Brave New World by Aldous Huxley Introductory Activities

Brave New World by Aldous Huxley Introductory Activities and Notes

Introductory Activities ® Has belief in the power of science replaced faith in God? ® What is happiness, and how can it be found? ® What are some dangers of being promiscuous? ® Why do people use drugs?

I. A. , cont. ® What are some pros and cons of genetic engineering? What about cloning? ® How are people brainwashed today? ® Do you think people are capable of living in peace? If so, under what conditions? ® Why do people dream? ® How do you define love?

Introductory Topics ® Psychological Conditioning-Pavlovian conditioning ® Sleep teaching ® Genetic engineering ® Test tube babies ® Identity ® Social Stability ® Community

Intro. topics, cont. ® Individual freedom/happiness ® Passion/painful emotion ® Consumption of material goods ® Mind-altering drugs ® Promiscuity ® Individual differences ® Family in crisis

Intro. topics, cont. ® Death ® Totalitarianism ® Utopia ® Henry Ford/mass production ® Karl Marx ® Herbert Hoover ® Benito Mussolini

Intro. topics, cont. ® Propaganda ® Overpopulation ® Cloning

BNW facts and themes ® Science fiction work ® Utopian fiction ® Title is from The Tempest by Shakespeare, and there are numerous parallels. ® Science can be used to control people ® Genetic engineering and psychological conditioning are potentially dangerous

BNW Themes, cont. ® Hardship increases the depth of life ® Materialism and pleasure vs. individuality and freedom ® Life without ties is empty ® Escapism is often destructive

Study Guide Chapters 1 -2 ® Do you think anything like the hatcheries might be happening today? ® How does Bokanovsky’s process work, and what is it for? ® What is the significance of A. F. ? ® How is Huxley’s depiction of the Director satirical?

1 -2, cont. ® What are some actual scientific principles presented? ® Explain the class system of BNW ® What social problems have been eliminated in BNW? ® Explain the motto “Community, Identity, Stability”

1 -2 Cont. ® How is Huxley mocking Christianity? ® Who are Henry Foster and Lenina Crowne? ® Why are the Delta children conditioned to dislike books and nature? ® Why can hypnopaedia be used to inoculate more beliefs and emotional attitudes but cannot be used to learn science?

Chapter 3 ® What is meant by “history is bunk”? ® How are the lectures, the conversations, and the activities related to each other? ® What is the deal with soma? ® Why does so much effort go into conditioning people to be consumers? What is Huxley satirizing?

Chapters 4 and 5 ® Share some opinions about Lenina ® How is Bernard different? What are some things that “trouble” him? ® Is Bernard paranoid, or are people really watching him? ® Compare/contrast Helmholtz to Bernard

4 and 5, cont. ® What satire is found in these two chapters? ® What does pneumatic mean?

Chapter 6 ® Think of the interaction between Lenina and Bernard at the beginning of the chapter. What may they represent? ® Is Bernard a coward in this chapter? ® What do you think of the Director’s treatment of Bernard? ® What can be inferred about the Director’s story about his “trip”?

6, cont. ® What is Bernard’s reaction to Iceland? ® What is amusing about the scene with the Warden of the reservation?

Chapter 7 ® Who do Bernard and Lenina meet on the Reservation? ® How is Lenina’s reaction to the Rez satirical? ® What is the effect of Lenina’s reaction to the child nursing? ® Compare Linda to Lenina

Chapters 8 and 9 ® Compare John and Bernard ® Why does Shakespeare have such a meaning for John? ® What theories about London and the other place does John have? What gave him these ideas? ® When John is alone looking at Lenina sleeping, what are his thoughts?

Chapters 10 and 11 ® “…no offence is so heinous as unorthodoxy of behavior. Murder kills only the individual—and after all, what is an individual? …We can make a new one with the greatest of ease…Unorthodoxy threatens more than the life of a mere individual; it strikes at Society itself…”

Chapters 12 and 13 ® “Pierced by every word that was spoken, the tight balloon of Bernard’s happy self-confidence was leaking from a thousand wounds. ”—metaphor ® How does John clash with the new world? ® How is love and romance satirized?

12 & 13, cont. ® What is the attitude about science that the government holds? ® What “crimes” have Bernard, John, and Helmholtz committed? ® Shakespeare as “propaganda technician”

Chapters 14 and 15 ® Explain John’s behavior after his mother dies. ® Grief ® Death-conditioning ® Soma

14 & 15, cont. ® Find quotes in which Huxley satirizes the following: ® Loss of knowledge of God ® The human attempt to create a utopian world.

Chapters 16 and 17 ® What does Mond say is the reason Othello could not be the same in the new world? ® What happened in the Cyprus experiment? ® The conversation between John and Mustapha Mond covers at least four areas:

16 &17 cont. ® Their goal is to arrive at truth through contradiction ® Question and answer is the strategy ® There is a logical structure ® Each man voices a set of principles

16 and 17, cont. ® When the controller says: “You can’t make flivvers without steel—and you can’t make tragedies without social instability, ” what does he mean? ® Society is based on the iceberg

Chapter 18 ® What is John’s new home like, and how does he feel about it? ® How does John handle the taunting that he endures? ® How does Huxley describe John’s suicide? ® In the Foreword, how does Huxley explain why the book had to end this way? ® How would Huxley re-write the ending?

Credits ® Andrew C. Jackson ® MCMLXXXIII