Brave New World

60 pages • 2 hours read

Brave New World

Fiction | Novel | Adult | Published in 1932

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Introduction

Before Reading

During Reading

After Reading

During Reading

Reading Questions & Paired Texts

Reading Check and Short Answer questions on key points are designed for guided reading assignments, in-class review, formative assessment, quizzes, and more.

CHAPTERS 1-3

Reading Check

1. What is the World State’s motto?

2. What is closely controlled to produce children of differing castes?

3. What is considered “smut”?

4. Where are children brought up?

5. Which two male figures from the past does Mond conflate?

Short Answer

Answer each question in at least 1 complete sentence. Incorporate details from the text to support your response.

1. What is Bokanovsky’s Process, and what benefit does it offer?

2. What effect does weaving Fanny and Lenina’s conversation, the interaction between Henry Foster and Bernard Marx, and Mustapha Mond’s recounting of history have on the narrative?

Paired Resource

“The Ones Who Walk Away from Omelas” and “The Ones Who Stay and Fight”

Two related short stories by Ursula K. Le Guin and N. K. Jemisin examine a perfect society’s moral and ethical costs.
Both stories examine the moral and ethical costs of social stability and control.
How do Le Guin, Jemisin, and Huxley rationalize the costs of maintaining a perfect society? Do the ends justify the means in any of the stories? Why or why not?

CHAPTERS 4-6

Reading Check

1. What is the solidarity service Bernard attends patterned to resemble?

2. What is Helmholtz’s attitude toward Bernard?

3. What is the nature of Bernard’s inner conflict?

4. What is harvested from cremated corpses?

Short Answer

Answer each question in at least 1 complete sentence. Incorporate details from the text to support your response.

1. In what ways are Bernard and Helmholtz similar, and how do they differ?

2. Based on Lenina’s character traits, what does the World State’s social programming take from a person?

3. What symbolic significance might there be in the animal carcasses strewn along the reservation’s electric fence?

Paired Resource

“A Telephone Call”

This satirical short story by Dorothy Parker explores anxiety, power, and gender roles from the perspective of a woman anxiously awaiting a telephone call from her beau.
Parker examines the role of gender in social power and control as well as gendered anxieties related to difficulties in identifying simulated versus authentic love.
In what ways do the polyamorous mores of Brave New World attempt to alleviate modern anxieties related to romantic love? Do they work? What problems do they seem to solve, and what problems remain?

CHAPTERS 7-10

Reading Check

1. What is the first word Lenina uses to describe the reservation?

2. What does Lenina forget to bring with her on her visit to the reservation?

3. What text consoles John during his childhood?

4. What role do Popé and Mitsima unofficially play in John’s upbringing?

Short Answer

Answer each question in at least 1 complete sentence. Incorporate details from the text to support your response.

1. How does Lenina attempt to cope with the shock of the reservation’s landscape and cultural differences?

2. In what way are John and Bernard similar?

3. What character traits do John and Lenina share?

Paired Resource

“Family Romances”

Sigmund Freud’s theories influenced modern thought and literature, including Brave New World, which examines the parent-child relationship and its associated neuroses.
Freud explores the role of Control in healthy and unhealthy parent-child relationships.
In what ways does Huxley’s World State attempt to eradicate the parent-child relationship? From a Freudian standpoint, what has it eliminated as a result? How does Huxley present both benefits and drawbacks to state-simulated parenting, and why is authentic parenting stigmatized?

CHAPTERS 11-14

Reading Check

1. What is John’s main critique of London?

2. What important ingredient does Helmholtz’s poetry lack?

3. What play does John link to the feelie Three Weeks in a Helicopter?

4. Which of Shakespeare’s works does Helmholtz find so funny?

5. What does exposing children to people like Linda supposedly eradicate?

Short Answer

Answer each question in at least 1 complete sentence. Incorporate details from the text to support your response.

1. What is ironic about Bernard’s newfound celebrity?

2. What aspect of Shakespeare does Helmholtz find so unbelievable, and what commentary might this provide regarding the topic?

3. What might John and Lenina’s differing reactions to the feelie suggest about sexual mores?

4. What does Linda’s death reveal about the World State?

Paired Resource

“A Note on Eugenics”

Aldous Huxley, brother of biologist and eugenics proponent Julian Sorell Huxley, muses on the role of eugenics in the evolution of human societies.
Connected themes include stability and control concerning race, genetics, and population growth.
Where does Huxley’s support for eugenics come through in Brave New World, and how does this ideological context create ambiguity surrounding his treatment of eugenics and dysgenics in the novel? How might this ambiguity regarding eugenics complicate the novel’s reception and relevance in a postcolonial world?

CHAPTERS 15-18

Reading Check

1. How does John attempt to free the Londoners?

2. What must people sacrifice for happiness, according to Mond?

3. What does Mond consider sheer cruelty?

4. What books does Mond refer to as “pornographic”?

Short Answer

Answer each question in at least 1 complete sentence. Incorporate details from the text to support your response.

1. What might Helmholtz mean when he yells, “Men at Last!” and enters the fray of people fighting with John?

2. If Mond has eliminated suffering, why has caste not also been eliminated?

3. In what way is John a type of Jesus figure?

4. What might be symbolic about John’s choice to live in a lighthouse?

Paired Resource

“A Brave New World Controversy” and “Margaret Atwood on Why We Should All Read Brave New World”

Two articles provide opposing views regarding Brave New World’s relevance to modern students and readers.
Connected themes include the use of literature to either combat or enforce social controls.
Is Brave New World a book everyone should read, or are there valid reasons to challenge its position within the realm of required reading in educational settings or the canon? What criteria might one use to determine its validity (or lack thereof) in an academic environment?

Recommended Next Reads

The Handmaid’s Tale by Margaret Atwood

In the New England of the near future, a Christian theocracy arises to solve the dilemma of dwindling birth rates, subjugating women into government-sanctioned roles based on their ability to give birth.
Shared themes include stability, control, simulation versus authenticity, and dehumanization at the hands of social and governmental policies.
Shared topics include authoritarianism, dystopian societies, and the role of religion in social planning.
The Handmaid’s Tale on SuperSummary

Never Let Me Go by Kazuo Ishiguro

Kathy H. reflects on her life and coming of age at the boarding school, Hailsham, recounting how she and her closest classmates unraveled the mystery of what made Hailsham students so special.
Shared themes include stability, control, simulation versus authenticity, and dehumanization at the hands of social and scientific policies.
Shared topics include genetic manipulation for dubious purposes, dystopian societies, and class commentary.
Never Let Me Go on SuperSummary

Reading Questions Answer Key

CHAPTERS 1-3

Reading Check

1. Community, Identity, Stability (Chapter 1)

2. Oxygen levels (Chapter 1)

3. Motherhood; Parenting (Chapter 2)

4. State Conditioning Centers (Chapter 2)

5. Ford and Freud (Chapter 3)

Short Answer

Answer each question in at least 1 complete sentence. Incorporate details from the text to support your response.

1. The process of splitting one embryo into as many as 96, optimizing gestation, and producing a predictable supply of workers and consumers to maintain social stability. (Chapter 1)

2. Stylistically, the isolated snapshots of information mimic the hypnopaedia children receive nightly. Structurally, the conflict of social shame and pressure regarding Lenina and Bernard’s reluctance to conform to their programming calls the system’s efficacy into question. (Chapter 3)

CHAPTERS 4-6

Reading Check

1. Church (Chapter 4)

2. Pity/Vicarious Embarrassment (Chapter 4)

3. Feeling inferior (Chapter 4)

4. Their energy/matter (Chapter 5)

Short Answer

Answer each question in at least 1 complete sentence. Incorporate details from the text to support your response.

1. Though both feel out of place and question social norms, Helmholtz does so from a place of superiority, whereas Bernard does so out of a sense of inferiority. (Chapter 4)

2. Social programming takes a person’s autonomy and authenticity. In most conversations, Lenina shares few thoughts of her own, relying instead on programmed phrases that she interjects into a conversation at the appropriate times. (Chapter 5)

3. The guide tells Lenina and Bernard that the animals will never learn that the fence is dangerous, instead following their instincts to roam. Since electrocution is one of the means of social programming, the parallel failure of the animals to learn leads to questions regarding whether the humans of the World State can genuinely learn to ignore their natural inclinations. (Chapter 6)

CHAPTERS 7-10

Reading Check

1. “Queer,” meaning “strange” (Chapter 7)

2. Soma (Chapter 7)

3. The Complete Works of William Shakespeare (Chapter 8)

4. Father figures (Chapter 8)

Short Answer

Answer each question in at least 1 complete sentence. Incorporate details from the text to support your response.

1. Without soma, Lenina must engage with the world, so she uses visual comparisons to try and make sense of the unfamiliar, such as comparing the Penitente’s cross to the Charing T-Tower. (Chapter 7)

2. Both have a physical difference that makes them an outsider in their society. (Chapter 7)

3. Both use quotations in place of authentic words and thoughts in conversation. (Chapter 9)

CHAPTERS 11-14

Reading Check

1. It’s too easy (Chapter 11)

2. Feeling/emotion (Chapter 12)

3. Othello (Chapter 11)

4. Romeo and Juliet (Chapter 12)

5. Fear of Death (Chapter 14)

Short Answer

Answer each question in at least 1 complete sentence. Incorporate details from the text to support your response.

1. Though society programs against individualism, Bernard’s love of his celebrity status confirms that the instinct to assert individualism cannot be educated away, and it is not authentic, being conferred to him only insofar as John appears at his parties. (Chapter 11)

2. From Helmholtz’s perspective, the entire premise of Romeo and Juliet, in which people have parents, are forbidden by said parents from speaking, let alone from having sexual intercourse, and who can be forced to marry and have intercourse unwillingly, is absurd, and, coming from one of the more morally-invested characters in the World State, offers a critique of sexual mores that prevent individual choice and freedom. (Chapter 12)

3. Lenina’s hedonistic conditioning desensitizes her to the intimacy of sexual experiences, just as John’s prudishness prevents him from seeking intimacy, suggesting that both extremes rob individuals of an important experience for creating care, emotion, and intimacy. (Chapter 13)

4. Linda’s death scene reveals the extent of citizens’ dehumanization not only through the lack of empathy and understanding shown for John as he mourns the passing of his mother and disregards Linda, around whom the children play and caper as if she were an object, but also through the apathetic attitudes toward dying. (Chapter 14)

CHAPTERS 15-18

Reading Check

1. Denying Soma (Chapter 15)

2. High Art/Science/Ingenuity (Chapter 16)

3. Excessive Leisure (Chapter 17)

4. Religious Texts (Chapter 17)

Short Answer

Answer each question in at least 1 complete sentence. Incorporate details from the text to support your response.

1. The only permissible violence in the World State is simulated versions through hormone therapy and feelies. Since violence is historically correlated with manhood in Western culture and with human nature, the opportunity for real, spontaneous violence is, for Helmholtz, an opportunity to be a man. (Chapter 15)

2. He claims that dissatisfaction with the type of work, as well as a lack of work, both lead to unhappiness. Hence, caste is a way to have all the tasks of an industrialized society met with the exact right temperament and intellect for everyone to be satisfied with their job. (Chapter 16)

3. Through his suffering, controversial moral teachings, and religious upbringing involving penitent ceremonies, John parallels Jesus as a character. Still, unlike Jesus, in a society with no religion, no fear of death, and no concept of an afterlife, it is unclear whether his plight has any impact. (Various chapters)

4. Not only is life in a lighthouse one of sacrifice and loneliness, which is the type of life John hopes to live out in repentance, but lighthouses can also symbolize guidance and truth in darkness, a role John’s Christ-like character plays in the story. (Chapter 18)