Brave New World Themes

Given its reputation, you’ve likely heard of Aldous Huxley’s Brave New World – even if you haven’t read it. (Here’s a helpful summary if you’re interested.) Published in 1932, Huxley’s dystopian (utopian?) novel presents a technologically advanced society organized into a rigid biological caste system. The book’s critique of media, drugs, and authority are more important than ever. This article will walk you through some of the themes of Brave New World and show how relevant Huxley’s vision is to our society today.  All my quotes are from the Gutenberg Project’s searchable Brave New World.  

Interested in an analysis of Brave New World quotes? Check out our blog on The Most Important Lines Explained.

Brave New World Themes – Science & Technology 

Brave New World (1932) depicts a technologically advanced “utopia” (and, at the same time, a dystopia) where personal helicopters are common, multisensory pornography is widespread, and rocket planes take you non-stop from London to New Orleans in six hours. (Remember that transatlantic passenger travel wouldn’t be a reality for at least a decade after Brave New World was published.) At first glance, technology seems a benign force in the New World State – however, as we’ll see, technology always serves the economic status quo rather than progress. 

Reproductive Technology

Most of the World State’s technological advancements are focused on embryonic manipulation and social conditioning of children. Through the manipulation of embryos and the conditioning of children, the World State produces precisely the correct amount of Alphas, Betas, Gammas, Deltas, and Epsilons to keep their economy humming along. (It’s no accident that the text begins in the Central London Hatchery and Conditioning Centre.) Each embryo is altered and conditioned according to the economic needs of society – Alphas for intelligence and leadership, Betas for high-level secretarial and scientific work (e.g., working in the hatchery), Gammas, Deltas, and Epsilons for varying types of manual labor.

Central to the World State’s reproductive technology is the Bokanofsky process, by which a single embryo is split into large groups of Gamma, Delta, or Epsilon twins. In the words of Mustapha Mond (World Controller of Western Europe), these workers are “the gyroscope that stabilizes the rocket plane of state on its unswerving course.” 

Hypnopaedia 

Hypnopaedia is the subliminal “sleep-learning” by which the World State forms the morality of their citizens. (Examples include “A gramme [of soma] is always better than a damn;” “Everybody’s happy nowadays;” “Everyone works for every one else;” “When the individual feels, the community reels”.) Children listen to thousands upon thousands of these banal maxims in early childhood. These slogans function as ideological balm in moments of stress or conflict. 

Lenina Crowne is a veritable firehose of hypnopaedic “wisdom.” For example, as she and Bernard are coming back from their first date, Bernard hovers his helicopter a hundred or so feet above the waves and declares that the sea makes him feel more like an individual. To this heresy, Leninia attempts to assert her hypnopaedic training (“…every one works for every one else…”), but Bernard cuts her off. This moment illustrates the real function of hypnopaedic learning.

Bernard’s insistence on his own individuality represents a societally destabilizing force – a force which Lenina attempts to counter with hypnopaedic pablum. We can see that hypnopaedic learning buttresses the status quo in moments of conflict or doubt. Individuals don’t ever have to think – they can just fall back on a bit of hypnopaedic wisdom. This aligns with an earlier quote from the director of the hatchery. He refers to, “Moral education, which ought never, in any circumstances, to be rational.”

Brave New World Themes (Continued)

Limits to Science and Technology

While this new world seems to be supportive of science and technological innovation, the fact is that the New World State only supports those discoveries that support and maintain the status quo. For example, in chapter 12, we see Mustapha Mond reading a new scientific article titled, “A New Theory of Biology.” While he acknowledges that the article is “a masterly piece of work,” he bans its publication, as it “might easily de-condition the more unsettled minds among the higher castes.” What’s more, he orders the author to be put under supervision, and wonders to himself whether the author might have to be forcibly exiled. 

Mond is even more explicit later in the book. When John, Bernard, and Helmholtz have been arrested and brought to the office of the World Controller, Mond admits the purpose of science isn’t progress but rather stability. He says, “Every change is a menace to stability” – as a result, “we have to keep it [science] most carefully chained and muzzled.” It turns out that before Mustapha Mond was a World Controller, he was a brash young scientist who dared to push the bounds of acceptable thought. When accused of heresy, Mond was given the choice between exile or a seat on the Controller’s Council – he chose the latter. 

Brave New World Themes – History / Time

The Eternal Present of the New World State

In the first chapter of Brave New World, Mustapha Mond makes a puzzling statement about history. Recall that Mond shows up while The Director of the Central London Hatchery and Conditioning Center is giving a tour to future workers. Delivering an ad hoc lecture, Mond declares that “History is bunk.” Considering the history that he relays – chemical warfare, viviparous births, poverty and squalor – Mond’s assertion is understandable. Compared to the pacified happiness of the New World State, the violence of the past could certainly be considered “bunk.” 

At the same time, this relationship to history says something more basic about this society’s relationship to time. In order to maintain societal stability, a sort of eternal present is insisted upon. Consider one of the bits of hypnopaedic “wisdom” that Lenina Crowne recites. She and Bernard are on their way to the reservation when Bernard receives news that the Director of the Hatchery is cross with him. Confronted with Bernard’s worry, Lenina declares, ‘Was and will make me ill…I take a gramme [of soma] and only am.” In the end, Lenina convinces Bernard to take some soma, at which point, “roots and fruits were abolished; the flower of the present rosily blossomed.” (In some ways, the eternal present of Brave New World is similar to that of Orwell’s 1984 – I’ve written about it here.)

Brave New World Themes (Continued)

“Savage” Time

John’s understanding of time is quite different. Unlike Lenina, Bernard, and the rest of the citizens of the New World State, John’s childhood wasn’t filled with thousands of hypnopaedic axioms glorifying the present. We can see John’s relation to time in one of the stories he tells when Bernard visits the reservation. John tells Bernard about his attempt to participate in the coming-of-age ceremony of his tribe. The men refuse to let him participate and throw rocks at him. Alone on the mesa, blood drips from his wrist. We read, “Drop, drop, drop. To-morrow and to-morrow and to-morrow…” It is at this moment that John discovers “Time and Death and God.”

We can see here how John’s understanding of time differs from that of the citizens of the New World State. (Even the coming-of-age ceremony differentiates time in a way that would be completely foreign to Bernard and Lenina.) In this moment, John’s body – site of exclusionary violence – becomes a kind of clock whereby John understands the slow temporality of exclusion as well as the eventuality of his own death. These two terms – exclusion and death – mean almost nothing to the citizens of the World State. How can they, when “every one belongs to every one else” and “the social body persists although the component cells may change”?

Brave New World Themes – God

We discussed John’s discovery of “Time and Death” in the aftermath of his rejection from the coming-of-age ceremony, but we haven’t yet discussed his discovery of God. It’s understandable why time and death go hand-in-hand with God. In the moment that Jon feels most alone – rejected by the only community he’s ever known, aware of his eventual death – it’s natural that he becomes open to something other than himself. Whether inspired by the sublime beauty of the natural world or the eternity of his eventual death, John feels the presence of something beyond himself. 

This aligns with John’s later conversation with Mustapha Mond on the nature of the divine. Mond quotes Cardinal Newman’s explanation for the naturalness of faith. Newman argues that as the bodily passions wane, people naturally search for something stable, “something that abides, something that will never play us false.” John asks if Mond thinks there is a God and Mond says that he believes there likely is. Seeing his confusion, Mond adds that in a society in which the bodily passions never wane – sex, sports, and soma – citizens of the New World State have no use for Newman’s God. 

Brave New World Themes – Revolution

Brave New World is decidedly ambivalent as to the possibility of revolution. On the surface, the New Word State seems extremely stable. The existence of so many Gammas, Delta’s and Epsilons would seem to provide structural inertia that is hard to overcome. Recall that John’s efforts to foment revolution by throwing away boxes of soma fails laughably. As Mond points out, the lower caste workers have no more interest in revolution than they do in Shakespeare. 

By the end, we see why – anyone who dares think for themselves is sent to one of the world’s many islands. In other words, while the government of the New World State seems like it eschews violence, there is the ever-present threat of exile. At the same time, the fact that people are allowed exile (instead of being vaporized a la Big Brother), creates reservoirs of potential revolutionary ideas.   

Wrapping Up – Brave New World Themes

With its presentation of a soma-soaked “utopia,” Huxley’s Brave New World is as relevant today as it was when it was published. Its trenchant critique of consumerism and superficial pleasures is a prescient commentary on our social media-obsessed society. Additionally, like 1984, Brave New World is a depressing read. Given John’s suicide and Bernard’s exile, I don’t think we can call it an uplifting book. At the same time, the fact that the New World State can’t quite manage to stamp out individual desire with their scientific machinations suggests that meaningful revolution remains possible. If you’d like to read more of my posts on literature, I’ve also written on Hamlet, The Great Gatsby, and 1984.