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Aldous Huxley: Brave New Worldr /
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Aldous Huxley. Brave New World. Hong Kong: Longman Group Limited: 1932
The Author Aldous Huxley:
07/26/1894: Aldous Huxley was born Godalming, Surrey
1908-13: Eton Collage Berkshire
1910: suffered an attack of keratitis punctata (an eye disease resulting in near blindness)
ātotally blind for a period about 18 months
1913-15: Balliol Collage, Oxford
1916: first collection on poetry appeared
1919: married Maria Nys (their child was born the year after)
1932: Brave New World was first published
1937: moved to the USA believing that the Californian climate would help his eyesight
1958: Brave New World Revised appeared
11/22/1963: died in Los Angeles (at the same day President Kennedy was killed)
Other Works: Crome Yellow (1921), Point Counter Point (1928) Island (1962)
Main Characters:
- Bernard Marx: loves Lenina Crowne; untypical Alpha Plus (very small); more independent thinking as a result of feeling separate; outsider; close friend of Helmholtz Watson.
- The Director of Hatcheries and Conditioning (DHC): humiliated by the arrival of Linda and John the Savage and resigns in disgrace.
- Helmholtz Watson: Alpha-Plus with too much intelligence; also an outsider; friend of Bernard; writes a poem which gets him in trouble.
- His Fordship Mustapha Mond: Resident Controller for Western Europe and one of the Ten World Controllers; makes the rules for society and decides what may be published.
- Lenina Crowne: beautiful woman; goes out with Bernard Marx to the Savage Reservations; tries to sleep with the Savage (who is unwilling); unclear whether she is killed or not.
- Linda: mother of the Savage; the DHC brought her to the reservation; alcoholic; consumes too much soma and dies soon thereafter.
- John "The Savage": son of the DHC and Linda; born on the; excluded from Indian rituals; went to London; falls in love with; runs away from the society; hunted down by a mob of sightseers; commit suicide.
Short Summary:
- Life has changed: there is only one "World State" ruled by "Controllers"; babies were "produced" in bottles and are conditioned for their later use; people are divided into five groups (Alphas, Betas, Gammas, Deltas, Epsilons)
- Bernard and Lenina go to an reservation and meet John whose mother is from the new world
- They take John and his mother with them to confront Bernard's Boss, the DHC, with John who is his son
- In the new world John and the ugly old woman Linda become an immediate sensation
- Linda begins to take Soma and dies of an overdose
- John gets disappointed with Bernard and Helmholtz's behaviour so that he stopped talking to them and become very angry
- Bernard introduces John to several very important people, John hates to have so many people around with not a single minute of silence but Marx enjoys being in the limelight
- When the most important people come to talk with John the Savage, he refuses to see themā Helmholtz, Bernard and John the Savage are ordered to Mustapha Mond, the controller of Europe
- They talk about free-thinking an the drug soma and because the three rebels, can't agree with Mustapha Mond he sends Helmholtz and Bernard to islands and John out of London to an old tower building
- John looses contact with Bernard and Helmholtz, begins a new life in the old tower and remembered what he had learned in the reservation
- But the people don't leave him in peace and return with noisy helicopters so that John becomes seriously aggressive and shoots at them ā the people keep distance from John
- The people and the radio reporters lose interest in the Savage until the day when a movie called "The Savage of Surrey" is shown in the cinemasā interested people come to see the Savage
That's too much for John. He committed suicide |
