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Prophetic: predictive; presageful or portentous Apocalyptic: predicting or presaging imminent disaster and total/universal destruction
Lenina
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
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
Marx is an obvious reference to Karl Marx, a German Socialist, whose bestknown 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
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
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.
Predestination
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.
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=mc2 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
Huxleys 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.
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.
Economic Changes
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 Shanges
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.
The Movie
Spirituality
Spirituality in Brave New World is a mix of Christianity, the tribal beliefs of Native Americans, a non-denominational interest in the soul, a spiritual unity with the natural world, and a frenzied, orgiastic parody of religious rites. One character believes his spiritual life is deepened through self-mutilation. But in the mind of the powerful world leaders, religion simply isn't needed in a world of science and machines. Comfort comes in a bottle, morality is taught in sleep-session brainwashing. In the world leaders' minds, God is obsolete.
Spirituality
Possible Issues: Brave New World argues that distinctions between one type of religion or another are frivolous, because, at the end of the day, all religions serve the same purpose: pacification. Religion is mocked in Brave New World as a less scientific form of hypnopaedia.
Science
Huxley wrote that the focus of Brave New World isn't science itself, but science as it affects people. The vision he paints of a technological, futuristic society is both horrifying and fascinating. In a world where people are controlled down to their very impulses, emotions, and thoughts, science has the ability both to imprison (by conditioning, for example) and to set free (the frontiers of scientific discovery often lead to change). Because of this, "science" is somewhat bastardized by those who seek to control; use what's useful, but limit what's "dangerous."
Science
Possible Issues Science is subservient to human nature in Brave New World; tools like the Violent Passion Surrogate and the Pregnancy Substitute prove that science must cater to the needs of the human body because it cannot overcome them. Science trumps human nature in Brave New World; tools like the Violent Passion Surrogate and the Pregnancy Substitute prove that science is effectively able to replace all natural functions.
Soma is more vital to the upper castes than it is to the lower ones. Soma is more vital to the lower castes than it is to the upper ones.
Identity
Brave New World explores the classic conflict between the individual and society. In this particular case, personal identity has been sacrificed for the sake of a common good. A form of biological reproduction produces certain types of humans in batches 96 identical copies of the same being. A social "caste" structure separates the citizens into five groups, the result being that a given individual is little more than a faceless, color-coded member of a larger group. Certain characters in the novel grow uncomfortable with this idea, are downright disgusted by it, or for one reason or another find that they just don't fit the mold. They seek to understand their individuality through isolation and selfexploration.
Identity
Possible Issues Women in Brave New World are defined only by their function as sexual objects. This is the extent of every female's identity. It is only by killing himself that John is able to maintain his identity as a human being instead of an animal.
Suffering
Brave New World takes place in a controlled environment where technology has essentially eliminated suffering, and where a widely-used narcotic dulls whatever momentary pains may arise. It soon becomes clear, however, that suffering is a part of the human experience. Without it, the citizens are somehow less-than-human. Self-inflicted pain becomes, for one character, a way to regain his humanity as well as a spiritual cleansing. God, he explains, is a reason for self-denial. This is of course tied to the notion of an afterlife: denying the body in this life will be good for the soul in the afterlife. Christianity especially espouses this theory, as suffering for one's sins is one way to emulate Jesus Christ.
Suffering
Possible Issues Despite John's adamant convictions, suffering serves no purpose inBrave New World. Inflicting pain on oneself is the only path to liberty in Brave New World.