Aldous Huxley and the Brave New World

This paper is about the famous dystopian novel of the 20th century, “Brave New World” and how the life of its author, Aldous Huxley, his personality, perceptions and beliefs have influenced the themes and styles he used in the novel. “A wide-ranging intellectual … made the world his province, and … did it with consummate clarity and grace.

” (Obernauer 1)This was how biographer Nicholas Murray described Alex Leonard Huxley (1894-1963), a renowned English novelist, essayist and poet. Born from the famous Huxley family of elite intellectuals both in literature and science, Aldous lived up to his family name and made a mark in the literary world.He authored “11 novels, 23 volumes of essays and letters, six short-story collections, six books of verse, three works of drama, three travel books, and two biographies and many other essays”. (Obernauer 1) Many called him a pacifist, a humanist, a guru, a psychiatrical mysticist, but he was most known as the author of the famous dystopian novel, “Brave New World” written in 1932.Huxley grew up with the pressures of keeping to his family’s reputation. He had the intellectual capability and performed well in school but at age 16, he contracted “keratitis punctata” (Obernauer 1) an illness that affected his vision profoundly and made him near blind for the rest of his life.

Huxley’s handicap could have greatly influenced his writings.It was said that he was not allowed to join the army to fight in the war. He was laughed at because he was almost blind. This bad experience among others could have led to his interest in the field of medicine and developed his passion for hallucinogenic drugs like LSD and mescaline.

“I have always felt a powerful craving for light,” (Obenauer 1) Biographer Murray quoted Huxley. There are possibly deeper meanings to Huxley’s search for light.  His darkness must have caused the creation of that concept of the brave new world where people were blinded to the real nature of life.Aldous Huxley’s brilliance in the way he made his dialogues, his cynicism and social criticisms made him very popular. Thus, the Brave New World which he wrote in 1932 shocked the world when he introduced his chilling dystopian concept of what the world would be in the future.Though it was supposed to be a fiction novel, the story was nightmare to its readers.

“Brave New World is an unsettling, loveless and even sinister place. This is because Huxley endows his "ideal" society with features calculated to alienate his audience.” (Pearce 1)In 1938, he published “After Many a Summer Dies the Swan”, which according to Murray was the finest work of Huxley. This book was also an echo of the Brave New World; it was about a person who struggled to achieve immortality through scientific experimentation, somebody who sacrificed humanity and was reduced to animal state. (Aldous Huxley: The Author and His Times 2)In many of Huxley’s early works, he showed his readers his excellent skills in literary writings, creative ideas and imagination.

Despite many criticisms in his works, especially in the Brave New World, Aldous Huxley was considered one of the “most fashionable literary figures of his time”. (Aldous Huxley: The Author and His Times 2)Brave New World“The price of universal happiness will be the sacrifice of the most hallowed shibboleths of our culture: motherhood, home, family, freedom, even love.” (Pearce 1) This was David Pearce’s reaction to how Huxley treated his dystopic world. “Our Ford” (Smith 1), the US President referred to as god, was one of the cynical metaphors Huxley used in the book.

This is possible reflection of Huxley’s opposition against the US leadership.Many wanted a good and happy life, free of problems, free of obligations. Huxley must have written this novel to express his need to be free of the obligations he had for his family. Huxley presented the future of the world through his novel Brave New World., a world that readers would dread to have.

In this dystopic world, children were genetically made in bottles instead of conceived and nurtured in the mother’s womb; people were classified in terms of intellect and looks, from Alphas who were almost perfect to the Epsilons who were morons and ugly.Learning was through conditioning, as in Pavlov’s classical conditioning theory, and behavioral patterns were developed through suggestion and done while people were sleeping. (Smith 1) People were supposed to be carefree, healthy and technologically advanced.Warfare and poverty were eliminated, races were equal and everybody was happy. The price paid was the elimination of individuality, family, even cultural diversity, art, literature, religion and most importantly, nature.

Nobody imagined even Huxley himself that his fairy tale story in “Brave New World” would soon be close to reality. After the publication of the book, World War II came and Hitler made his mark in history and Huxley decided to turn away from fiction, write about reality and express his own views about religion, science and philosophy.He then released Brave New World Revisited (1958) where he talked about real-life problems and ideas; of “over-population, over-organization, and psychological techniques from salesmanship to hypnopaedia, or sleep-teaching” (Adlous Huxley: The Author and His Times 2). The essay was also a confirmation of the many predictions made in the fiction version 25 years earlier.