Brave New World Prophetic or Apocalyptic Prophetic predictive

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: references to history or literature

Lenina l A variation of Lenin -Nikolai Lenin, the Russian Socialist, who had a tremendous influence in the formation of the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics, the present-day Russia.

Ford l l An important figure in the formation of the World State. His utilization of the massproduction 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.

Bernard Marx l 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 l 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 l 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 l 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.

Predestination l 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.

l 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=mc 2 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

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.

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

Societal changes l 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.