I just wanted to make this thread for Brave New World by Aldous Huxley.


The book was written 16 years before 1984 and has some similar themes to it. If I wasn't told which book came first, I would have assumed it was 1984. The feel of BNW is just a little more futuristic.

BNW has its own slogan: Community, Identity, Stability. In the first chapter the reader is introduced to the semi-autonomous human breeding program that has been set up to mass produce people - a people making assembly line of sorts. They're able to make, not clones exactly, but identical twins. The science for cloning wasn't around during the thirties. I think if this book was written today it would have definitely been clones. This is what the author wants to suggest though. If all the world was populated with the exact same person (male and female versions) there would be stability. I don't know if there is any real logic in this... at all. But I can see what he's getting at. "Standard men and women; in uniform batches."

It's a major instrument of social stability because each person can be classified and stereotypes can be developed. The author makes sure to note that there are operations in Africa as well as Asia so he avoids calling race into question.

"The principal of mass production at last applied to biology."

By controlling every aspect of human development from artificial fertilization a caste system has been made. There are Alpha, Betas, Gammas, Deltas, and Epsilons. The Alphas are the world leaders and the Epsilons are moronic slaves. The Alphas are chosen to be tall, smart, and presumably good looking and these traits decrease down from Beta to Gamma to finally Epsilon. During development the Epsilon babies are even deprived oxygen to make them dumber.

It goes on and on how the kids are treated with Neo-Pavlovian conditioning to make them hate or love certain things and also receive messages while they sleep to instill in them satisfaction in their selves, admiration of higher castes, and the loathing of lower castes.

The author really pounds into the reader that there are colossal boundaries set up between castes. It isn't like India where people may be physically and intellectually the same and differ only in how society judges their value. In Huxley's world the different castes are scientifically engineered to be the way they are.

It's clear when Ford is discussed that the idea of a robotic factory worker comes to mind. A mindless cog in a machine - an assembly line automaton. This really needs no explanation.

Chapter 3 really gives the reasoning and history of why this has all come to pass but it's more important because it shows how ignorant the BNW is about the family unit, the act of sexual reproduction, monogamy, and love. This is another display of how humanity has been robbed from society. How loyalty lies more with the state than with the family unit. The family unit has been dissolved and now everyone belongs to everyone else. Which is another way of saying everyone is responsible for everyone else and so no one is responsible for anyone - there's no love here.

I think it's like Geo was saying in his earlier post on how people respond to a single person's plight more than they do an entire group's.

Like 1984 no one is supposed to be alone but in this book it's actually ok to have sex constantly and with as many people as possible.

By the end of Chapter 3, our main character begins to appear, I believe. He is the self aware individual. Hopefully he won't share a similar fate as Winston.

Names are thrown around in this book like Ford, Marx, and Engels as symbols.

The end of chapter 5 shows that sometimes two can be preferable to one - as in one single eye-brow. lol

Dude, you suck so bad right now. :]

I'm refraining from reading all of this post as there might be something I don't want to hear...

Lol!!! I told you I'd catch up

I have a lot to do next week so I need to get my reading time in this weekend.

Fair enough. Frog said she'd start mid-week.

I'll start around then if not.... right now.

God, you're a fast reader.

It has been a long time since I read this one. I remember loving the book.

Indeed, there are similarities to Nineteen-Eighty-Four, but in some ways the society depicted in this work is an opposite extreme to Orwell's depiction. Huxley's world is one where the population is mindlessly enraptured with mindlessness. As time goes by, it seems to me that modern society is moving much closer to Huxley's vision.

I just finished chapter 2, and I am horrified (as I am supposed to be) by the way these children are created and raised. The Pavlovian conditioning is horrid. I saw the beginning of a movie made from this book, made way back when and they used the conditioning from it (I'm awfully glad I'm not an Alpha, they work too hard....) I never finished the movie, it was not very interesting, and I had no idea then that it was based on a book.

Just finished chapter 5 so that probably means Pres has finished the book...

This is definitely not what I expected. I thought because children are not born they're made, sex would not be allowed and intimacy would but a flat out "no."

Also, what gets me is Lenina (feminine version of Lenin?), an Alpha female, is supposed to be superior, less flawed than others? When Huxley describes Lenina: "for all the lupus and the purple eyes....a row of coral teeth" these flaws still let her lead a normal life while Bernards height makes him an outcast?

I'll be better at this in the morning. Promise. G'night. :]

I think that has to do with the lighting in the workplace. Page 11

I am finished with the book. I was pleased with it. It didn't have the same impact that 1984 had on me but it was still a good book.

What color is lupus exactly? I tried to google it, but only got references to diseases and wolves. Wolves come in browns and greys and silvers, so I'm not sure that gives me enough to go on.

Genocide, I agree, I thought sex would be forbidden, and yet it is the opposite.

I can see that Bernard's feelings make him more outcast than his peers do. Both of themfeel differently about things than their friends do, and together with Bernard's friend we are starting already to notice that the sameness isn't as complete as planned. I am only to the end of Chapter 4.

Every recent generation has been upset at the promiscuity of the next generation, I feel. I don't know when this started but it seems a part of English and U.S. thought. Maybe Huxley thought the same and just figured the future would also be composed of people who had sex all the time.

Additionally the problem of sex in this society is simply solved by allowing people to have it all the time as long as they don't have any children. This serves to undermine the family unit as in 1984. It creates a world where sex is just Soma. Its only purpose is Soma.

It has no meaning at all. Again, there is the absence of love. No one should love. There is no individuality or ownership beyond what the state allows. No one owns or is a part of another person - everyone is a part of everyone else.

Both these authors are romantics. I think their shared message is: once love is denied man, he is doomed. They both just want a nook of the world for their characters to share with a female they truly love - an ideal world where they can be a man and where their woman can be a woman and where their family can be the product of their own input and no one else.