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THE AUTHOR
Aldous Huxley was born in 1894, the third son of Leonard Huxley and the grandson of Thomas Henry Huxley (an important disciole of Darwin). His mother, who died when Aldous was fourteen, was the niece of niece of Matthew Arnold (a Victorian poet); the philosopher Sir Julian Huxley was his brother.
In 1916 Aldous Huxley took a first in English at Balliol College, Oxford, despite a condition of near-blindness which had developed while he was at Eton. In 1919 he married Maria Nys, a Belgian and joined \"The Athanaeum\". His first book of verse had been published in 1916 and two more followed. Then, in 1920, \"Limbo\", a collec-tion of short stories, was published. A year later, his first novel \"Crome Yellow\" appeared and his reputation was firmly established.
In the 1930s he moved from Italy to Sanary (near Toulon) where he wrote \"Brave New World\". Believing that the climate would help his eyesight, he left for California, where he became convinced of the value of mystical experience and described the effects of his experiments in \"The Doors of Perception\" and \"Heaven and Hell\".
One year after his wife\'s death in 1955, he married Laura Archera, a concert violonist who had become a practising psychotherapist. They continued to live in California, where Huxley died on 22 November 1963.
THE MAIN CHARACTERS
(a.) Bernard Marx - a highly intelligent but introverted and ugly Alpha plus scientist. The popular theory is that too much alcohol was accidentally put into his blood-surrogate when he was a fetus.
(b.) Lenina Crowne - a typical alpha girl - very pretty, superficial and promiscous-, who works in the London Hatchery and Conditioning Center.
(c.) Fanny Crowne - Lenina\'s colleague, friend and confidante, a very sensible girl
(d.) Henry Foster - an enthusiastic scientist who Lenina has an affair with.
(e.) The DHC - the pomopus Director of the Hatchery and Conditioning Centre in London.
(f.) Mustapha Mond - formerly a physicist, now one of the ten World Controllers
(g.) John - a young \"savage\" discovered in an Indian reservation who quotes Shakespeare all the time.
(h.) Linda - John\'s mother, a sloppy and ugly middle-aged woman,brought to the reservation years ago by the DHC
(i.) Helmholtz Watson - an alpha writer and Emotional Engineer and friend of Bernard and John
OUTLINE OF CONTENTS
In 632 A.F. (after Ford) proudly the Director of the "Central London Hatchery and Conditioning Centre" shows the plant to a group of young students. As the he explains, there cannot be room for individual differences, if the goals of society - COMMUNITY, IDENTITY AND STABILITY - shall be achieved.
From the fetal phase on, people are pushed into their predestined places in a ridigly hierarchic society that ranges from Alpha Plus, the highly intelligent leaders, to Epsilon Minus, ape-like gnomes who do the dirty work.
In the hatchery, men and women are massproduced by artificial insemination and chemically conditioned, while in the Conditioning Centre, the babies are taught to keep their places in society and to repress their individualistic instincts.
But with Bernard Marx, a brilliant but shy and embittered scientist something is wrong. Instead of being as handsome and extroverted like all the other Alphas, he is small and ugly. Because he is so special, he attracts the attention of Lenina.
Because of his high position, Bernard has access to one of the few reservations left where people still live as savages. Lenina accepts his offer to visit one of them with him.
Having arrived in New Mexico, Lenina is at first horrified because of the absence of all comforts of the hypercivilization in Europe. Worst of all, she has forgotten her supply of SOMA, a tranquillizer that has taken the place of alcohol and drugs.
They meet John and his mother Linda, who was brought here by the DHC. Having grown up in the Brave New World, she could not get along with life in the reservation.
John who has taught himself with the help of old Shakespeare books immediately falls in love with Lenina, but because of his strict morality he fails to do something about it.
Bernard takes John and his mother back to England to conduct an experiment with them and to get even with the DHC, who dislikes him and wants him to exile. Because of the fact that he has a son, he is exiled himself.
John becomes a great social success while his mother must be kept happy with overdoses of soma which she later dies of.
The Savage is terrified with the hedonism of cicvilized society and wants to return to the stricter, more meaningful morality of the primitive live. As Bernard wants to show him the Arch-Community-Songster of Canterbury (a religious leader), he refuses and Bernard is again in disgrace.
Guilt-ridden after his mother\'s death, John tries to destroy the soma ration doled out to Delta hospital workers and wants them to realize how it destroys them. He is almost killed before a police squad quells the riot with water pistols that shoot tranquillizers. Mustapha Mond exiles Bernard and Helmholtz and has a long philosophical argument with John who remains unconvinced and becomes a hermit in a lighthouse. A sensation-seeking crowd descends on him and wants to make his eccentric behaviour (he ocasionally whips himself when he thinks of Lenina) a spectacle. Enraged, John kills Lenina with the whip and commits suicide.
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