socialize: To convert or adapt to the needs of society.

Ideology: The body of ideas reflecting the social needs and

aspirations of a class or culture.

Individuals are conditioned and socialized to form their identity

within an ideology.
 Hypnopaedia

“The greatest moralizing and socializing force of all

time” (Huxley 28).

- Sleep teaching
- Moral education
- Class conditioning

“The child’s mind is these suggestions, and the sum of

the suggestions is the child’s mind” (Huxley 28-29).
In Brave New World, people are encouraged to take
SOMA
if they are feeling dissatisfied, bored, or unhappy.
Soma is a hallucinogenic anti-depressant that people
take regularly to avoid negative feelings and doubts.