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Mark Moreno
Mrs. Hamon
English Literature and Composition 3rd pd
09 October 2008

Brave New World

1. Pick 6 words that are representative of the novel as a whole and then rank them in order
of importance to the central themes of the novel. Explain your choices and rankings.

• Consumerism – The basis of the novel are around Henry Ford’s creation of the
assembly line and if the time when the novel is written it was around the time where
creating goods wasn’t as costly so more of the lower class was able to afford them,
making it a so that society began becoming a lot more materialistic. If looked at
through a Structuralist point of view the time Brave New World was written plays an
important role on its central theme because it shows how Henry’s Ford idea of the
assembly line and how consumption increased lead to the main theme of the book of
people’s needs being satisfied if their needs are altered without them knowing.
• Totalitarianism – This means absolute control by the state or a governing branch of a
highly centralized institution. This is similar to how life works in Brave New World,
because all human life is controlled by the Hatching and Conditioning Centre and
they tell people how they are going to live and function in society. I believe this was
important because it shows the central idea based behind the hatcheries and the World
State.
• Dystopia – The opposite of a utopia. This word helps describe the imperfection of the
world created by Huxley and how unlike a utopia the happiness everyone was
experiencing was an illusion because they in fact had been taught was is happiness
and what makes them happy taking away the ability for them to think of that on their
own. Though not the most important of points it is still important to know the type of
setting in which the story is being based on.
• Illusion – The World States mission was to stabilize society and ensure that everyone
remained conformed to them. They did this by selectively choosing who would be
successful and who would be the lower working class, and as babies conditioning
them to the type of lifestyle they were going to have live in the future to ensure that
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Mark Moreno
Mrs. Hamon
English Literature and Composition 3rd pd
09 October 2008

no one would disrupt the order of things. This was an idea used a lot in Huxley’s
writing so I chose it because without this a lot of the satire would have been taken
out.
• Surrender – Can describe it fairly well because of the idea that everyone is
surrendering their free will to the people in charge just so that they can always seem
to be happy and maintain stability. This was one of the thoughts that went through
Marx, Watson, and John’s mind about how people’s free will was being deprived
from them without them having a word in it.
• Alienation – Marx, Watson, and John are all alienated for different reasons from the
World State. Marx for not being able to be happy with the job and his life like he was
conditioned to. Watson for undermining authority and being able to have thought-out
logical ideas that the World State did not like. And John for being so uncivilized and
not being able to be accept by the Indians, and not wanting to conform to the will of
the World State. This was not the main point of the story but was constantly brought
up and referred to when talking about the three.

2. How could Brave New World be seen as a response to Bolshevist or Communist

philosophy? Could Brave New World be used to express/address any of the major societal
issues being discussed during the current presidential election?

Brave New World can be seen as a response based off that fact that at the time the
Russians were spreading Communism and all the previous acts like The Bolshevist
fighting onside the government in the Russian Civil War which helped in the forming of
the Soviet Union. All these events all point to a totalitarian society in which the
government rules all, like as seen in Brave New World with the Hatcheries and the World
State. Yes, like in today’s current issues politicians are talking about how to prevent the
spread of communism and bring peace to the world, because we believe Communism to
take away peoples freedom and free will and we want to stop things like what occurs in
Brave New World with Mustapha Mond ruling the entire world through the World State.
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Mark Moreno
Mrs. Hamon
English Literature and Composition 3rd pd
09 October 2008

3. Explain why Huxley chose to use fantasy to criticize reality and the effect of his choice.

I believe that because Huxley was trying to show people the dystopia in which
everything was happening and the only way for him to get his message across was to
show the future and where he saw it leading to based off the events that were occurring at
the time. So he set his goal to aim to the emotions of the readers in his writing by
showing the cruelty being done to the babies and the adaptation methods that was being
done to the children, and the remorse thought of making young children have sexual
intercourse, completely taking away the meaning of sex. With using a fictional society he
would be able to implement such ideas like the Hatchery and the cloning of humans
because even today those things do not exist.

4. Explain the ongoing mentioning and significance and argument behind “soma”.

Throughout the novel Huxley makes it evident the there is an essence of delusional
happiness going around in which everyone believes they are happy when in fact they are
being taught how to be happy and how to avoid reality and what is really occurring. This
same idea is being shown by the “soma”. Because actually what is happening is that they are
being drugged and hallucinating of nice things which does not solve the problem but instead
like the fog in One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s nest it is being used as an escape from reality.
The purpose it serves is to show the ongoing ideology of ignoring reality as they were taught
to do in the hatchery as babies and children and believing that what is really going on is a
good thing and they are not being treated unfairly.
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Mark Moreno
Mrs. Hamon
English Literature and Composition 3rd pd
09 October 2008

5. If you could change any aspect of this text, what would you change? What would be the
effect of your change?

I would change how John goes out. Instead I would have liked that he killed
Mustapha Mond and destroy the Hatchery. It would have made a great deal in change for
one; it would have brought an end to the Bokanovsky Process and ended the cloning of
human’s at least at that one hatchery. And it also would have shown everyone how they have
a free will and because he would have been leading the revolt he could have attempted to
teach them the meaning and importance of sex, and how imperfections are okay in a society.
He would have taught them how to be truly happy.