O' Brave New World

O wonder!

How many goodly creatures are there here! How beauteous mankind is! O brave new world! That has such people in it!

1   Brave New World takes place under in a new world unlike one you would have ever thought of. The word family is taboo, sex is now available for all ages, humans are created (incantated) at hatcheries and brainwashed to fit a certain class. There are approximately five social classes: Alpha, Beta, Gamma, Delta and Epsilon. Alpha's are the genius bred class, also the class that has the most free thinkers (which is not good) so there are few created. Beta's are the upper middle educated, they also do jobs that require much knowledge. Gamma, Delta and Epsilon are all the workers and make up more than 80 percent of the population combined. Personal sexual relationships are frowned upon between any class even within the same class.
    The world is not lost to this lifestyle, there are "indian" like reservations sprawled out. These are home to what the citizens of this world order call "savages." The savages retain old religions and culture in a way that would imply there name. They are somewhat violent and don't use birth control so they give birth naturally. This frightens people who visit.
    The story starts out with Bernard, an Alpha plus. He is a psychologist and a genius among his peers. He lacks social skills and his quite often mixed with the lower castes due to his smaller stature. He keeps to himself and has a small circle of friends or "friend" you could say. His friend is Helmholtz Watson, a professor of writing. They relate because of their differences in society. Unlike Bernard, who is smaller and quite Watson is too handsome, too talented, too much of everything.
    The third important character is Lenina, a beta who is not "promiscuous". She tends to hold longer relationships which is scandalous. She is still very popular and socially excepted. She begins to have feelings for Bernard.
   Bernard, wanting to impress Lenina, takes her to a reservation to meet the savages. There they meet a woman who belonged to the World Order. She gave birth to the son of Bernard's boss eighteen years prior after being separated from her tour group and missing her contraceptives. The mother, Linda, is conditioned to sleep around, and is hated by the women of the village for her scandalous nature. This resulted in her son, John, being an outsider. Bernard sees this as an opportunity to sabotage his boss, Thomas, by revealing his son. Linda agrees in an attempt to get back to her old life and to start using soma again (Soma is a drug that is strongly endorsed by the government). John is excited to experience the 'brave new world' his mother always told him about. He reads profusely, but only the books he had available. Those happened to be the bible and the Complete Works of Shakespeare.
    Bernard brings John to his work where he publicly humiliates his boss by showing him Linda and her son. The uproar is further agitated when John calls Thomas father. John becomes a celebrity, bringing a euphoric Bernard along for the short ride. He becomes depressed when John, Helmholtz and Lenina seem to all replace him and he is back to where he was before. John becomes horrified after his mother is dies and is tossed aside like trash and the workers intake in soma publicly. He is set over the edge when Lenina attempts to engage sexually with him and goes to destroy soma rations. The police come after an outraged crowd comes to stop him. Bernard is torn on whether to help and Helmholtz helps without a second thought. The police soma-gas the crowd including John, Bernard and Helmholtz.
   The trio are brought to the World Controller of West Europe where they are told they are going to become outcasts of society. Mustapha, the Controller, tells them that this is not much of a punishment, but a chance to rejoin society as free-thinkers and not influence the population. He reveals that he was given the choice of being a ruler or being an outcast and chose the prior. John and him have a philosophical debate and he tells Mustapha that he must stay to finish his "experiment."
   John takes the life of a hermit in an abandoned lighthouse. To atone for his iniquities he whips him self and poses in a crucifix posture until he passes out. He is seen doing this and draws attention, which dissolves his life as a hermit. People flood to see the "Savage" and even Lenina comes. Lenina, hidden by the crowd, cries and this is not noticed by the enraged savage. John sees Lenina, the woman who planted the seed of bitterness in his heart, and attacks her. The violent act excites the crowd and they begin a soma induced, sex crazed orgy, which John is drugged into. John, utterly defeated and ultimately depressed in this sinful and unforgivable acts. The crowd rushes to the lighthouse the next day to find that John has hung himself.

2 Themes of the book are alienation, or the lack thereof. John is alienated because he is what we would think of as moral. The population is conditioned from birth to never be alienated and have constant company which usually implies sex, this leads us to second theme. The second theme is birth control/social sex. The whole society views the idea of a family or close relations as pornographic, which is ironic. The world makes sure women have constant birth control and leave the reproduction up to the hatcheries. The third theme, and perhaps most prominent, is the danger of an all powerful world power. The world power makes peoples lives so "blissful" that they lose sight of what freedom once was.

3-4 Huxley is extremely fond of parody and satire. You find this when you simply observe how most the characters are off shoots of famous political or scientific characters throughout the last few centuries. One of the main characters, Bernard Marx (just look at the last name), there is Polly Trotsky (Trotsky!!), Darwin Bonaparte (c'mon it is getting to easy), Benito Hoover and so on so forth. Also you will find characters saying "Our Ford" or "Our Freud" which refer to Henry Ford, who created the assembly line. The controlled world base there timeline on the creation of the assembly line. "Our Freud" refers to Sigmond Freud, who was famous for dream psychoanalysis, brain conditioning and sex as a recreational too to acquire happiness. It is noticeable, but not positive that the population may think these two people were one in the same. Both are worshiped as God.