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by Chris Kohnen2 views·Updated Dec 16, 2022

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  1. let it go,
  2. what up
  3. Now? I can go. OK, Hi, my name is Chris Conan.
  4. Um I am in mrs J's Class Block eight and my review is over a brave new world.
  5. Okay, so,
  6. first to go into a little background info about the author uh analyst Huxley.
  7. Huxley was born in the U. K. In 18 94 to a prominent biologist father when he was 16.
  8. In the around 1910, he suffered an eye infection um was called keratosis.
  9. It cost him nearly lose his eyesight, even went temporarily blind,
  10. he regained it.
  11. But in order to see for the rest of his life, most of the rest of his life,
  12. he would have to wear thick glasses magnify IRS.
  13. Um
  14. It was not until later on in life.
  15. He claimed to try alternative medicine,
  16. which he claimed fixed his eyesight although that's somewhat disputed um
  17. Earlier but go back earlier on in life. He began his writing career in his early 20's
  18. as a satire writer,
  19. first becoming known for the novel's chrome
  20. yellow and antique a uh they're both satire
  21. john or books that hit kind of poked fun at the intellectuals of his day.
  22. He also those barren leaves of point counterpoint, both which are also satires.
  23. Um in 1932 Brave New World was published.
  24. He wrote it in 1931 it was his first dystopian novel and the novel made him famous.
  25. Um It kind of expresses his deep distrust of those
  26. in high power and the general trend of the world um
  27. During his time
  28. pause, uh the novel is perceived as a sort of warning,
  29. Huxley was sending the world about the potential for destruction and
  30. a potential dystopian kind of society of changes did not occur.
  31. And if we look at it, we can look at a number of factors to kind of,
  32. understand where this novel kind of originated from.
  33. One is um the historical background of that, the other is kind of his own beliefs. Um
  34. so just to kind of go into the historical background,
  35. um if you look at what was happening during the world during this time,
  36. it's it's kind of actually fairly easy to see where this kind of came from.
  37. We're all suffering for a great depression,
  38. A quarter of the workforce in the United Kingdom was unemployed.
  39. Um many of them were homeless uh without food, couldn't feed themselves,
  40. couldn't feed their family, um some starving.
  41. Uh and
  42. it was just this big worldwide economic collapse.
  43. And there were also some other things at play that maybe perhaps even Huxley saw
  44. that the rest of the world didn't some believe um because of what happened after
  45. the novel was published.
  46. Um but before I even get into that,
  47. I just want to kind of go back and kind of just go and dive into
  48. pause
  49. the novel a little bit, um
  50. actually,
  51. kind of had a cynical view of people naturally bad, and he believed they had a
  52. unlimited, basically unlimited capacity for
  53. being gullible and being deceived.
  54. He also believed that people had an unlimited
  55. capacity for kind of a sort of malignant,
  56. malignant e um being maligned essentially.
  57. Um which is basically just another word for having
  58. bad intentions of being evil and wanting bad things.
  59. Um
  60. This is kind of, expressed in the novel on page 211, quote,
  61. one believes things because one has been conditioned to believe them.
  62. That was a quote from character in the novel and expresses his believe
  63. that people have almost an almost a limited capacity to be fooled.
  64. In addition, there's tons of references that
  65. people being fooled.
  66. And obviously, so there's another thing this quote on um early on in the book, um
  67. and it kind of shows the way the characters,
  68. many of the characters which aren't really named by, into the words of the director,
  69. um quote, you won't have time for generalities.
  70. Meanwhile,
  71. meanwhile, it was a privilege, straight from the horse's mouth.
  72. The book, the boy scribbled like mad. So
  73. in other words, these people in the book aren't even remotely freethinking.
  74. And um
  75. once again,
  76. this expresses Huxley's extreme belief that people can be extremely gullible.
  77. Um
  78. Huxley also furthermore,
  79. he believes people have almost a limited capacity for perversion.
  80. Take the DHS remarks on page 38 for example,
  81. in a little grassy bay between tall clumps of mediterranean had their two Children,
  82. a little boy about seven and a little girl who might have been a year older were
  83. playing very greatly with all the focus attention to
  84. scientists in terms of the Labor of Discovery,
  85. a rudimentary sexual game, charming, charming, the DHC repeated sentimentally.
  86. So this is just another
  87. of Huxley's beliefs expressed, expressed in the novel.
  88. Um in this case,
  89. it is his belief in people's malignant e an
  90. ability to be very maligned um and perverted.
  91. Um obviously, uh looking at Children playing, having sex in the bushes and
  92. uh finding it charming is perverted, at least in our world perspective,
  93. although not so much in theirs, because of course it is a dystopian novel.
  94. Um he also believes uh people have almost unlimited capacity to be deceiving.
  95. Um a man can smile and smile and be a villain. That's a quote from Huxley on page 123.
  96. And these assumptions of Huxley's about people's underlying
  97. malignant e and ability to be received.
  98. They can be found all throughout the novel.
  99. So,
  100. the part of the novel is the ability to kind of look at it
  101. and take find Huxley's beliefs within from
  102. quotes from other characters in the novel,
  103. amongst other things.
  104. And this is kind of his and there's these little hidden,
  105. subtle warnings throughout the novel that Huxley is trying to send to the world.
  106. Um and as time would go on. Um
  107. Huxley's words and Brave New World would become almost prophetic.
  108. Um and it's probably why those who lived not actually
  109. during the time um right around when Huxley's writing level,
  110. which was his warning to the world perhaps was not heated um because people,
  111. I guess based on the events that happened afterwards didn't take it.
  112. Um,
  113. but people who lived through those events would be
  114. uh become his biggest audience for the novel.
  115. It makes sense why what would go on and why it was seen as prophetic.
  116. Um there would be the Second World War after the rise of Hitler in the late thirties.
  117. Um the holocaust,
  118. I think I already mentioned the Great Depression was going
  119. on at time and influencing his writing the novel,
  120. but certainly the holocaust Second World War,
  121. the rise of Hitler in the Cold War and the red scare in the early fifties, um,
  122. all this kind of stuff going on, you know, um nuclear the atomic bomb,
  123. all this stuff kind of scared people.
  124. And they were looking for something to kind of perhaps find that would um
  125. be kind of aligned with those views and Brave New World
  126. perhaps fueled them perhaps
  127. seemed relevant. Um,
  128. pots
  129. no doubt that the events of Huxley's time influenced um
  130. his novel as well as who would become the novel's target audience.
  131. Um,
  132. you're saying, um way too much crap, it's not pause not possible,
  133. I'm not recording recording the video because
  134. it's still not possible.
  135. So, back to the novel in the novel,
  136. um I mentioned a lot of this topi in elements that kind of stand through in the novel,
  137. but I haven't mentioned yet.
  138. Perhaps the main protagonist novel, the main character,
  139. his name is john he's also commonly referred to as the savage,
  140. the savage in the novel.
  141. Um
  142. and the savage kinda runs a countercultural force to all these people in the
  143. novel as well as something to be the most parallel to a modern human,
  144. but in the novel because it's so dystopian.
  145. Um well, as just as we see these people is kind of like,
  146. the character is the director of the novel is crazy.
  147. They see john
  148. which is much like us as modern humans as crazy.
  149. So, throughout the novel,
  150. he's kind of questioning what's going on and he's really
  151. unsure as to what it is in the world.
  152. Um that is true and untrue and um like I said,
  153. he kind of represents a modern human kind of going into Huxley's world.
  154. And as the novel goes on,
  155. it becomes more and more curious and questioning um
  156. the beliefs of the THC and the Controller.
  157. Um and by the end of the novel, um it kind of this kind of peaks when he is
  158. and then opposed it to everything the controllers monde uh says and beliefs. Um
  159. speaking of that, I will actually find the quote that kind of ties into this um
  160. cool,
  161. all the tonic effects of murdering dist oma and being murdered
  162. by a fellow without any of the inconvenience mind speaking,
  163. but I like the inconveniences, john the Savage speaking,
  164. that was we don't see the controller. We prefer to do things comfortably.
  165. But I don't want comfort. I want God, I want poetry. I want real danger.
  166. I want freedom. I want goodness, I wants in
  167. quote impacts and mustafa manure, claiming the right to be unhappy.
  168. All right. Then the savage to finally, I'm claiming the right to be unhappy.
  169. Not to mention the right to grow old and ugly and potent.
  170. The right to have syphilis and cancer,
  171. the right to have too little to eat.
  172. The right to be lousy the rights to catch typhoid,
  173. the right to be tortured by unspeakable pains of every kind.
  174. There's a long silence, I clean them also. The sandwiches last.
  175. Um and this is what I mean,
  176. where he kind of grows with the novel and becomes like a wiser human being,
  177. a modern human being but wiser in that he is insinuating the quote,
  178. I want reality with all his words, He chooses reality
  179. and all its negatives above the kind of promise,
  180. false promise of a Utopian society and he has served
  181. himself in doing so as a non conforming freethinking individual.
  182. Um and this is what Huxley I think is saying in this quote is that gratitude is
  183. a key element of preserving what is good and
  184. natural and preventing this kind of dystopian society.
  185. That's his kind of warning to the world heated or not.
  186. Um because without it, without gratitude, society will overlook what is good,
  187. real and natural and said seek what they perceived to be utopia.
  188. Um And this kind of continues on in this other
  189. quote just found 16 pages early in the novel.
  190. I'll read it quote,
  191. actual happiness always looks pretty squalid in
  192. comparison with the overcompensation for misery.
  193. And of course, stability is nearly so spectacular instability. So just to explain
  194. to your squalid in the vocabulary,
  195. um it means evolving low moral
  196. standards or dishonest behavior initially thought the
  197. actual happiness looks better than um
  198. whatever over compensations for misery. But it actually turns
  199. it looks much worse.
  200. And this is kind of actually changes the meaning into Huxley's actual message,
  201. which is that um
  202. you know, kind of overcompensation for misery can look so elusive.
  203. It doesn't appear to be um
  204. as good as actual happiness at times because those
  205. in power can make it look so deceiving,
  206. but it's an empty promise.
  207. Um And if and if you know, if something like happiness which is exclusively used,
  208. Huxley is saying is
  209. you know, if it's exclusively yours,
  210. they're promising that it's probably an empty promise,
  211. it will lead down empty rabbit hole Once again, this stems from a lack of gratitude.
  212. Falling into these traps of wanting of these overcompensation.
  213. Empty promises of uh them being able to overcompensate for misery,
  214. which they call happiness.
  215. Um because of a lack of gratitude, which then people will buy into
  216. and fall into the trap of kind of this kind of dystopian type system.
  217. Where then that's how kind of were centralized power
  218. and and and uh immoral leaders will come from.
  219. So it's important to have gratitude as a key way of preventing that.
  220. That is a big warning of Huxley's.
  221. I think that is kind of hidden, kind of buried within this novel.
  222. Ah
  223. good
  224. last word. I want to go over here, stability.
  225. Uh the quality of being state or state of being steady and
  226. not changing or being upset in any way from the Oxford dictionary.
  227. Um
  228. The word stability is used by Huxley on numerous occasions throughout the novel. Um
  229. Not changing or being upset in any way is kind of
  230. the central goal of the DHC the state,
  231. because it's necessary to make control of the system loses perfection.