Brave New World
Analysis Notes:
Chapters One
What is a satire?

Satire is a genre of writing that is
intended to mock or ridicule with the
intent to reform. Often, satires are often
misconstrued as ―serious‖ works because
people do not understand the tone.

Huxley will intentionally make this world
seem like a perfect place, a utopia, but the
underlying tone will be one that is
disgusted with this world.
Reminder about the Novel
NEVER
FORGET: The novel is a critique
of the over-enthusiastic embrace of new
scientific discoveries. Also? It’s a satire.
Huxley wants make this world better than
ours to show why WE have to want to be
better than them.
Satire is often misunderstood. People think
it’s ―cool‖. Don’t fall for that trick: Huxley is
attacking anyone who falls for this!

BNW Motto: Community, Identity, Stability.
◦ Community: ALL people matter
◦ Identity: Your job IS your identity.
◦ Stability: The world IS stable.
◦ All three are required to have a world not at
war. However, these three words also have a
deeper implication as we progress through
the novel.

Setting of the novel takes place in London,
England.

Building we are in is the Hatcheries and
Conditioning Centre.
◦ They produce and train the humans here.
◦ Controlled by: Director of Hatcheries and
Conditioning (the DHC)

The caste system starts to be explained.
◦ Double Plus (―extra special‖)
◦ Plus (Higher status)
◦ Minus (Lower status)

The DHC: Alpha Double Plus (Alpha++)
◦ He was born/bred for this job.
◦ He was trained from birth for this job.
◦ That ++ gives him an edge that few others in
this world have.
After thoughts of Chapter 1
The World State holds technology up to
be a form of religion
 There will be warped religious references
throughout the novel as commentary by
Huxley.

◦ Example: the Social Predestinators are like
Calvinist religious leaders. They determine
ones’ job the way Calvinist leaders
determined if individuals were to transcend to
heaven or to hell.

Huxley is commentating about religion:
◦ The use of religion in our world (despite any
background you may or may not have) is
about finding unity and harmony. It’s about
innocence and purity.
◦ In BNW, it is far from innocent. Technology is
the pillar of stability for the World State
totalitarian control.
 Think of the DHC: He claims that ―social stability‖
is the highest of social goals – to be stable is what
we should all want to be.
 Instead of ―stable‖, consider the word ―innocent‖.

The DHC believes that…
◦ Using predestination and rigorous
conditioning, individuals accept their given
roles in society without question. How could
they? They don’t know any other type of life.

The caste structure is created and maintained
using specific tools to allow the most powerful
members of the World State (the ruling Alpha
caste) to solidify and justify unequal
distribution of power and status.

Meaning:You are what they make you, and you
do this without question to allow others more
power.

Upper class/Alpha’s make the most money and
therefore decide all the rules. Lower class/Epsilon’s
make the least money and have the least political
power, and therefore follow the rules of others.
Social Conditioning

―Inescapable Social Destiny‖ – by creating
and conditioning individuals for a specific
role in society, stability in ensured.

―Progress‖ never happens. You are
programmed to perform a certain task or
function, you never learn something new
and you believe that doing so is ―beneath‖
you.
Huxley’s Commentary

Think back to the Community, Identity,
Stability.
◦ Stability is ensured because no one can or will
challenge the rules. They do not know there
is another way of life.

Satirical intent: Huxley says that stability is
admired, but stability can be used for the
wrong means for the wrong ends.
THEME of Chapter 1

The production of humans in the
Hatchery versus the production of
consumer goods on an assembly line.
◦ Everything is maximized for business potential.
It’s about efficiency and profit.
◦ Supply and Demand: the Predestinators
will determine how many caste members will
be needed, and then the Hatchery produces
those numbers.
Assembly Line/Hatchery

The key function of the assembly line for
success is that every part is identical and
interchangeable.
◦ The steering column of a 1908 Model T fits onto the
steering column of any current Model T.
◦ In BNW, people are bred to be clones. They are
identical and interchangeable. I could kill one and
replace it with another without any real loss.
Gamma’s, Delta’s, Epsilon’s

Subjected to more anonymity
◦ Alpha’s and Beta’s are ―decanted‖ without
artificial intervention. But the other castes
are subject to a variety of interventions to
lower their function ability.
◦ Meaning: To be an Alpha or Beta allows you to
retain some level of individuality and creativity.
This is denied to lower castes.
2nd THEME of Chapter 1

BNW citizens are still human, however
some humans are allowed to be more
human than others.
◦ This is not a choice though. You are made
into what they want and need.
COMMUNITY, IDENTITY,
STABILITY: All are
incomparably linked.
Stability is the biggest
feature though. The world
is stable without war or
financial crisis due to the
identities of the
community. Without a
upper and lower class,
there is no stability.
IDENTITY
COMMUNITY
STABILITY
Chapter 2….
The next chapter will focus on the additional
scientific discoveries and will further explain how the
caste system does provide some form of stability.
Chapter Two
The first half of the students' tour,
described in the previous section,
illustrates the World State's abuse of
biological science in conditioning its
citizens.
 Chapter Two focuses on the use of
psychological technologies to control the
future behavior of World State citizens.

Chapter Two
Conditioning, combined with prenatal
treatment, creates individuals without
individuality: each one is programmed
to behave exactly like the next
 This system allows for social stability,
economic productivity within narrow
constraints, and a society dominated by
unthinking obedience and infantile
behavior

Chapter Two
 The
conditioning technique used to instill a
dislike for flowers and books in infants is
modeled after the research of Ivan Pavlov, a
Russian scientist.
◦ Pavlov demonstrated that dogs could be trained
to salivate at the ringing of a bell if the sound was
consistently visually associated with food.
◦ This led to the observation that other kinds of
responses could also be conditioned.
◦ By applying Pavlovian theory to human infants,
the state literally programs human beings to
uphold the status quo.
Chapter Two

The conditioning also drives the
population to support the capitalist
economic system.
◦ Because the World State wants children to be
loyal consumers as adults, the importance of
the individual is diminished in order to further
the interests of the larger community.
Chapter Two

Even during their off-work hours, World
State citizens serve the interests of
production and, therefore, the interests of
the whole economy and society, by
consuming transportation and expensive
sporting equipment.
◦ Any opportunity for individual, idiosyncratic
behavior that might not feed the economy is
eliminated.
Chapter Three
 The
Director and Mustapha Mond explain to
the boys how the World State works in an
abstract way, it’s all to serve a method to
illustrate how the traditional taboos
regarding sexuality have been discarded
◦ The interspliced scenes of Lenina and Bernard
show the society in action
◦ The sexual play of the children at recess
◦ The boys' discomfort at the word ―mother‖
◦ Lenina's relaxed nakedness,
◦ The conversation between Henry and the
Predestinator
Chapter Three
Bernard is the sole character to protest—almost
silently—the way the system works.
 His discomfort with the commodification of sex
marks him as a misfit.




Bernard's dissatisfaction with the State stems from his own
isolation within it, introducing Bernard with the words
―Those who feel themselves despised do well to look
despising.‖
Bernard may be a rebel, but that rebellion does not come
from any ideological objection to the World State.
It comes from a sense that he might never fully belong to
that society. This facet of Bernard's character will be
brought into play as the novel progresses.
Chapter Three
Aside from the prenatal and postnatal
conditioning, the World State controls the
behavior of its members through the
forces of social conformity and social
criticism.
 In the first three chapters alone, we’ve
seen it countless of times

Chapter Three
 Consider:
◦ Lenina's friend Fanny warns her that the Director does
not like it when Hatchery workers fail to conform to the
expected promiscuity standards.
◦ Even as an adult, a World State citizen must fear being seen
doing something ―shameful‖ or ―abnormal.‖
◦ The adult citizen has no private life. As Lenina notes, the
only thing that one does when one is alone in the World
State is sleep, and one can't do that forever.
◦ In and out of the office, the adult citizen is under
surveillance to ensure that his or her body and mind are
following the World State's moral value system.
◦ Both peers and superiors, like Fanny and the Director, are
constantly watching to ensure that each citizen is behaving
appropriately.
Chapter Three
In
the recap of the history of the World
State, Mustapha Mond blames the
previously sacred institutions of family,
love, motherhood, and marriage for
causing social instability in the old society.
◦ These institutions create conflict between the
individual's interests and the interests of
society with the State, but the personal
institutions and State institutions were
themselves out of alignment, creating
instability.
Chapter Three

Individuals cannot always be relied upon
to choose the path of most stability since
family, love, and marriage produce divided
allegiances.
◦ Freely acting individuals must constantly weigh
the moral value and the moral consequences
of their actions.
◦ Example dilemma: you are married, but are in
love another with another person. It creates
conflict.
Chapter Three
 Mond
argues that the divided allegiances of
individuals produce social instability.
◦ For this reason, the World State has eliminated all
traces of non-State institutions.
◦ The citizen is socialized to only have an allegiance to
the State: personal connections of all sorts are
discouraged, and even the desire to develop such
connections is conditioned away.
◦ The constant availability of physical satisfaction
evident in the feelies, the abundance of soma, the easy
attainment of sex through state sanctioned
promiscuity, and the lack of any historical knowledge
that might point to an alternate way of life, ensure
that the way of life developed and instituted by the
World State will not be threatened.
Chapter Three

Consumption and the importance of the
within the society
◦ Mond and the Director are talking about
creating a population that will always want
more—a captive market created by
conditioning that will want whatever goods
the World State produces.
◦ This culture of constant consumption allows
the Government to act as a supplier,
propelling the economy and creating a happy
community dependent on its supplier.
Chapter Three
 Economically…
the economy does not only
include money and goods.
◦ Everything, including sex, operates according to
the logic of supply and demand.
◦ Citizens are taught to view one another, and
themselves, as commodities to be consumed like
any other manufactured good.
◦ Bernard rebels against this sentiment when he
notes that Henry and the Predestinator view
Lenina as a ―piece of meat‖—and that Lenina
thinks of herself the same way.
◦ Consumption as a way of life is never justified by the
World State; it is taken as a way of life.
Chapter Three

―History is bunk‖
◦ Mond tells the history of the World State,
which shows that Mond and the other nine
World Controllers have a monopoly on
historical knowledge, ensuring their position
of power.
Chapter Three
 Mond, and
the World Controllers, have
conditioned us to believe that ―history is
bunk.‖
◦ Because we, the humans, are trained to see
history as worthless, they are trapped in the
present, unable to imagine alternative ways of life.
◦ It is unclear why Mond takes the time to explain
the history of the World State to the boys,
though it certainly is a convenient way of
explaining a possible pathway from the reader's
world to that of the World State.