Shams Abou el enein

5E

English

Science and Literature in the Brave New World

Plan :

1. Science in the Brave New World 1. Stability 2. Fordism 3. In the Savage Reservation 4. Religion 5. Conclusion 2. Literature in the Brave New World 1. The Bureaux of Propaganda College of Emotional Engineering 2. In the Savage Reservation 3. John has read Shakespeare 4. Helmohltz Watson 5. Mustapha Mond 6. Conclusion & Openings

Shams Abou el enein

5E Science in the Brave New World

English

All revolutions have tried to change the environment in order to change the individuals. In Brave New World Huxley shows the final revolution, the ultimate revolution, where men can act directly on the mind and the body of their fellows. He states his book as The advancement of science as it affects human individuals.. That means that science is very important in Brave New World. Stability The result of the campaign against the past, is a lack of culture. Only the Directors and few elicited persons have the knowledge to control birth, thinking, acting and death of everybody. That's why there is no freedom, people are conditioned to do what they have to do, and if an individual was conditioned to think, to act or to react in a particular way to a particular stimulus, then free will would have been abolished. That means that the Brave New World is based on conditioning and hypnopedia. It doesn't mean that people aren't happy ! On the contrary, they are all happy, and glad to be where they are. In chap. 1 the Director says : All conditioning aims at that : making people like their unescapable destiny. That sentence is really interesting. It shows every main aspect of the Brave New World. First, every body is conditioned. Secondly, the BNW is not organized in a way that makes everybody happy, but every individual is conditioned to be happy with what he has. And the third aspect, probably the most important, they don't have choice. They are happy in the Brave New World, and that's it. But science is more than the foundation of the society, it is a way of life. To understand this, we have to know more about Henry FORD. Fordism Each inhabitant of the Brave New world knows who Ford is. He is one of most important figures of the Brave New World. There are a lot of similitudes with Jesus himself. For example, The Director often makes the T sign (that probably comes from the car with which Henry Ford became famous : the Ford T), and their calender starts the day of Ford's birth. (The events take place in the year A.F. 632, that makes approximately 2495 a.J.-C. ) But who is this amazing person ? Henry Ford (July 30, 1863 April 7, 1947) was an American industrialist, the founder of the Ford Motor Company, and sponsor of the development of the assembly line technique of mass production. His introduction of the Model T automobile revolutionized transportation and American industry. As owner of the Ford Motor Company, he became one of the richest and best-known people in the world. He is

Shams Abou el enein

5E

English

credited with Fordism: mass production of inexpensive goods coupled with high wages for workers. Ford had a global vision, with consumerism as the key to peace. His intense commitment to systematically lowering costs resulted in many technical and business innovations, including a franchise system that put dealerships throughout most of North America and in major cities on six continents. -Wikipedia1He also introduced the five-dollars work day for his workers. Of course that makes them happy to work for him, but it also prevents from resignation and makes them more productive. Another of his inventions was welfare capitalism, also called industrial paternalism. Like in the Brave New World, he controlled all the people who were working for him. He asked them not to smoke and money games were forbidden. He had a private police, who was controlling them. In the Brave New World, people are also totally controlled and have no private life. Henry FORD was also against labor union, because he believed that he was able to chose the best for his employees. Again, in the Brave New World, the World Controllers have the same ideas. They control everything for everybody, even private life. The perfect example is in chapter one, where this huge production line which could look like a Ford's factory is described. Every worker is happy to work there, but at the same time, they are all under the control of the Director. In the Savage Reservation In the Savage reservation, it's just the opposite. There is no science, only practical knowledge. They teach what they have to know through generations, but only have empiric knowledge. They don't use science to explain things, but have mystical explanations. They are a small ethnic group and who don't need scientific explanations or anything else. Region Those two conceptions are totally in opposition. In the Brave New World, there is no god because he was replaced by science. In the Savage Reservation, there is no science, but they have a big faith in god and mystical things. In my opinion, Huxley wants to show us that both extremes are bad. In one case because it annihilates every social relationship and in the other because it creates a society with no possibility of development. Conclusion Brave New World is Huxley's warning. Knowledge is power. The one who controls and uses knowledge wields the power. Science and technology should be servants of man, man should not be adapted and enslaved to them.

1 http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Henry_Ford 8.12.2011

Shams Abou el enein

5E Literature in the Brave New World

English

We have seen that science and knowledge are very important in the Brave New World. But, it stays in the hand of a few World Controllers who are looking for the stability of the society. Everything has been set up for this purpose. People are always doing something in groups and have no free time for themselves. Of course that's not a problem for them, because they even don't know what they are missing. We also have seen that the result of the campaign against the past was a lack of culture. They have never heard anything about feelings, freedom, and so on... And to make sure that nothing will change, most of the books are banished. The only authorized ones are those written by the Bureaux of Propaganda and College of Emotional Engineering. The Bureaux of Propaganda College of Emotional Engineering : (chap 4 part. 2) It is a big complex in which every book, film, newspaper of de Brave New World is produced. The various Bureaux of Propaganda and the College of Emotional Engineering were housed in a single sixty-story building in Fleet Street. In the basement and on the low floors were the presses and offices of the three great London newspapersThe Hourly Radio, an upper-caste sheet, the pale green Gamma Gazette, and, on khaki paper and in words exclusively of one syllable, The Delta Mirror. Then came the Bureaux of Propaganda by Television, by Feeling Picture, and by Synthetic Voice and Music respectivelytwenty-two floors of them. Above were the search laboratories and the padded rooms in which Sound-Track Writers and Synthetic Composers did the delicate work. The top eighteen floors were occupied the College of Emotional Engineering. - Brave New World2 Everything comes from there. Books, films, radios and the most important : hypnopedic sentences. That creates a very controlled society in which one there is no freedom of speech. In the savage reservation In the Savage Reservation, people are free, but can not read. In this ethnic group, they don't learn it. So there is no literature, because they only have knowledge of rituals who are passing through generations. We have seen that religion is more important than science and it is also the same for literature. They don't need it and don't see any interest in it. But it is not totally nonexistent. Pope has given to John a book, written by Shakespeare.
2 Brave New World, Aldous Huxley, Chap4 part 2

Shams Abou el enein John has read Shakespeare

5E

English

Linda taught him to read. With a piece of charcoal she drew pictures on the wallan animal sitting down, a baby inside a bottle; then she wrote letters. THE CAT IS ON THE MAT. THE TOT IS IN THE POT. He learned quickly and easily. - Brave New World3 He is clever, and always makes links with the plays he read. He believes in feelings, and has big values like marriage, love, He could not find those values in the Savage Reservation, so he though that they are civilized values, and they should only exist in the Brave New World. But when he visited it, he was surprised. There was no love, no friendship, no culture and no marriage. The Brave New World was not as in his dreams, not as in Shakespeare's writtings. Helmohltz Watson Helmohltz Watson works in the Buraux of Propaganda, and was quiet talented. He was writting hipnopedic sentences, approved stuff, and was really talented for it. But because of his big intelligence, he always had the feeling that something was missing in his life. That there was something more. [...]I feel I could do something much more important. Yes, and more intense, more violent. But what? What is there more important to say? And how can one be violent about the sort of things one's expected to write about? Words can be like X-rays, if you use them properlythey'll go through anything. You read and you're pierced. That's one of the things I try to teach my studentshow to write piercingly. But what on earth's the good of being pierced by an article about a Community Sing, or the latest improvement in scent organs? Besides, can you make words really piercingyou know, like the very hardest X-rayswhen you're writing about that sort of thing? Can you say something about nothing? That's what it finally boils down to. I try and I try " - Helmohltz Watson4 He has been conditioned, so he is not able to know what feelings are, but tries to find it out. Mustapha Mond Mustapha Mond is one of the 10 World Controllers. He was once conditioned but then got to selfconscious. At this point, the World Controllers asked him to chose between becoming one of them, or being sent in an island far from there. He choose the first option. This explains that although he has been conditioned he knows everything about the world. But he is also one of the elite who controls the world. That allows him to break the rules and read books.
3 Brave New World, Aldous Huxley, Chap8 4 Brave New World, Aldous Huxley, Chap4 part2

Shams Abou el enein

5E

English

The Savage's face lit up with a sudden pleasure. "Have you read it too?" he asked. "I thought nobody knew about that book here, in England." "Almost nobody. I'm one of the very few. It's prohibited, you see. But as I make the laws here, I can also break them. With impunity, Mr. Marx," he added, turning to Bernard. - Brave New World5 He wants to send Marx and Watson on an island, because like him, they have got to self-conscious and there is no more place as World Controllers. That means that this society is a dictatorship, in which a few people have the power and control all the others. He knows that literature is nice, but he also knows that it is a danger for the stability. He is a clever man. He knows that this society is utopian and very fragile. "But why is it prohibited?" asked the Savage. In the excitement of meeting a man who had read Shakespeare he had momentarily forgotten everything else. The Controller shrugged his shoulders. "Because it's old; that's the chief reason. We haven't any use for old things here." "Even when they're beautiful?" "Particularly when they're beautiful. Beauty's attractive, and we don't want people to be attracted by old things. We want them to like the new ones." -Brave New World6Conclusion & Openings So we saw that literature is quiet nonexistent and only approved stuff is published. People are educated not to think and in the Savage Reservation people even don't know how to read. In history and literature, there are several other examples of such a kind of situation. For example, in Hitler's Mein Kampf, there are lots of things about behavior, about physical entertainment and patriotism, but nothing about ideas. Hitler doesn't want his nation to think. He only wants that people make what he says. Another example is George Orwell's Nineteen Eighty-Four. It is a dystopian novel about Oceania, a
5 Brave New World, Aldous Huxley, Chap16 6 Brave New World, Aldous Huxley, Chap16

Shams Abou el enein

5E

English

society ruled by the oligarchical dictatorship of the Party. Like in Brave New World, everybody is controlled (trough cameras, helicopters,...), and they are even not allowed to think. And to help this, the Ministry of Truth (Newspeak : Minitrue) controls every information. There are a lot of people who are rewriting everything so that it suits to the Party's doctrine. In the Brave New World, they try to control people through the hypnopedic process. In Oceania, they are making a step further. They are creating a new language, called Newspeak to even delete the words that could make people think about something they should not. Is it the next step in the Brave New World ?