Responding to Brave
New World
Open Response
How did
Huxley respond to rereading his own work fifteen years later?
In 1931 Aldous Huxley wrote Brave New World. Then, in 1946 he wrote a “Foreword” addressing the
limitations and successes of the book he had written fifteen years before. How
did Huxley’s ideas change between writing the novel in 1931 and writing the
foreword in 1946? How did other ideas stay the same or grow stronger? Refer to
specific details from the passage. Quotations and specificity are a must.
Huxley was fairly critical of his work, which is to be understood since everyone is their own worst critic. One of the biggest things that changed though was how he would have written John's journey. Huxley wanted to include a part where John was introduced to the World State before he actually went there by refugees of the society living inside the reservation trying to make a new life for themselves. Huxley said, “Today I have no wish to demonstrate sanity is impossible,” and goes on to say that although he thought people could only choose between “insanity” and “lunacy” at the time, he now believes sanity can be achieved but he admits saneness is still rare. Another thing that he finds is lacking in the book is nuclear fission, which he says is strange because it had been a topic of discussion when he wrote the book and he himself had even mentioned it in a book he had written prior to Brave New World, so he wasn't unfamiliar with the topic. He was on the other hand able to explain why its absence might work in the the book, stating that nuclear fission is an advancement in science and , “The theme of Brave New World is not the advancement of science as such; it is the advancement of science as it affects human individuals.”
ReplyDeleteThen there are other aspects of the book that have become more concrete in Huxley's mind over the years. For instance, when the book was published Huxley could foresee a future similar to the society in the World State where there was a drug like soma that made everyone happy and people were conditioned to do as they were told. At the time he wrote the book however, he assumed it would be far in the future. Fifteen years later he believed it could happen in as little as a century, “that is, if we refrain from blowing ourselves to smithereens in the interval.” He talks about how relationships will become more casual, comparing the acquisition of marriage licenses in the future to getting a dog license today. He points out we can already see evidence to support this theory if we look at the near equal number of divorces and marriages in some American cities. For Huxley, it's all only a matter of time.