The major characters of the New World are all, in some way, unique. The New World conditioning does not guarantee happiness for allĭespite the early conditioning to poison, stimulate, or sleep-teach “moral education”, fitting each ‘type’ of embryo/child for its eventual job and lifestyle, human individuality persists (Huxley, 1965, p. This occurs despite repeated messages that “All men are physicochemically equal” (Huxley, 1965, p. For example “eighty-three almost noseless black brachycephalic Deltas were cold-pressing” (Huxley, 1965, p. 206).Įveryone throughout society also expresses, unquestioningly, the scientific racism that values people according to external physical characteristics.

97) As another example, Bernard is “profoundly squeamish” at John’s distress (Huxley, 1965, p. She says, “If it hadn’t been for you…I might have gotten away.” (Huxley, 1965, p.

Linda has no feeling for her weeping son. However, it appears in ways not perhaps foreseen by the Controllers.įor example, early conditioning against dirt and illness eliminates sympathy, by the majority of New Worlders, for anyone’s suffering. It is encouraged, as caste consciousness, by sleep teaching. Prejudice against the ‘other’, by whatever name, remains. This ended after a mere six years in “a first-class civil war” (Huxley, 1965, p. An example is a disastrous experiment with an all-Alpha settlement. Our tendency to fight, and do dumb things, resists the government’s plans. Human nature persists, despite efforts to control it. Lenina overlooks a trypanosomiasis treatment, and the resulting sleeping sickness death is the “first in half a century” (Huxley, 1965, p. 84)ĭisease, another natural process, stalks any un-inoculated individual. These are described as follows: “We preserve them from diseases.” The government keeps “ their internal secretions… balanced.” They control “ their magnesium-calcium ratio.” They transfuse “ young blood.” The result: “ Youth almost unimpaired till sixty, and then, crack! The end.” (Huxley, 1965, p. Death, a force of nature, remains inescapable.Īging, another natural process, still occurs, as senility, despite advanced interventions. 27).Īs another example, the government beautifies the “Park Lane Hospital for the Dying”, offers painkillers, and performs “wholesome death conditioning” on children (Huxley, 1965, pp. Despite unlimited pregnancy-free sex, women feel better after a “pregnancy substitute” (Huxley, 1965, p. 120), natural forces still exert their influence.įor example, the urge to procreate remains. Despite the New World government’s determination to direct everything, including via “the Weather Department’s captive balloon” shining “rosily in the sunshine” (Huxley, 1965, p. 632 are still a part of nature, with all of nature’s contradiction, capacity for rebirth, and vulnerability. No matter how completely the government seeks to manage the population, the citizens are still human. Human attempts to re-make the world are, in Huxley’s view, a risky business. His vision of the future is of a fragile fabric of control holding down a world that has sacrificed a great deal but resists mightily. Elsewhere, Huxley communicates both his distaste for his contemporary world and the dangers of trying to improve it, in subtle, often humorous jibes. His musings express Huxley’s skepticism of the effectiveness of global management. This quotation is Mustapha Mond’s response to a manuscript on the “mathematical treatment of the conception of purpose” (Huxley, 1965, p. He picked up his pen again, and under the words, “Not to be published” drew a second line, thicker and blacker than the first then sighed, “What fun it would be,” he thought, “if one didn’t have to think about happiness!” (Huxley, 1965, p. Which was, the Controller reflected, quite possibly true? But not, in the present circumstance, admissible. It was the sort of idea that might easily decondition the more unsettled minds among the higher castes–make them lose their faith in happiness as the Sovereign Good and take to believing, instead, that the goal was somewhere beyond, somewhere outside the present human sphere, that the purpose of life was not the maintenance of well-being, but some intensification and refining of consciousness, some enlargement of knowledge. But once you began admitting explanations in terms of purpose–well, you didn’t know what the result might be.

Brave new world quotes and analysis