Now read and translate an excerpt from the book and discuss it.

Part I

What do you know about Aldous Huxley? Have you read his book “Brave New World”? If so, what did you like and dislike about it? Read some information about the author and the book and do the tasks:

Aldous Huxley was born July 26, 1894-1963, he was an English novelist, poet and critic. Blind in one eye from the age of 17 he was unable to pursue his chosen career in science, so in turn pursued and received his B.A. in English from Balliol College, Oxford in 1915. He published his first poetic works in 1916 followed by a second volume in 1920.

Aldous is possibly best known for his dystopian book “Brave New World”. This book can be considered a reflection of Aldous Huxley’s opinions, fears and true life experiences. His Utopian society, set in London, reflects the rigidly structured London of his youth. He also felt different and separate from others because of his high intelligence level. This is another running theme in his text. One section of the book also depicts a dramatic scene where one of the main characters, John the Savage, loses his mother due to over medication and is doesn’t completely understand his feelings about the loss of his mother, but then flies into a rage. Huxley lost his mother to cancer at the age of 14 and may have felt much in the same way as his character John.

Huxley completed “Brave New World” in just four months and it became a best seller almost immediately. The story is very well written and easy to follow. The futuristic setting is an interesting one. Sex is given freely, there are no monogamous relationships and love is not ‘natural’. People are deterred from having any emotional bond with each other and no one has a mother, they are all born from a test tube. Drugs are given to the characters in order to maintain societal order, and the characters emotional order. It is interesting to note that the name of the drug that calms them down is called Soma, which is a muscle relaxant prescribed today. They would even take a Soma vacation, they would go into a hospital and take high amounts of Soma for stress relief. At the time, decided for them, that their life should end, people would check into a hospital and be given enough Soma to kill them. As with everything else in this society it was done without a fight.

Personally Huxley was concerned about, society’s possible overpopulation, too much government control and manipulations done by advertising, sales and even methods of sleep teaching and brainwashing.

Exercise 1. Think about these questions and dwell on them:

1. How have the author’s life views reflected in the book (Brave New World)?

2. Why did the book become a best seller almost immediately?

3. What do you think of social structure presented in Brave New World?

4. What are your personal views on the following: society’s possible overpopulation, too much government control, manipulations done by advertising, methods of sleep teaching and brainwashing?

Exercise 2. Decide whether the following sentences are true or false:

1. Aldous Huxley was an American novelist, poet and critic.

2. He had a successful career in science so in turn pursued and received his B.A. in English from Balliol College, Oxford in 1915.

3. He published his first poetic works in 1916 followed by a second volume in 1920.

4. Aldous is possibly best known for his poetry.

5. This book can be considered a reflection of Aldous Huxley’s opinions, fears and true life experiences.

6. His utopian society, set in London, reflects the rigidly structured London Huxley has seen in his dreams.

7. Huxley lost his mother to cancer at the age of 14 and may have felt much in the same way as his character John.

8. Huxley completed “Brave New World” in four years and it became a best seller almost immediately.

9. Huxley was concerned about, society’s possible overpopulation, too much government control and manipulations done by advertising, sales and even methods of sleep teaching and brainwashing.

Exercise 3. Find additional information about the author and the book.

Part II

Now read and translate an excerpt from the book and discuss it.

The novel opens in the distant future at the Central London Hatchery and Conditioning Centre. This institution plays an essential role in the artificial reproduction and social conditioning of the world's population. As the chapter begins, the Director of the Centre conducts a group of new students, as well as the reader, on a tour of the facility and its operations — a biological version of the assembly line, with test-tube births as the product. They begin at the Fertilizing Room, move on to the Bottling Room, the Social Predestination Room, and the Decanting Room. Along the way, the Director explains the basic operation of the plant — Bokanovsky's Process — in which one fertilized egg produces from 8 to 96 "buds" that will grow into identical human beings. The Director continues his tour of the Centre in the Infant Nursery. Here he lectures the new students on the importance of social conditioning as "moral education." The director oversees a demonstration of "Neo-Pavlovian Conditioning."

The D.H.C.[1] and his students stepped into the nearest lift and were carried up to the fifth floor.

INFANT NURSERIES. NEO-PAVLOVIAN CONDITIONING ROOMS, announced the notice board.

The Director opened a door. They were in a large bare room, very bright and sunny; for the whole of the southern wall was a single window. Half a dozen nurses, trousered and jacketed in the regulation white viscose-linen uniform, their hair aseptically hidden under white caps, were engaged in setting out bowls of roses in a long row across the floor. Big bowls, packed tight with blossom. Thousands of petals, ripe-blown and silkily smooth, like the cheeks of innumerable little cherubs, but of cherubs, in that bright light, not exclusively pink and Aryan, but also luminously Chinese, also Mexican, also apoplectic with too much blowing of celestial trumpets, also pale as death, pale with the posthumous whiteness of marble.

The nurses stiffened to attention as the D.H.C. came in.

"Set out the books," he said curtly.

In silence the nurses obeyed his command. Between the rose bowls the books were duly set out–a row of nursery quartos opened invitingly each at some gaily coloured image of beast or fish or bird.

"Now bring in the children."

They hurried out of the room and returned in a minute or two, each pushing a kind of tall dumb-waiter laden, on all its four wire-netted shelves, with eight-month-old babies, all exactly alike (a Bokanovsky Group, it was evident) and all (since their caste was Delta) dressed in khaki.

"Put them down on the floor."

The infants were unloaded.

"Now turn them so that they can see the flowers and books."

Turned, the babies at once fell silent, then began to crawl towards those clusters of sleek colours, those shapes so gay and brilliant on the white pages. As they approached, the sun came out of a momentary eclipse behind a cloud. The roses flamed up as though with a sudden passion from within; a new and profound significance seemed to suffuse the shining pages of the books. From the ranks of the crawling babies came little squeals of excitement, gurgles and twitterings of pleasure.

The Director rubbed his hands. "Excellent!" he said. "It might almost have been done on purpose."

The swiftest crawlers were already at their goal. Small hands reached out uncertainly, touched, grasped, unpetaling the transfigured roses, crumpling the illuminated pages of the books. The Director waited until all were happily busy. Then, "Watch carefully," he said. And, lifting his hand, he gave the signal.

The Head Nurse, who was standing by a switchboard at the other end of the room, pressed down a little lever.

There was a violent explosion. Shriller and ever shriller, a siren shrieked. Alarm bells maddeningly sounded.

The children started, screamed; their faces were distorted with terror.

"And now," the Director shouted (for the noise was deafening), "now we proceed to rub in the lesson with a mild electric shock."

He waved his hand again, and the Head Nurse pressed a second lever. The screaming of the babies suddenly changed its tone. There was something desperate, almost insane, about the sharp spasmodic yelps to which they now gave utterance. Their little bodies twitched and stiffened; their limbs moved jerkily as if to the tug of unseen wires.

"We can electrify that whole strip of floor," bawled the Director in explanation. "But that's enough," he signalled to the nurse.

"Offer them the flowers and the books again."

The nurses obeyed; but at the approach of the roses, at the mere sight of those gaily-coloured images of pussy and cock-a-doodle-doo and baa-baa black sheep, the infants shrank away in horror, the volume of their howling suddenly increased.

"Observe," said the Director triumphantly, "observe."

Books and loud noises, flowers and electric shocks–already in the infant mind these couples were compromisingly linked; and after two hundred repetitions of the same or a similar lesson would be wedded indissolubly. What man has joined, nature is powerless to put asunder.

"They'll grow up with what the psychologists used to call an 'instinctive' hatred of books and flowers. Reflexes unalterably conditioned. They'll be safe from books and botany all their lives." The Director turned to his nurses. "Take them away again."

Still yelling, the khaki babies were loaded on to their dumb-waiters and wheeled out, leaving behind them the smell of sour milk and a most welcome silence.

One of the students held up his hand; and though he could see quite well why you couldn't have lower-cast people wasting the Community's time over books, and that there was always the risk of their reading something which might undesirably decondition one of their reflexes, yet … well, he couldn't understand about the flowers. Why go to the trouble of making it psychologically impossible for Deltas to like flowers?

Patiently the D.H.C. explained. If the children were made to scream at the sight of a rose, that was on grounds of high economic policy. Not so very long ago (a century or thereabouts), Gammas, Deltas, even Epsilons, had been conditioned to like flowers–flowers in particular and wild nature in general. The idea was to make them want to be going out into the country at every available opportunity, and so compel them to consume transport.

"And didn't they consume transport?" asked the student.

"Quite a lot," the D.H.C. replied. "But nothing else."

Primroses and landscapes, he pointed out, have one grave defect: they are gratuitous. A love of nature keeps no factories busy. It was decided to abolish the love of nature, at any rate among the lower classes; to abolish the love of nature, but not the tendency to consume transport. For of course it was essential that they should keep on going to the country, even though they hated it. The problem was to find an economically sounder reason for consuming transport than a mere affection for primroses and landscapes. It was duly found.

"We condition the masses to hate the country," concluded the Director. "But simultaneously we condition them to love all country sports. At the same time, we see to it that all country sports shall entail the use of elaborate apparatus. So that they consume manufactured articles as well as transport. Hence those electric shocks."

"I see," said the student, and was silent, lost in admiration.

…

Fifty yards of tiptoeing brought them to a door which the Director cautiously opened. They stepped over the threshold into the twilight of a shuttered dormitory. Eighty cots stood in a row against the wall. There was a sound of light regular breathing and a continuous murmur, as of very faint voices remotely whispering.

A nurse rose as they entered and came to attention before the Director.

"What's the lesson this afternoon?" he asked.

"We had Elementary Sex for the first forty minutes," she answered. "But now it's switched over to Elementary Class Consciousness."

The Director walked slowly down the long line of cots. Rosy and relaxed with sleep, eighty little boys and girls lay softly breathing. There was a whisper under every pillow. The D.H.C. halted and, bending over one of the little beds, listened attentively.

"Elementary Class Consciousness, did you say? Let's have it repeated a little louder by the trumpet."

At the end of the room a loud speaker projected from the wall. The Director walked up to it and pressed a switch.

"… all wear green," said a soft but very distinct voice, beginning in the middle of a sentence, "and Delta Children wear khaki. Oh no, I don't want to play with Delta children. And Epsilons are still worse. They're too stupid to be able to read or write. Besides they wear black, which is such a beastly colour. I'm so glad I'm a Beta."

There was a pause; then the voice began again.

"Alpha children wear grey They work much harder than we do, because they're so frightfully clever. I'm really awfuly glad I'm a Beta, because I don't work so hard. And then we are much better than the Gammas and Deltas. Gammas are stupid. They all wear green, and Delta children wear khaki. Oh no, I don't want to play with Delta children. And Epsilons are still worse. They're too stupid to be able …"

The Director pushed back the switch. The voice was silent. Only its thin ghost continued to mutter from beneath the eighty pillows.

"They'll have that repeated forty or fifty times more before they wake; then again on Thursday, and again on Saturday. A hundred and twenty times three times a week for thirty months. After which they go on to a more advanced lesson."

Roses and electric shocks, the khaki of Deltas and a whiff of asafoetida–wedded indissolubly before the child can speak. But wordless conditioning is crude and wholesale; cannot bring home the finer distinctions, cannot inculcate the more complex courses of behaviour. For that there must be words, but words without reason. In brief, hypnopaedia.

Glossary Neo-Pavlovian Conditioning Huxley's term for the dystopian form of infant training. The term derives from the classical conditioning system named for the Russian physiologist Ivan Petrovich Pavlov (1849-1931). viscose a substance used in making rayon thread and fabric. Model-T the first car produced on Henry Ford's assembly line. hypnopaedia sleep-teaching. asafoetida a bad-smelling gum resin. It was formerly used to treat some illnesses, or, in folk medicine, to repel disease.

The students took it down in their little books. Straight from the horse's mouth.

Once more the Director touched the switch.

"… so frightfully clever," the soft, insinuating, indefatigable voice was saying, "I'm really awfully glad I'm a Beta, because …"

Not so much like drops of water, though water, it is true, can wear holes in the hardest granite; rather, drops of liquid sealing-wax, drops that adhere, incrust, incorporate themselves with what they fall on, till finally the rock is all one scarlet blob.

"Till at last the child's mind is these suggestions, and the sum of the suggestions is the child's mind. And not the child's mind only. The adult's mind too–all his life long. The mind that judges and desires and decides–made up of these suggestions. But all these suggestions are our suggestions!" The Director almost shouted in his triumph. "Suggestions from the State."

Exercise 4. Answer the following questions:

1. What work does the conditioning do? Who gets conditioned? How does hypnopaedia work?

2. What are the 5 classes in this society? How are the distinct from each other?
2. Why condition the Deltas to hate nature but love outdoor sports?
3. How does time work in this book? History? Why does Ford say “History is Bunk?”
4. What are the various castes like, and why?
5. How do the students demonstrate their own conditioning?

6. What is Neo-Pavlovian Conditioning? What do you think of the method?

7. What do you know about G.B. Shaw? Why does the author single him out for particular mention as an accepted genius of the dystopia?

Date: 2016-01-14; view: 622