Brave New World Prophetic or Apocalyptic?

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Brave New World Prophetic or Apocalyptic?
Prophetic predictive presageful or portentous
Apocalyptic predicting or presaging imminent
disaster and total/universal destruction
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A collision of cultures to shake our beliefs as
readers
Find a partner among your group to work with as
we delve into the allusions in the novel
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Brave New World Allusions
Allusions references to history or literature
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Lenina

• A variation of Lenin -- Nikolai Lenin, the
  Russian Socialist, who had a tremendous influence
  in the formation of the Union of Soviet
  Socialist Republics, the present-day Russia.

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Ford

• An important figure in the formation of the World
  State. His utilization of the mass-production
  technique influenced social, political, and
  economic life.
• In Huxley's Utopia, the life, work, and teachings
  of Ford are the sources of inspiration and truth.
  Even time is reckoned according to Ford.

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Bernard Marx

• Marx is an obvious reference to Karl Marx, a
  German Socialist, whose best-known work, Das

Kapital, expresses his belief that the
fundamental factor in the development of society
is the method of production and exchange. Karl
Marx called religion the opium of the people in
Huxley's Brave New World, soma is substituted for
religion.
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Neopavlovian Conditioning

• Conditioning is defined as the training of an
  individual to respond to a stimulus in a
  particular way. The Russian scientist Ivan Pavlov
  conducted experiments to determine how this
  conditioning takes place. In Brave New World
  individuals are conditioned to think, act, feel,
  believe, and respond the way the government wants
  them to.

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Benito Hoover

• Benito Hoover combines the names of two men who
  wielded tremendous power at the time Huxley was
  writing Brave New World Benito Mussolini, the
  Italian dictator, and Herbert Hoover, the
  American President.

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The Malthusian beltThomas Malthus

• This English political economist believed that
  unless the population diminished, in time the
  means of life would be inadequate. Improvements
  in agriculture, he predicted, would never keep up
  with expanding population, and

increases in the standard of living would be
impossible. In the World State, mandatory
birth-control regulates the growth of population.
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Predestination

• Predestination is the act of deciding an
  individual's fate or destiny.

• Both the Old and New Testaments contain
  allusions to God as the Predestinator, but since
  the World State has eliminated God, this is now
  the function of government. In the World State
  each individual has been predestined according to
  the needs of society.

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• Since 1900, in any 10-year period, advances in
  science and technology have overshadowed
  advancements made during ANY previous 100-year
  period.

Periodic table in 1869Telephone in 1876 Light
bulb in 1879 Emc2 in 1887 Germ theory of disease
in 1890 Radium in 1899 Radio tube in 1905,
transmitter in 1914 Insulin in 1922 Sliced bread
in 1928 Jet engine in 1937
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Huxleys warning!
Huxley realized that these advances, which were
welcomed as progress, were full of danger. Man
had built higher than he could climb man had
unleashed power he was unable to control.
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• Brave New World is Huxley's warning it is his
  attempt to make man realize that since knowledge
  is power, he who controls and uses knowledge
  wields the power.
• Science and technology should be the servants of
  man -- man should not adapted and enslaved to
  them. Brave New World is a description of our
  lives as they could be in the none-too-distant
  future.

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International political scene

• Bolshevik Revolution in Russia, the dictatorship
  of Mussolini in Italy, and the Nazi Party
  movement in Germany. Concerned about threats to
  man's freedom and independence, Huxley realized
  that communism and fascism place the state above
  the individual and demand total allegiance to a
  cause.

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Economic changes

• A time of more and bigger factories, more
  manufactured goods, the advent of mass-produced
  automobiles
• Big business used and misused the individual --
  man became important as a producer and a
  consumer.

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Societal changes

• More people were moving to the cities ? change in
  attitude and point of view. As "one of the
  crowd," the individual is not responsible for
  himself or for anybody else. Huxley carries this
  loss of individuality one step further in his
  projection of Bokanovskified groups of identical
  twins performing identical tasks.

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EQ How does Huxley present his message to the
reader through allusion and satire? ELABLRL1, 2, 3

• What might a message be to a modern reader?
• Lets analyze the allusions in order to answer
  these questions
• 1. With your partner, create one level 2 question
  to support the facts on your handout
• 2. With your partner, summarize the information,
  connecting the summary to the Huxleys beliefs
  and Historical factors questions.
• 3. Complete a story map with your partner
• http//olc.spsd.sk.ca/de/pd/instr/strats/storymapp
  ing/index.html