{"id":1060,"date":"2014-08-11T17:02:11","date_gmt":"2014-08-11T17:02:11","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/opentextbc.ca\/englishliterature\/?post_type=chapter&#038;p=1060"},"modified":"2019-07-08T17:58:45","modified_gmt":"2019-07-08T17:58:45","slug":"study-questions-and-activities-12","status":"publish","type":"chapter","link":"https:\/\/opentextbc.ca\/englishliterature\/chapter\/study-questions-and-activities-12\/","title":{"raw":"Study Questions and Activities","rendered":"Study Questions and Activities"},"content":{"raw":"<div class=\"textbox textbox--exercises\"><header class=\"textbox__header\">\r\n<p class=\"textbox__title\">Study Questions and Activities<\/p>\r\n\r\n<\/header>\r\n<div class=\"textbox__content\">Sir Thomas More coined the word \u201cutopia\u201d in his fictional work <em>Utopia<\/em>, first published in Latin in 1516. He created the word by combining the Greek prefixes \u201cou\u201dand \u201ceu\u201d with the suffix \u201ctopos.\u201d Define the two Greek prefixes and the Greek suffix, and then show how the concept of utopia is inherently playing with two different places.<strong>Epigraph<\/strong>\u2014What is an epigraph? Huxley uses the following quotation from Nicolas Berdiaeff, <em>Un nouveau moyen age<\/em> 1927, p. 262: Les utopies apparaissent comme bien plus r\u00e9alisable qu'on ne le croyait autrefois. Et nous nous trouvons actuellement devant une question bien autrement angoissante: Comment \u00e9viter leur r\u00e9alisation d\u00e9finitive? Les utopies sont r\u00e9alisables. La vie marche vers les utopies. Et peut-\u00eatre un si\u00e8cle nouveau commence-t-il, un si\u00e8cle o\u00f9 les intellectuels et la classe cultiv\u00e9e r\u00eaveront au moyens d'\u00e9viter les utopies et de retourner \u00e0 une soci\u00e9t\u00e9 non utopique, moins \"parfaite\" est plus libre. [Utopias appear to be more realizable than we used to believe. And we now find ourselves facing a deeply troubling question: How to avoid their definitive realization? Life marches towards utopia. And maybe a new century will begin, a century where the intellectuals and cultivated classes will dream of ways to avoid utopias and to return to a non-utopian society, less perfect and more free.]\r\n<h1>Chapter 1<\/h1>\r\n<ol>\r\n \t<li>Notice the two sentence fragments with which Huxley begins the novel. If a 34-storey building is described as \u201csquat,\u201d then what kind of irony is Huxley using here?<\/li>\r\n \t<li>Look up the word \u201cidentity\u201d in a good dictionary. What aspect of the word is central to the world state\u2019s philosophy?<\/li>\r\n \t<li>Compare Huxley\u2019s use of colour imagery in this chapter with that of Dickens in the second chapter of <em>Hard Times<\/em>. <a href=\"http:\/\/ebooks.adelaide.edu.au\/d\/dickens\/charles\/d54ht\/contents.html\"><\/a><\/li>\r\n \t<li>Do Alphas and Betas undergo Bokanovsky\u2019s Technique?<\/li>\r\n \t<li>Describe how the government of the brave new world resembles that of H. G. Wells\u2019s <a href=\"http:\/\/ebooks.adelaide.edu.au\/w\/wells\/hg\/w45mu\/contents.html\"><em>A Modern Utopia <\/em>(1905<\/a>) or that of <a href=\"http:\/\/ebooks.adelaide.edu.au\/w\/wells\/hg\/w45me\/contents.html\"><em>Men Like Gods<\/em> (1923)<\/a>. \u00a0<em>\u00a0<\/em><\/li>\r\n \t<li>Write a brief essay in which you speculate that Huxley borrowed ideas from Wells, especially Chapters 14, 15, and 20 from his dystopia <a href=\"http:\/\/ebooks.adelaide.edu.au\/w\/wells\/hg\/w45ws\/contents.html\">\u201cWhen the Sleeper Wakes.\u201d<\/a><\/li>\r\n<\/ol>\r\n<h1>Chapter 2<\/h1>\r\n<ol>\r\n \t<li>What kind of <strong>irony<\/strong> does Huxley use when he gives the following line to the DHC: \u201cThe greatest moralizing and socializing force of all time\u201d?<\/li>\r\n \t<li>What is the status of the English language in A.F. 632? French?<\/li>\r\n \t<li>Compare the first two chapters of Dickens\u2019s <a href=\"https:\/\/ebooks.adelaide.edu.au\/d\/dickens\/charles\/d54ht\/contents.html\"><em>Hard Times<\/em><\/a> (\u201cThe One Thing Needful\u201d and \u201cMurdering the Innocents\u201d) with the first two chapters of <em>Brave New World<\/em>. How is Henry Foster like Bitzer? What values do they share? Which kind of education do both dystopias\u2014i.e., the Brave New World and Dickens\u2019s Coketown\u2014 prefer: particular or general education\u2014or, in other words, vocational or liberal education?<\/li>\r\n<\/ol>\r\n<h1>Chapter 3<\/h1>\r\n<ol>\r\n \t<li>What is the world\u2019s population in 632 A.F.?<\/li>\r\n \t<li><em>Brave New World<\/em>, like T.S. Eliot\u2019s <em>The Waste Land<\/em>, uses montage technique as in film. This device is especially evident in Chapter 3, where settings and character shift with no transition devices being offered to the reader. Scenic cuts become faster as the chapter advances. In the first two and a half pages of Scene 1, in Chapter 3, we observe the DHC and his students outside the Hatchery and Conditioning Centre, watching the children at play\u2014first, Centrifugal Bumple-Puppy, then erotic play; followed by the introduction of the World Controller, Mond; then to indicate a shift of scene and character, comes a double space. Then we see Henry Foster snubbing Bernard Marx at the embryo store as Lenina enters. Scenes shift between the DHC and Mond\u2019s history lesson and the dialogue between Foster, the Assistant Predestinator. Try placing an M for Mond at the beginning of each of his scenes, L for Lenina\u2019s as they counterpoint, and notice how gradually the interval between Mond\u2019s words and Lenina\u2019s gets reduced. Sometimes only one line intervenes until Mond or Lenina\/Fanny take up their lines.<\/li>\r\n \t<li>Give one example of Mond\u2019s being depicted as an ironic Christ figure: it occurs near the end of the chapter. How is Mond an ironic Christ figure?<\/li>\r\n \t<li>How is Mond like one of H. G. Wells\u2019s samurai in his <a href=\"http:\/\/ebooks.adelaide.edu.au\/w\/wells\/hg\/w45mu\/contents.html\"><em>A Modern Utopia<\/em><\/a>?<\/li>\r\n \t<li>In a brief essay, compare Huxley and Eliot\u2019s use of juxtaposition of past versus present.<\/li>\r\n \t<li>After reading Mond\u2019s history lesson in Chapter 3, give the chief reason for the creation of the Brave New World.<\/li>\r\n \t<li>The utopian society of the Brave New World apparently minimizes the problems associated with old age through hormone treatments\u00a0 (Violent Passion surrogates, gonadal hormones). Look up the scientists Serge Voronoff (1866-1951) and Eugen Steinach (1861-1944). Huxley refers throughout the novel to ductless glands, adrenals, pituitary glands, internal and external secretions, and gonads. He is almost certainly referring to the rejuvenation theories of Steinach and Voronoff.) Interestingly, late in his life, W. B. Yeats underwent such rejuvenation therapy and reported positive results.) By 1929, the Marx Brothers famously alluded to this rejuvenation fad in their song \u201cMonkey Doodle-Doo\u201d in their film <em>The Cocoanuts: <\/em>\u201cLet me take you by the hand\/Over to the jungle band\/If you\u2019re too old for dancing\/Get yourself a monkey gland\/And then let\u2019s go, my little dearie, there\u2019s the Darwin theory...\u201d<\/li>\r\n \t<li>You might consider writing an essay on Huxley\u2019s use of rejuvenation therapy in <em>BNW<\/em>.<\/li>\r\n<\/ol>\r\n<h1>Chapter 4<\/h1>\r\n<ol>\r\n \t<li>List the uniform colour for Gammas, Deltas, and Epsilons.<\/li>\r\n \t<li>Why is Community Singing encouraged in the brave new world?<\/li>\r\n \t<li>Notice the special meaning for the word \u201cCorporation.\u201d List a few examples and then clarify what a Corporation is. What European state was known as a \u201ccorporate state\u201d between the wars? Is the Brave New World a \u201ccorporate state\u201d?<\/li>\r\n \t<li>Before her date with Bernard, Lenina rushes to meet Henry Foster, fearing her lateness will annoy Henry, who is a stickler for punctuality. His efficiency-expert attention to time introduces the satire on industrial rationalization as championed by <a href=\"http:\/\/en.wikipedia.org\/wiki\/Frederick_Winslow_Taylor\">F. W. Taylor<\/a>, a time-and-motion engineer, dubbed \u201cthe father of scientific management,\u201d and whose books greatly influenced Ford. See first \u00a0Then, look at the following article: <a href=\"http:\/\/www.willamette.edu\/~fthompso\/MgmtCon\/Scientific_Management.html\">\"Sophistication of Mass Production\"<\/a>.<a href=\"http:\/\/www.willamette.edu\/~fthompso\/MgmtCon\/Scientific_Management.html.\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\"><\/a><\/li>\r\n<\/ol>\r\n<h1><strong>Chapter 5<\/strong><\/h1>\r\n<ol>\r\n \t<li>The chapter begins with several allusions to Thomas Gray\u2019s \u201c<a href=\"http:\/\/www.thomasgray.org\/cgi-bin\/display.cgi?text=elcc\">Elegy Written in a Country Churchyard<\/a>.\u201d Read the poem, especially the first 50 lines.<\/li>\r\n \t<li>Make a list of words that Huxley borrows from Gray here. Write a brief essay on the thematic use Huxley makes of the contrast between Gray\u2019s poem and the novel.<\/li>\r\n<\/ol>\r\n<h1>Chapter 6<\/h1>\r\n<ol>\r\n \t<li>Contrast what Henry Foster expects from his relationship with Lenina with what Bernard Marx wants from her.<\/li>\r\n \t<li>What is the main conflict in this chapter? Between which characters?<\/li>\r\n \t<li>A key symbol is the electric fence separating \u201ccivilization from savagery\u201d: Uphill and down, across the deserts of salt or sand, through forests, into the violet depth of canyons, over crag and peak and table-topped mesa, <strong>the fence marched on and on, irresistibly the straight line, the geometrical symbol of triumphant human purpose.<\/strong> And at its foot, here and there, a mosaic of white bones, a still unrotted carcase dark on the tawny ground marked the place where deer or steer, puma or porcupine or coyote, or the greedy turkey buzzards drawn down by the whiff of carrion and fulminated as though by a poetic justice, had come too close to the destroying wires. \"They never learn,\" said the green-uniformed pilot, pointing down at the skeletons on the ground below them. \"And they never will learn,\" he added and laughed, as though he had somehow scored a personal triumph over the electrocuted animals.\"<\/li>\r\n \t<li>This image needs to be examined carefully. \u00a0Typically, the straight line symbolizes human reason, science. Notice that man has conquered nature, and that the animals are killed by the voltage in the man-made fence. Just before he was writing <em>Brave New World<\/em>, Huxley was highly critical of LeCorbusier, the famous French\/Swiss architect. Look him up in <a href=\"http:\/\/en.wikipedia.org\/wiki\/Le_Corbusier#Major_buildings_and_projects\">Wikipedia<\/a>.<\/li>\r\n \t<li>In his foreword to <em>Urbanisme<\/em> (Englist translation, <em>The City of Tomorrow)<\/em> (1929), he said, \u201c<strong>A curved road is a donkey path; a straight road is a road for men.<\/strong>\u201d One thinks here of the myth of Pandora\u2019s box and of the expulsion of Adam and Eve from Eden for eating of the fruit of the tree of knowledge. Pride is the common denominator in both myths. Look at the \u201cForays into Urbanism 1922-1929 section of the site mentioned above. Pay particular attention to the photo of Le Corbusier\u2019s sketch of a city for three million people, with its 60-storey buildings, rooftop helipads, etc. Note also that Le Corbusier hoped that politically minded industrialists in France would lead the way with their efficient Taylorist and Fordist strategies adopted from American models to reorganize society. In this new industrialist spirit, Le Corbusier began a new journal called <em>L\u2019Esprit Nouveau<\/em> that advocated the use of modern, industrial techniques and strategies to transform society into a more efficient environment with a higher standard of living on all socioeconomic levels. He forcefully argued that this transformation was necessary to avoid the spectre of revolution that would otherwise shake society. His dictum \"Architecture or Revolution,\" developed in his articles in this journal, became his rallying cry for the book <em>Vers une architecture<\/em> (\"Towards an Architecture,\" translated into English as <em>Towards a New Architecture<\/em>), which comprised selected articles from <em>L'Esprit Nouveau<\/em> between 1920 and 1923.<\/li>\r\n \t<li>Huxley had a long-standing aversion to LeCorbusier\u2019s urban style, calling him \u201can enemy of privacy,\u201d and <em>BNW<\/em> is an attack on his kind of futuristic city.<\/li>\r\n \t<li>Is Huxley warning against human pride here, our tendency to try to dominate nature, to improve upon it as Henry Foster is so eager to demonstrate?<\/li>\r\n \t<li>You might consider writing an essay on Huxley\u2019s critique of modernist architects such as LeCorbusier.<\/li>\r\n<\/ol>\r\n<h1>Chapter 7<\/h1>\r\n<ol>\r\n \t<li>The expression, \u201cCleanliness is next to godliness\u201d is not from the Bible. Who popularized the adage?<\/li>\r\n \t<li>What is John\u2019s mother Linda\u2019s relationship to nature and technology?<\/li>\r\n \t<li>Explain how Linda\u2019s allusion to the Chelsea Abortion Centre is an example of <strong>bathos<\/strong>. Note that Sir Christopher Wren\u2019s classically designed Chelsea Hospital has now become an abortion centre.<\/li>\r\n \t<li>What key information concerning the D.H.C. is divulged in this chapter?<\/li>\r\n<\/ol>\r\n<h1>Chapter 8<\/h1>\r\n<ol>\r\n \t<li>How does young John react to the relationship between his mother and Pop\u00e9, the man who gave John a tattered copy of Shakespeare\u2019s complete works?<\/li>\r\n \t<li>John learns to read, but the only book besides Linda\u2019s technical manuals is <em>The Complete Works of William Shakespeare<\/em>. Immediately the descriptions in <em>Hamlet <\/em>and other plays provide John with the negative vocabulary and another perspective with which to view Pop\u00e9 and Linda\u2019s sexual behaviour: \u201cNay, but to live \/In the rank sweat of an enseamed bed,\/Stewed in corruption, honeying and making love\/Over the nasty sty.\u201d (<em>Hamlet<\/em>, 3.4.83-84).<\/li>\r\n \t<li>In <em>Hamlet<\/em>, Shakespeare depicts women as either <strong>madonnas<\/strong> (innocents like Ophelia before she falls out of Hamlet\u2019s favour) or else <strong>whores<\/strong> (Gertrude with Claudius or Ophelia after her rejection of Hamlet\u2019s love). John will soon begin to idealize Lenina, who is so unlike his aging mother. John had earlier loved the Indian maid Kiakim\u00e9, but at age 16 his heart was broken as she married another\u2014a young, full-blooded Zu\u00f1i man, not an outsider like John. John was also an outsider to the rites and mysteries discussed in the kiva, so the essence of John\u2019s experience is rejection. He will be an outsider in both communities, because of his different race in the reserve, and because of his different values in the brave new world.<\/li>\r\n \t<li>Notice Freud\u2019s articulation of the <a href=\"http:\/\/en.wikipedia.org\/wiki\/Madonna%E2%80%93whore_complex\">whore-madonna theory<\/a>.<\/li>\r\n \t<li>Look up Ernest Jones, Freud\u2019s biographer. Then read this <a href=\"http:\/\/elsinore.ucsc.edu\/Freud\/freudSphinx.html\">article<\/a>, which explains how Jones interpreted Shakespeare\u2019s <em>Hamlet<\/em> in light of the Freudian Oedipus complex.<\/li>\r\n<\/ol>\r\n<h1><strong>Chapter 9<\/strong><\/h1>\r\n<ol>\r\n \t<li>Why do you think Mond allows John and Linda to come with Bernard and Lenina to \u201ccivilization\u201d?<\/li>\r\n \t<li>What is the attitude to romantic love in the Brave New World?<\/li>\r\n<\/ol>\r\n<h1>Chapter 10<\/h1>\r\n<ol>\r\n \t<li>What is the significance of the perfectly synchronized clocks in all 4,000 rooms of the Centre? How does this image link to F.W. Taylor?<\/li>\r\n \t<li>In what ways does the Brave New World resemble a beehive or ant colony?<\/li>\r\n<\/ol>\r\n<h1>Chapter 11<\/h1>\r\n<ol>\r\n \t<li>What scene causes John to repeat Miranda's famous phrase \"O, brave new world\" and how is his meaning different from the first time he says this at the end of Chapter 8? In what later chapter does John utter these lines yet again? Clarify the irony with respect to John\u2019s three separate quotations of Miranda\u2019s words.<\/li>\r\n \t<li>Why is it more difficult, according to Miss Keate, to educate upper caste, one-egg, one adult students?<\/li>\r\n<\/ol>\r\n<h1>Chapter 12<\/h1>\r\n<ol>\r\n \t<li>What is the central paradox in the poem Helmholtz writes? In what way does it resemble William Wordsworth\u2019s sonnet, \u201c<a href=\"http:\/\/allpoetry.com\/Composed-Upon-Westminster-Bridge,-September-3,-1802\">Composed Upon Westminster Bridge, September 3, 1802<\/a>\u201d?<\/li>\r\n \t<li>What does it have in common with T.S. Eliot\u2019s \u201c<a href=\"http:\/\/www.bartleby.com\/198\/3.html\">Preludes<\/a>\u201d?<\/li>\r\n \t<li>In a brief essay, analyze Helmholtz\u2019 24 line poem, beginning \u201cYesterday\u2019s committee...\u201d<\/li>\r\n<\/ol>\r\n<h1>Chapter 13<\/h1>\r\n<ol>\r\n \t<li>Discuss the significance of the promising Alpha-minus administrator\u2019s dying of trypanosomiasis. Try to relate it to one of the main hypnopaedic maxims of <em>BNW<\/em>.<\/li>\r\n \t<li>What does John Savage mean when he says \"some kinds of baseness are nobly undergone\"?<\/li>\r\n \t<li>In what way is Lenina atavistic?<\/li>\r\n \t<li>When Lenina grabs John and kisses him, what does he experience and why?<\/li>\r\n \t<li>Describe the change in the image patterns found in the poetic lines that John suddenly starts to quote from Shakespeare. Account for the sudden change in the kinds of images.<\/li>\r\n<\/ol>\r\n<h1>Chapter 14<\/h1>\r\n<ol>\r\n \t<li>What is the earliest entry in the Oxford English Dictionary for the word \u201ctelevision\u201d?<\/li>\r\n \t<li>Whose name does Linda call out when John visits her in the hospital?<\/li>\r\n<\/ol>\r\n<h1><strong>Chapter 15<\/strong><\/h1>\r\n<ol>\r\n \t<li>How does the historic<em> soma<\/em> and its use differ from the <em>soma<\/em> of <em>BNW<\/em>?<\/li>\r\n<\/ol>\r\n<h1>Chapter 16<\/h1>\r\n<ol>\r\n \t<li>\u201cChapter 16 shows Bernard Marx at his worst.\u201d Do you agree or disagree?<\/li>\r\n \t<li>What was the Cyprus experiment?<\/li>\r\n \t<li>In the discussion scene between with Mond and John, it is hard not to think of another poem by Thomas Gray here, \"<a href=\"http:\/\/www.thomasgray.org\/cgi-bin\/display.cgi?text=odec\">Ode on a Distant Prospect of Eton College.<\/a>\" In that poem, Gray contrasts the thoughtless days of youth before the pain of adulthood are known. \"Regardless of their doom\/The little victims play!\/No sense have they of ills to come,\/Nor care beyond today.\" (ll. 51-54). As Mond knows, and as John must learn, the Brave New World eliminates all the ills which Gray attributes to adulthood: the Passions of Anger, Fear, Shame, pining Love, Jealousy, Envy, Care, Despair, Sorrow, Ambition, Death, Poverty, and slow consuming age. The inhabitants of Mond's stable, controlled society, unlike men, are not \"condemned alike to groan.\"<\/li>\r\n \t<li>How can Mond's position be partly summed up by the last stanza (lines 91-100)?<\/li>\r\n<\/ol>\r\n&nbsp;\r\n<h1>Chapter 17<\/h1>\r\nHuxley was indebted to Dostoevsky's famous Grand Inquisitor chapter from <em>The Brothers Karamazov<\/em> in Chapters 16 and 17, with John resembling Dostoevsky's Christ figure, and Mond representing his <a href=\"http:\/\/en.wikipedia.org\/wiki\/The_Grand_Inquisitor\">Grand Inquisitor<\/a>.\r\n\r\nThe essence of the conflict between John and Mond is whether happiness (Mond's goal) is the chief goal in human society or whether it is some form of heightened consciousness\/freedom for each person (John's goal). Dostoeivsky used Satan's triple temptation of Christ in the wilderness as his starting point. [See Matthew: ch 4]\r\n<ol>\r\n \t<li>In the context of the Grand Inquisitor, why do you think Mond encourages the Fordian religion? Why does the Brave New World bother with religion at all?<\/li>\r\n<\/ol>\r\n<h1>Chapter 18<\/h1>\r\n<ol>\r\n \t<li>Do you consider Bernard Marx a static or a dynamic, changing character? That is, does he grow or change during the novel? Is he any different in his final appearance in Chapter 18?<\/li>\r\n \t<li>Who is Darwin Bonaparte and who might be his modern equivalent?<\/li>\r\n \t<li>In the last scene, what might the references to the compass points suggest?<\/li>\r\n<\/ol>\r\n<\/div>\r\n<\/div>","rendered":"<div class=\"textbox textbox--exercises\">\n<header class=\"textbox__header\">\n<p class=\"textbox__title\">Study Questions and Activities<\/p>\n<\/header>\n<div class=\"textbox__content\">Sir Thomas More coined the word \u201cutopia\u201d in his fictional work <em>Utopia<\/em>, first published in Latin in 1516. He created the word by combining the Greek prefixes \u201cou\u201dand \u201ceu\u201d with the suffix \u201ctopos.\u201d Define the two Greek prefixes and the Greek suffix, and then show how the concept of utopia is inherently playing with two different places.<strong>Epigraph<\/strong>\u2014What is an epigraph? Huxley uses the following quotation from Nicolas Berdiaeff, <em>Un nouveau moyen age<\/em> 1927, p. 262: Les utopies apparaissent comme bien plus r\u00e9alisable qu&#8217;on ne le croyait autrefois. Et nous nous trouvons actuellement devant une question bien autrement angoissante: Comment \u00e9viter leur r\u00e9alisation d\u00e9finitive? Les utopies sont r\u00e9alisables. La vie marche vers les utopies. Et peut-\u00eatre un si\u00e8cle nouveau commence-t-il, un si\u00e8cle o\u00f9 les intellectuels et la classe cultiv\u00e9e r\u00eaveront au moyens d&#8217;\u00e9viter les utopies et de retourner \u00e0 une soci\u00e9t\u00e9 non utopique, moins &#8220;parfaite&#8221; est plus libre. [Utopias appear to be more realizable than we used to believe. And we now find ourselves facing a deeply troubling question: How to avoid their definitive realization? Life marches towards utopia. And maybe a new century will begin, a century where the intellectuals and cultivated classes will dream of ways to avoid utopias and to return to a non-utopian society, less perfect and more free.]<\/p>\n<h1>Chapter 1<\/h1>\n<ol>\n<li>Notice the two sentence fragments with which Huxley begins the novel. If a 34-storey building is described as \u201csquat,\u201d then what kind of irony is Huxley using here?<\/li>\n<li>Look up the word \u201cidentity\u201d in a good dictionary. What aspect of the word is central to the world state\u2019s philosophy?<\/li>\n<li>Compare Huxley\u2019s use of colour imagery in this chapter with that of Dickens in the second chapter of <em>Hard Times<\/em>. <a href=\"http:\/\/ebooks.adelaide.edu.au\/d\/dickens\/charles\/d54ht\/contents.html\"><\/a><\/li>\n<li>Do Alphas and Betas undergo Bokanovsky\u2019s Technique?<\/li>\n<li>Describe how the government of the brave new world resembles that of H. G. Wells\u2019s <a href=\"http:\/\/ebooks.adelaide.edu.au\/w\/wells\/hg\/w45mu\/contents.html\"><em>A Modern Utopia <\/em>(1905<\/a>) or that of <a href=\"http:\/\/ebooks.adelaide.edu.au\/w\/wells\/hg\/w45me\/contents.html\"><em>Men Like Gods<\/em> (1923)<\/a>. \u00a0<em>\u00a0<\/em><\/li>\n<li>Write a brief essay in which you speculate that Huxley borrowed ideas from Wells, especially Chapters 14, 15, and 20 from his dystopia <a href=\"http:\/\/ebooks.adelaide.edu.au\/w\/wells\/hg\/w45ws\/contents.html\">\u201cWhen the Sleeper Wakes.\u201d<\/a><\/li>\n<\/ol>\n<h1>Chapter 2<\/h1>\n<ol>\n<li>What kind of <strong>irony<\/strong> does Huxley use when he gives the following line to the DHC: \u201cThe greatest moralizing and socializing force of all time\u201d?<\/li>\n<li>What is the status of the English language in A.F. 632? French?<\/li>\n<li>Compare the first two chapters of Dickens\u2019s <a href=\"https:\/\/ebooks.adelaide.edu.au\/d\/dickens\/charles\/d54ht\/contents.html\"><em>Hard Times<\/em><\/a> (\u201cThe One Thing Needful\u201d and \u201cMurdering the Innocents\u201d) with the first two chapters of <em>Brave New World<\/em>. How is Henry Foster like Bitzer? What values do they share? Which kind of education do both dystopias\u2014i.e., the Brave New World and Dickens\u2019s Coketown\u2014 prefer: particular or general education\u2014or, in other words, vocational or liberal education?<\/li>\n<\/ol>\n<h1>Chapter 3<\/h1>\n<ol>\n<li>What is the world\u2019s population in 632 A.F.?<\/li>\n<li><em>Brave New World<\/em>, like T.S. Eliot\u2019s <em>The Waste Land<\/em>, uses montage technique as in film. This device is especially evident in Chapter 3, where settings and character shift with no transition devices being offered to the reader. Scenic cuts become faster as the chapter advances. In the first two and a half pages of Scene 1, in Chapter 3, we observe the DHC and his students outside the Hatchery and Conditioning Centre, watching the children at play\u2014first, Centrifugal Bumple-Puppy, then erotic play; followed by the introduction of the World Controller, Mond; then to indicate a shift of scene and character, comes a double space. Then we see Henry Foster snubbing Bernard Marx at the embryo store as Lenina enters. Scenes shift between the DHC and Mond\u2019s history lesson and the dialogue between Foster, the Assistant Predestinator. Try placing an M for Mond at the beginning of each of his scenes, L for Lenina\u2019s as they counterpoint, and notice how gradually the interval between Mond\u2019s words and Lenina\u2019s gets reduced. Sometimes only one line intervenes until Mond or Lenina\/Fanny take up their lines.<\/li>\n<li>Give one example of Mond\u2019s being depicted as an ironic Christ figure: it occurs near the end of the chapter. How is Mond an ironic Christ figure?<\/li>\n<li>How is Mond like one of H. G. Wells\u2019s samurai in his <a href=\"http:\/\/ebooks.adelaide.edu.au\/w\/wells\/hg\/w45mu\/contents.html\"><em>A Modern Utopia<\/em><\/a>?<\/li>\n<li>In a brief essay, compare Huxley and Eliot\u2019s use of juxtaposition of past versus present.<\/li>\n<li>After reading Mond\u2019s history lesson in Chapter 3, give the chief reason for the creation of the Brave New World.<\/li>\n<li>The utopian society of the Brave New World apparently minimizes the problems associated with old age through hormone treatments\u00a0 (Violent Passion surrogates, gonadal hormones). Look up the scientists Serge Voronoff (1866-1951) and Eugen Steinach (1861-1944). Huxley refers throughout the novel to ductless glands, adrenals, pituitary glands, internal and external secretions, and gonads. He is almost certainly referring to the rejuvenation theories of Steinach and Voronoff.) Interestingly, late in his life, W. B. Yeats underwent such rejuvenation therapy and reported positive results.) By 1929, the Marx Brothers famously alluded to this rejuvenation fad in their song \u201cMonkey Doodle-Doo\u201d in their film <em>The Cocoanuts: <\/em>\u201cLet me take you by the hand\/Over to the jungle band\/If you\u2019re too old for dancing\/Get yourself a monkey gland\/And then let\u2019s go, my little dearie, there\u2019s the Darwin theory&#8230;\u201d<\/li>\n<li>You might consider writing an essay on Huxley\u2019s use of rejuvenation therapy in <em>BNW<\/em>.<\/li>\n<\/ol>\n<h1>Chapter 4<\/h1>\n<ol>\n<li>List the uniform colour for Gammas, Deltas, and Epsilons.<\/li>\n<li>Why is Community Singing encouraged in the brave new world?<\/li>\n<li>Notice the special meaning for the word \u201cCorporation.\u201d List a few examples and then clarify what a Corporation is. What European state was known as a \u201ccorporate state\u201d between the wars? Is the Brave New World a \u201ccorporate state\u201d?<\/li>\n<li>Before her date with Bernard, Lenina rushes to meet Henry Foster, fearing her lateness will annoy Henry, who is a stickler for punctuality. His efficiency-expert attention to time introduces the satire on industrial rationalization as championed by <a href=\"http:\/\/en.wikipedia.org\/wiki\/Frederick_Winslow_Taylor\">F. W. Taylor<\/a>, a time-and-motion engineer, dubbed \u201cthe father of scientific management,\u201d and whose books greatly influenced Ford. See first \u00a0Then, look at the following article: <a href=\"http:\/\/www.willamette.edu\/~fthompso\/MgmtCon\/Scientific_Management.html\">&#8220;Sophistication of Mass Production&#8221;<\/a>.<a href=\"http:\/\/www.willamette.edu\/~fthompso\/MgmtCon\/Scientific_Management.html.\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\"><\/a><\/li>\n<\/ol>\n<h1><strong>Chapter 5<\/strong><\/h1>\n<ol>\n<li>The chapter begins with several allusions to Thomas Gray\u2019s \u201c<a href=\"http:\/\/www.thomasgray.org\/cgi-bin\/display.cgi?text=elcc\">Elegy Written in a Country Churchyard<\/a>.\u201d Read the poem, especially the first 50 lines.<\/li>\n<li>Make a list of words that Huxley borrows from Gray here. Write a brief essay on the thematic use Huxley makes of the contrast between Gray\u2019s poem and the novel.<\/li>\n<\/ol>\n<h1>Chapter 6<\/h1>\n<ol>\n<li>Contrast what Henry Foster expects from his relationship with Lenina with what Bernard Marx wants from her.<\/li>\n<li>What is the main conflict in this chapter? Between which characters?<\/li>\n<li>A key symbol is the electric fence separating \u201ccivilization from savagery\u201d: Uphill and down, across the deserts of salt or sand, through forests, into the violet depth of canyons, over crag and peak and table-topped mesa, <strong>the fence marched on and on, irresistibly the straight line, the geometrical symbol of triumphant human purpose.<\/strong> And at its foot, here and there, a mosaic of white bones, a still unrotted carcase dark on the tawny ground marked the place where deer or steer, puma or porcupine or coyote, or the greedy turkey buzzards drawn down by the whiff of carrion and fulminated as though by a poetic justice, had come too close to the destroying wires. &#8220;They never learn,&#8221; said the green-uniformed pilot, pointing down at the skeletons on the ground below them. &#8220;And they never will learn,&#8221; he added and laughed, as though he had somehow scored a personal triumph over the electrocuted animals.&#8221;<\/li>\n<li>This image needs to be examined carefully. \u00a0Typically, the straight line symbolizes human reason, science. Notice that man has conquered nature, and that the animals are killed by the voltage in the man-made fence. Just before he was writing <em>Brave New World<\/em>, Huxley was highly critical of LeCorbusier, the famous French\/Swiss architect. Look him up in <a href=\"http:\/\/en.wikipedia.org\/wiki\/Le_Corbusier#Major_buildings_and_projects\">Wikipedia<\/a>.<\/li>\n<li>In his foreword to <em>Urbanisme<\/em> (Englist translation, <em>The City of Tomorrow)<\/em> (1929), he said, \u201c<strong>A curved road is a donkey path; a straight road is a road for men.<\/strong>\u201d One thinks here of the myth of Pandora\u2019s box and of the expulsion of Adam and Eve from Eden for eating of the fruit of the tree of knowledge. Pride is the common denominator in both myths. Look at the \u201cForays into Urbanism 1922-1929 section of the site mentioned above. Pay particular attention to the photo of Le Corbusier\u2019s sketch of a city for three million people, with its 60-storey buildings, rooftop helipads, etc. Note also that Le Corbusier hoped that politically minded industrialists in France would lead the way with their efficient Taylorist and Fordist strategies adopted from American models to reorganize society. In this new industrialist spirit, Le Corbusier began a new journal called <em>L\u2019Esprit Nouveau<\/em> that advocated the use of modern, industrial techniques and strategies to transform society into a more efficient environment with a higher standard of living on all socioeconomic levels. He forcefully argued that this transformation was necessary to avoid the spectre of revolution that would otherwise shake society. His dictum &#8220;Architecture or Revolution,&#8221; developed in his articles in this journal, became his rallying cry for the book <em>Vers une architecture<\/em> (&#8220;Towards an Architecture,&#8221; translated into English as <em>Towards a New Architecture<\/em>), which comprised selected articles from <em>L&#8217;Esprit Nouveau<\/em> between 1920 and 1923.<\/li>\n<li>Huxley had a long-standing aversion to LeCorbusier\u2019s urban style, calling him \u201can enemy of privacy,\u201d and <em>BNW<\/em> is an attack on his kind of futuristic city.<\/li>\n<li>Is Huxley warning against human pride here, our tendency to try to dominate nature, to improve upon it as Henry Foster is so eager to demonstrate?<\/li>\n<li>You might consider writing an essay on Huxley\u2019s critique of modernist architects such as LeCorbusier.<\/li>\n<\/ol>\n<h1>Chapter 7<\/h1>\n<ol>\n<li>The expression, \u201cCleanliness is next to godliness\u201d is not from the Bible. Who popularized the adage?<\/li>\n<li>What is John\u2019s mother Linda\u2019s relationship to nature and technology?<\/li>\n<li>Explain how Linda\u2019s allusion to the Chelsea Abortion Centre is an example of <strong>bathos<\/strong>. Note that Sir Christopher Wren\u2019s classically designed Chelsea Hospital has now become an abortion centre.<\/li>\n<li>What key information concerning the D.H.C. is divulged in this chapter?<\/li>\n<\/ol>\n<h1>Chapter 8<\/h1>\n<ol>\n<li>How does young John react to the relationship between his mother and Pop\u00e9, the man who gave John a tattered copy of Shakespeare\u2019s complete works?<\/li>\n<li>John learns to read, but the only book besides Linda\u2019s technical manuals is <em>The Complete Works of William Shakespeare<\/em>. Immediately the descriptions in <em>Hamlet <\/em>and other plays provide John with the negative vocabulary and another perspective with which to view Pop\u00e9 and Linda\u2019s sexual behaviour: \u201cNay, but to live \/In the rank sweat of an enseamed bed,\/Stewed in corruption, honeying and making love\/Over the nasty sty.\u201d (<em>Hamlet<\/em>, 3.4.83-84).<\/li>\n<li>In <em>Hamlet<\/em>, Shakespeare depicts women as either <strong>madonnas<\/strong> (innocents like Ophelia before she falls out of Hamlet\u2019s favour) or else <strong>whores<\/strong> (Gertrude with Claudius or Ophelia after her rejection of Hamlet\u2019s love). John will soon begin to idealize Lenina, who is so unlike his aging mother. John had earlier loved the Indian maid Kiakim\u00e9, but at age 16 his heart was broken as she married another\u2014a young, full-blooded Zu\u00f1i man, not an outsider like John. John was also an outsider to the rites and mysteries discussed in the kiva, so the essence of John\u2019s experience is rejection. He will be an outsider in both communities, because of his different race in the reserve, and because of his different values in the brave new world.<\/li>\n<li>Notice Freud\u2019s articulation of the <a href=\"http:\/\/en.wikipedia.org\/wiki\/Madonna%E2%80%93whore_complex\">whore-madonna theory<\/a>.<\/li>\n<li>Look up Ernest Jones, Freud\u2019s biographer. Then read this <a href=\"http:\/\/elsinore.ucsc.edu\/Freud\/freudSphinx.html\">article<\/a>, which explains how Jones interpreted Shakespeare\u2019s <em>Hamlet<\/em> in light of the Freudian Oedipus complex.<\/li>\n<\/ol>\n<h1><strong>Chapter 9<\/strong><\/h1>\n<ol>\n<li>Why do you think Mond allows John and Linda to come with Bernard and Lenina to \u201ccivilization\u201d?<\/li>\n<li>What is the attitude to romantic love in the Brave New World?<\/li>\n<\/ol>\n<h1>Chapter 10<\/h1>\n<ol>\n<li>What is the significance of the perfectly synchronized clocks in all 4,000 rooms of the Centre? How does this image link to F.W. Taylor?<\/li>\n<li>In what ways does the Brave New World resemble a beehive or ant colony?<\/li>\n<\/ol>\n<h1>Chapter 11<\/h1>\n<ol>\n<li>What scene causes John to repeat Miranda&#8217;s famous phrase &#8220;O, brave new world&#8221; and how is his meaning different from the first time he says this at the end of Chapter 8? In what later chapter does John utter these lines yet again? Clarify the irony with respect to John\u2019s three separate quotations of Miranda\u2019s words.<\/li>\n<li>Why is it more difficult, according to Miss Keate, to educate upper caste, one-egg, one adult students?<\/li>\n<\/ol>\n<h1>Chapter 12<\/h1>\n<ol>\n<li>What is the central paradox in the poem Helmholtz writes? In what way does it resemble William Wordsworth\u2019s sonnet, \u201c<a href=\"http:\/\/allpoetry.com\/Composed-Upon-Westminster-Bridge,-September-3,-1802\">Composed Upon Westminster Bridge, September 3, 1802<\/a>\u201d?<\/li>\n<li>What does it have in common with T.S. Eliot\u2019s \u201c<a href=\"http:\/\/www.bartleby.com\/198\/3.html\">Preludes<\/a>\u201d?<\/li>\n<li>In a brief essay, analyze Helmholtz\u2019 24 line poem, beginning \u201cYesterday\u2019s committee&#8230;\u201d<\/li>\n<\/ol>\n<h1>Chapter 13<\/h1>\n<ol>\n<li>Discuss the significance of the promising Alpha-minus administrator\u2019s dying of trypanosomiasis. Try to relate it to one of the main hypnopaedic maxims of <em>BNW<\/em>.<\/li>\n<li>What does John Savage mean when he says &#8220;some kinds of baseness are nobly undergone&#8221;?<\/li>\n<li>In what way is Lenina atavistic?<\/li>\n<li>When Lenina grabs John and kisses him, what does he experience and why?<\/li>\n<li>Describe the change in the image patterns found in the poetic lines that John suddenly starts to quote from Shakespeare. Account for the sudden change in the kinds of images.<\/li>\n<\/ol>\n<h1>Chapter 14<\/h1>\n<ol>\n<li>What is the earliest entry in the Oxford English Dictionary for the word \u201ctelevision\u201d?<\/li>\n<li>Whose name does Linda call out when John visits her in the hospital?<\/li>\n<\/ol>\n<h1><strong>Chapter 15<\/strong><\/h1>\n<ol>\n<li>How does the historic<em> soma<\/em> and its use differ from the <em>soma<\/em> of <em>BNW<\/em>?<\/li>\n<\/ol>\n<h1>Chapter 16<\/h1>\n<ol>\n<li>\u201cChapter 16 shows Bernard Marx at his worst.\u201d Do you agree or disagree?<\/li>\n<li>What was the Cyprus experiment?<\/li>\n<li>In the discussion scene between with Mond and John, it is hard not to think of another poem by Thomas Gray here, &#8220;<a href=\"http:\/\/www.thomasgray.org\/cgi-bin\/display.cgi?text=odec\">Ode on a Distant Prospect of Eton College.<\/a>&#8221; In that poem, Gray contrasts the thoughtless days of youth before the pain of adulthood are known. &#8220;Regardless of their doom\/The little victims play!\/No sense have they of ills to come,\/Nor care beyond today.&#8221; (ll. 51-54). As Mond knows, and as John must learn, the Brave New World eliminates all the ills which Gray attributes to adulthood: the Passions of Anger, Fear, Shame, pining Love, Jealousy, Envy, Care, Despair, Sorrow, Ambition, Death, Poverty, and slow consuming age. The inhabitants of Mond&#8217;s stable, controlled society, unlike men, are not &#8220;condemned alike to groan.&#8221;<\/li>\n<li>How can Mond&#8217;s position be partly summed up by the last stanza (lines 91-100)?<\/li>\n<\/ol>\n<p>&nbsp;<\/p>\n<h1>Chapter 17<\/h1>\n<p>Huxley was indebted to Dostoevsky&#8217;s famous Grand Inquisitor chapter from <em>The Brothers Karamazov<\/em> in Chapters 16 and 17, with John resembling Dostoevsky&#8217;s Christ figure, and Mond representing his <a href=\"http:\/\/en.wikipedia.org\/wiki\/The_Grand_Inquisitor\">Grand Inquisitor<\/a>.<\/p>\n<p>The essence of the conflict between John and Mond is whether happiness (Mond&#8217;s goal) is the chief goal in human society or whether it is some form of heightened consciousness\/freedom for each person (John&#8217;s goal). Dostoeivsky used Satan&#8217;s triple temptation of Christ in the wilderness as his starting point. [See Matthew: ch 4]<\/p>\n<ol>\n<li>In the context of the Grand Inquisitor, why do you think Mond encourages the Fordian religion? Why does the Brave New World bother with religion at all?<\/li>\n<\/ol>\n<h1>Chapter 18<\/h1>\n<ol>\n<li>Do you consider Bernard Marx a static or a dynamic, changing character? That is, does he grow or change during the novel? Is he any different in his final appearance in Chapter 18?<\/li>\n<li>Who is Darwin Bonaparte and who might be his modern equivalent?<\/li>\n<li>In the last scene, what might the references to the compass points suggest?<\/li>\n<\/ol>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n","protected":false},"author":17,"menu_order":20,"template":"","meta":{"pb_show_title":"on","pb_short_title":"","pb_subtitle":"","pb_authors":[],"pb_section_license":""},"chapter-type":[],"contributor":[],"license":[],"class_list":["post-1060","chapter","type-chapter","status-publish","hentry"],"part":1000,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/opentextbc.ca\/englishliterature\/wp-json\/pressbooks\/v2\/chapters\/1060","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/opentextbc.ca\/englishliterature\/wp-json\/pressbooks\/v2\/chapters"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/opentextbc.ca\/englishliterature\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/chapter"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/opentextbc.ca\/englishliterature\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/17"}],"version-history":[{"count":19,"href":"https:\/\/opentextbc.ca\/englishliterature\/wp-json\/pressbooks\/v2\/chapters\/1060\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":2608,"href":"https:\/\/opentextbc.ca\/englishliterature\/wp-json\/pressbooks\/v2\/chapters\/1060\/revisions\/2608"}],"part":[{"href":"https:\/\/opentextbc.ca\/englishliterature\/wp-json\/pressbooks\/v2\/parts\/1000"}],"metadata":[{"href":"https:\/\/opentextbc.ca\/englishliterature\/wp-json\/pressbooks\/v2\/chapters\/1060\/metadata\/"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/opentextbc.ca\/englishliterature\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1060"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"chapter-type","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/opentextbc.ca\/englishliterature\/wp-json\/pressbooks\/v2\/chapter-type?post=1060"},{"taxonomy":"contributor","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/opentextbc.ca\/englishliterature\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/contributor?post=1060"},{"taxonomy":"license","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/opentextbc.ca\/englishliterature\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/license?post=1060"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}