Tuesday, May 26, 2009

Aldous Huxley

Currently my classic novel I am reading for class is Brave New World by Aldous Huxley. Hurley was born in Godalming, Surrey on July 26, 1894 and he died in Los Angeles on November 22, 1963. Huxley was boor into an upper-class family and was initially surrounded by writing basically from birth because hi father, Leonard Huxley, was a biographer, editor and poet. Huxley lived a hard life starting from the young age of fourteen. At the age of sixteen he was suffered from keratitis punctata, and for about eighteen months he was totally blind.
Huxley attended two colleges in his life. The first was Eton College, Berkshire which he attended from 1908-1913. The second college he attended was Balliol College, Oxford from 1913-1915, here he received his B.A in English in 1916. Huxley did not always want to be a write and a master of English though, at first he wanted to be a scientist, but he was not able to pursue this dream, and switched his career of to study English.
In the novel, Brave New World Huxley’s writing can be seen as complex and hard to read, but if you start to get the idea of the story then I think the reader would have enough determination to get through it, because so far it is a very intriguing story. For some it the novel may not be as interesting to read if one of your favorite genres is science fiction, which mine is, which is what makes the story so enjoyable to me.\
So far I am on chapter five of sixteen. The setting of the first chapter is Central London Hatchery and Conditioning Centre, and the World State’s motto “COMMUNITY, IDENTITY, STABILITY” is hung before the main entrance of the building (which I am sure is to have some significance later on in the novel). The scene takes place in a laboratory, and Huxley gives the impression that this place is dark, dank and secluded, but very busy.
The first character the reader is introduced to is the Director. I don’t want to be too specific for those of you who may want to read this, but the first impression you get about this character is that they are power hungry and determined about whatever project they take on, and do not want any obstacles to overcome them. What the Director is doing when he is introduced is showing new students around the facility. He explains what they do here at the Hatchery, which is to reproduce humans no longer by natural sexual reproduction, but by artificially producing/developing them in test tubes, bringing true meaning in this book to test-tube babies. The Director goes into further detail about the process, and about the experiments done to the embryo’s, which all of this is called “Bokanovsky Process”. It is believed that this will further stabilize society and help civilization develop.
The next character the reader is introduced to is Mr. Foster, a worker at the Hatchery that is very enthusiastic and knowledgeable of his job and the whole Bokanovsky Process.
Later the Director shows the students around the Nurseries. I do not want to give too much away so I can avoid spoilers, so I’ll leave it at that so those who will later read this can find out about this place. In the World State the idea of loving nature and purity of all things has been abolished by those who work in places like the Hatchery (there are many places all over the world like this, producing billions of artificially produced humans a year).
I think I will stop here, so I can make sure as to not give away too many ideas of and events that occur in Brave New World.

1 comment:

  1. Caitlin,

    When was this novel written? Don't you think it's very interesting that some of the ideas are so relevant to today's society? It sounds like you are enjoying it. Thanks for not spoiling it for other readers.


    Good post-just make sure to proof your entry for spelling and punctuation errors :)

    Ms. M.

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