ClassyU

Tuesday, February 11, 2014

Brave New World by Aldous Huxley Notes

Tone: Satirical
Setting: London, Britain 
Theme: dangers of an all powerful world; the advancement of science as it affects human individuals

Foreword:
-never regret your mistakes; learn from them
-Savage's two alternatives: an insane life in Utopia or the life of a primitive in an Indian Villiage
-Huxley would give him a 3rd alternative if he could go back= live in a community of exiles and refugees from the Brave New World
-book about future about how the future can interest us only if its prophecies look if they were to come true
-book has no reference to nuclear fissions

Chapters 1-2:
-setting: London
-World State's Motto: "Community, Identity, and Stability"
-Director gives new students a tour while they take notes
-Incubators hold eggs and sperm
-Bokanovsky's Process= for Gammas, Deltas, and Epsilons that makes one fertilized egg divide until you get 96 humans and then are poisoned with alcohol until near death
-advantage of hundreds of identical people=social stability
-freemartins: sterile females,
-Alphas (top class)>Epsilons (bottom; stupid because they are engineered to be by oxygen deprivation and alcohol treatments)
-men are conditioned to love whatever job they do (men in mine in tropics hate cold and men who hang upside down to do rocket repairs are only happy when upside down)
-Mr. Foster (who has explained some of this) has a 'thing' with Lena one of the nurses
-in the infant nurseries the nurses set out bowls of roses and books for the kids to play with  but they are electrified so they will have no interest in flowers or books
-Director tells a story about "Our Ford" a boy named Reuben Rabinovitch and his parents played a tape about the Nile River and when they asked him what it was he still didn't know he could just repeat it word-for-word
-Director had to explain what parents were and it is a vulgar word as is "Mom" and "Dad"
-Analogy: Water can wear through rock over time but the lessons that are repeated over and over during sleep aren't like water but like wax; they pile up on the rock and harden until the rock is one big crusty blob
-Alphas (grey) > Betas (mulberry) > Gammas (green) > Deltas (khaki) > Epsilons (black)
-Class consciousness is where recorded voices whisper to sleeping children... Hypnopaedia


Chapter 3:
-little kids are engaging in sexual games and the Director tells the students of a time when people weren't allowed to
-Mustapha Mond is one of the ten "World Controllers" and is nicknamed "his fordship"
-rumors he keeps a safe with bibles and poetry
-The Controller tells the students what a "home" was and about emotions and one kid almost gets sick
-Fanny is introduced; one of Lenina's friends
-Bernard is introduced; one of Henry's friends and an Alpha
-Fanny is shocked Lenina is going to meet up with Henry again and has dated him for 4 years
-Monogamy is good; pre-Ford monogamy doesn't make sense because everyone should belong to everyon
-This keeps everyone's emotions stable and you need individual stability because it leads to stability and without it everyone will die
-Lenina says she is interested in Bernard but Fanny is concerned because he spends too much time alone; and he is shy around her; but she will accept his invitation to a date to the Savage Reservation
-Fanny says there's rumors someone accidentally injected him with alcohol
-Fanny compliments Lenina on get belt of contraceptives from Henry
-Bernard thinks everyone is an idiot for repeating the same things over and over; he wants to punch some guys who talk about Lenina as if she were a piece of meat
-Nine Years' war brought devastating chemical and biological warfare and people had no choice but to accept world control as the only solution
-Controller says after illegal substances they need to conquer old age so men can work their whole lives without worrying about retirement which is dangerous because it leads to thinking
-Controller- "Suffer little children." like Jesus's famous quote "Suffer the little children unto me."

Chapter 4:
 -Lenina talks about her plans with Bernard out loud and he blushes and doesn't want to talk in front of others
-an Epsilon-Minus-Semi-Moron gets tot he roof of the elevator and goes "Ah the roof the roof" over and over (programmed to only be happy when he gets to the roof)
-Lenina declares how she hates khaki (aka she is glad she's not a Gamma)
-Bernard is sad that Lenina talked about their date in public because he though she would be different
-Bernard has a flaw= he is short like the Delta-Minus workers; he is suppose to be tall like Alphas
-there's a newspaper for each class of people except Epsilons (they can't read???)
-we meet Helmholtz Watson who is an Alpha-Plus and lectures at College of Emotional Engineering; super smart so he feels like an outsider like Bernard
-Helmholtz says he is dissatisfied and wants something more but he doesn't know what; he asks Bernard if he has ever felt like there was something inside waiting to come out like a feeling to say something important (foreshadowing maybe??)
-Helmholtz says words are like x-rays because they can pierce through anything and he thinks he can do something more instense and more violent if only he knew what
-Bernard tells him to be quiet and check to make sure nobody was listening in

Chapters 5 & 6:
-Henry and Lenina fly back home after golf and there are adult corpses that are burned with no rituals to help plants grow 
-Henry says everyone is equal chemically and jokes even Epsilons are useful and Lenina says she is glad shes not an Epsilon but Henry says it's because of her status and if she were one she'd be happy about it
-Soma is the drug they all take
-when click strikes 9 it says "Ford, Ford, Ford..." 9 times
-Bernard goes to a meeting and they listen to music, take soma, and chant a song 12 times
-Bernard isn't in the mood even though he took soma and he is more miserable than he has ever been
- Bernard is an Alpha-Plus psychologist
-Lenina accepts Bernard's invitation to go to Savage Reservation in New Mexico but she is horrified by it while Bernard is fascinated and he wishes he could be "free" which freaks Lenina out
-When Bernard requests permission to go to Savage Director starts thinking aloud about a time when he met a women but she got lost and he left without her
-Director embarrassed and reprimands Bernard and tells him he doesn't like his behavior and he better stop or he will be sent to Iceland
-Helmholtz like Bernard to talk to but he thinks he is too proud and has too much self-pity
-On helicopter ride Lenina talks Bernard into taking 4 soma tablets (that's a lot for them)

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