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Oh brave new world. Aldous Huxley's dystopian novel Brave New World! (English Literature) Brave New World heroes of the novel

FEATURES OF O. HUXLEY'S DYUTOPIA IN THE NOVEL "BRAVE NEW WORLD"

Burdun Nina Vladimirovna

4th year student, Department of English Philology
KubSU,
RF, Krasnodar

Blinova Marina Petrovna

scientific supervisor, Ph.D. Philol. Sciences, Associate Professor of the Department of Education lit.,
KubSU,
RF, Krasnodar

At all times, humanity has thought about the likely prospects for the development of society. This was reflected in literature: works appeared whose authors tried to create their own scenario for the development of the world in the next era. The dystopian genre is becoming more and more popular every day: currently one of the most relevant works is the novel by O. Huxley “Brave New World”.

In order to conduct a study of the features of O. Huxley's dystopia, we will define this genre and consider its characteristic features.

Dystopia - in fiction and in social thought, such ideas about the future that, in contrast to utopia, deny the possibility of building a perfect society and predict that any attempts to bring such a society to life will inevitably lead to catastrophic consequences.

M. Shadursky identifies three subgenre varieties of dystopia: quasi-utopia, kakatopia and dystopia. Despite some differences, all subgenre varieties of dystopia are united by a dispute with utopia, a denial of its principles, which allows us, having studied the works of M. Shadursky and O. Pavlova, to identify features characteristic of dystopia as a whole:

Let's start with the fact that both utopias and dystopias describe a society isolated from other states. However, utopians see in it an ideal, which they contrast with the really existing world.

Unlike utopias, where everything is frozen, like in a picture, in dystopias the world develops dynamically and, as a rule, for the worse. But it is worth noting that it was from utopias that dystopia adopted some static descriptive elements.
Utopians depicted endless spaces, while in dystopias space is deliberately limited. Usually the hero has a personal space, that is, his apartment or even a room, and “real space,” which belongs to the state, but not to the individual.
As we know, in a utopian state all processes proceed according to a pre-established pattern. Showing how absurd these ideas are, dystopians specifically “ritualize” the lives of the heroes. That is, they depict a society where rituals, customs and rules control people’s lives, not allowing them to think independently.
Utopia does not accept irony and allegory. Dystopians describe the “ideally bad society” with a bitter smile or even sarcasm. Sometimes writers use allegory, transferring human qualities and vices to animals, which gives the work an additional specific load. Very often, dystopias use the grotesque, which helps achieve the effect of a “terrible parody” and make the reader horrified.
It is no coincidence that fear is the internal atmosphere of dystopia. Power frightens people, and they become passive and obedient. But a person appears who is tired of being afraid, and this becomes the main cause of conflict, which does not exist in utopias.
In utopias, the entire society is faceless, and people are equally beautiful. Dystopia pays a lot of attention to the feelings and experiences of an individual, who is not a mythical wanderer, but a resident of this country; and shows how difficult it is to maintain a human face in such a state.

Thus, dystopia is a logical development of utopia and formally can also be attributed to this direction. The world depicted in dystopia is in many ways reminiscent of a utopian one; it is also closed, divorced from reality, and everything is thought out to the smallest detail. But the writers focus their attention not so much on the structure of society, but on the individual person who lives there, as well as on his feelings that are incompatible with the inhumane social order. This is how a conflict arises between the individual and the soulless system. The very presence of conflict, in essence, contrasts dystopia with a conflict-free descriptive utopia.

O. Huxley is rightly considered one of the authors of classic dystopias of the 20th century. From an early age, the writer thought about what awaits humanity in the future. Even in his youthful poem “Carousel,” Huxley metaphorically depicts society in the form of “an ever-accelerating ride, driven by a demented, disabled driver.”

The novel “Brave New World” is a kind of satire or even a parody of H. Wells’s work “Men Like Gods” and a model of an ideal “scientific” society. Huxley himself characterized the novel as “the horror of the Wellsian Utopia and a revolt against it.”

At first glance, such a definition may seem strange, because in his work the writer depicted a truly perfect world where everyone is happy. There are no revolutions, wars, diseases, no poverty, inequality and even fear of death, and there is only “community, sameness, stability” (“COMMUNITY, IDENTITY, STABILITY”). But this is the whole horror and the whole tragedy of the novel, because “there is no social stability without individual stability,” that is, to create a stable society it is necessary that “all actions, feelings and even the most secret desires of one person coincide with a million others.” It is no coincidence that, in the words of the Supreme Controller, “people are happy; they get what they want, and they never want what they can"t get” (“People are happy; they get everything they want, and are not able to want what they cannot get”).

So, the inhabitants of the “wonderful world” have everything except freedom, which they exchanged for comfort (“We prefer to do things comfortably”). And the writer shows how degraded these “absolutely happy” people are, having lost even the ability to think independently, love and make choices.

Thus, this work is a classic example of dystopia and has characteristics characteristic of this genre:

The novel takes place in the World State, which, after a “bloody nine-year war between the old and new worlds,” owns almost the entire globe, with the exception of isolated territories with barren soils and a terrible climate, which were decided to be given over to reservations for savages (“savage reservations”), as well as several islands where dissidents are sent. This gives the author the opportunity to contrast the “ideal” utopian state with the real world, where even if not everyone is happy, but in any case, “these savages,” as one of the heroes says, “truly preserve their disgusting way of life, marry, live families, there is no talk of the scientific formation of the psyche, monstrous superstitions, Christianity, totemism, ancestor worship, they speak only such extinct languages as Zuni, Spanish ... ". That is, uneducated Indians living on reservations have much more freedom and are more like people than the civilized inhabitants of the “new world.”
Despite the external “stability”, the world depicted in the novel is not static. It continues to develop, although, at first glance, it seems that scientific progress has nowhere to move. After all, high technologies make it possible to control even a person’s subconscious, to control his desires, not to mention the cloning and production of people in incubators. Even the Supreme Controller himself understands that the further development of science is dangerous and can destabilize the situation in society: “Science is dangerous; we have to keep it carefully most chained and muzzled’ (“Science is a dangerous thing; you have to keep it on a strong chain and muzzled”), . But still, scientists do not stop there; they strive to penetrate even the soul of a person and “free” him from the fear of death. Children are deliberately brought into the hospital so that they can have fun, eat sweets while watching the dying, and “be death-conditioned.” Thus, Huxley takes Wells' idea of "omnipotent man" to the extreme, showing what kind of "gods" these representatives of the "scientific society" became and how they were able to change themselves.
As mentioned earlier, the authors of dystopias deliberately limit the “personal” space of the heroes. The inhabitants of the World State are simply deprived of it. The government tried to do everything possible so that people could not be alone for a second (“We don"t encourage them to indulge in any solitary amusements.” - “We do not encourage entertainment related to solitude”). People are even grown like plants, in special bottles ("bottles"). It is noteworthy that throughout the novel the author repeatedly uses the word "bottled", characterizing the mental state of Lenina and Bernard. In translation, it sounds like "corked", in oblivion. Thus, even the feelings and thoughts of the heroes do not belong to them, and the scale of personality narrows to the size of a bottle.When the Savage, accustomed to freedom and loneliness, decides to leave the civilized world and settle in an abandoned air beacon, crowds of people do not leave him alone until his death.
As in any dystopia, the life of the inhabitants of the State invented by Huxley is “ritualized.” Moreover, the traditions and customs of the real (“wild”) world are often replaced by “civilized” traditions. Thus, the inhabitants of the World State are not simply deprived of art and religion, but are replaced with all this by various “unity meetings”, joint viewing of “feelies” and mass use of the drug “Soma” (“Soma is Christianity without tears”), even the name of God is replaced by Ford, and the banner of the cross is replaced by a T-shaped one. So it turns out that people are absolutely happy, because all their needs are satisfied, and they don’t even notice how they completely lose the ability to think independently and develop creatively.
However, despite the hopelessness of the situation in which the society of the “wonderful world” finds itself, the novel is not permeated with an atmosphere of fear or horror, and there is clearly irony in the work. Ridiculous names of rituals that have replaced religion and art, “orgy-porgy”, “feelies”, stupid slogans that fill people’s heads (“A gramme is always better than a damn” - “A gramme - and there are no dramas!”; “Ending is better than mending” - “It’s better to buy new than to wear old”) only strengthen the impression of mass degradation, showing the insignificance of these people.
It should be noted here that throughout the novel Huxley more than once compares the inhabitants of the World State to animals. Already in the first chapter it is said about the Director of the Hatchery “straight from the horse's mouth”, which our translators replaced with the phrase “from wise lips”. However, it is not by chance that Huxley uses this particular expression, since, judging by the further description, the Director really resembles a horse (“He had a long chin and big rather prominent teeth, just covered, when he was not talking, by his full, floridly curved lips” - “The Director had a long chin, large teeth protruded slightly from under his fresh, full lips” ) , . It is said about children undergoing a course of “accustoming to death” that they looked at the dying woman with animal curiosity (“with the stupid curiosity of animals.” Looking at a group of twins, the Savage more than once calls them “human maggots”) "), and the buzzing crowd that finds him even in an abandoned air beacon - "locusts" and 'grasshoppers". "Locusts", a cloud of soulless insects capable of destroying everything in their path - this is how the people of the future appear before us. However, they themselves They consider themselves to be beings of a higher order, and John, who grew up in freedom, is treated like an experimental monkey (“as to an ape”). They watch his unusual behavior with interest, wondering why the Savage always quotes Shakespeare, and never take his words seriously. Helmholtz is the only one who really tries to understand what John is talking about, and even in his own way admires Shakespeare's talent, saying about his poems: “What a superb piece of emotional engineering! That old fellow makes our best propaganda technicians look absolutely silly’ (“Why was this old fellow such a wonderful technologist of feelings?”), . However, the author’s irony also sounds here, because Helmholtz, although he is fond of poetry, is not able to fully appreciate the content of the lines he heard. For example, he perceives Juliet’s address to her mother “O sweet my mother” as a stupid, indecent joke, since in a “civilized” society any word associated with family is considered obscene. Therefore, the Savage decides not to throw pearls in front of the “pig” and removes the book (“removes his pearl from before swine’). Later, the Supreme Controller himself speaks about the inhabitants of the “wonderful world”: “Nice tame animals, anyhow.” Particular attention here should be paid to the word “tame”, which can be translated as “tame, obedient, submissive, trained.” Turning people into an army of tame, trained animals is the main guarantee of the success of the World State. After all, such creatures are much easier to control than smart and headstrong “savages” who have their own opinion on everything.
As you know, the authors of dystopias set as their goal not so much to depict the social order as to show the life of an individual, so the narrator is often the main character, who is a resident of a dystopian state. Huxley has several such heroes, they all have different origins and are carriers of certain character traits. The narration is told in third person, but all the thoughts and feelings of the characters are open to the reader. So, we can see the “brave new world” from different angles. We first see it through Bernard's eyes. Despite belonging to the upper class, this young man becomes an outcast due to his unusual appearance. He is overly thoughtful, melancholic, even romantic. From the moment he appears on the pages of the novel, it seems that Bernard is the dystopian hero. He looks at the people around him with contempt and hatred, refuses to take part in “unity meetings,” and the beauty of nature fascinates him. (“The smile on Bernard Marx’s face was contemptuous” - “Bernard smiled condescendingly”; “But wouldn’t you like to be free to be happy in some other way? ...not in everyone else’s way” - “But doesn't the freedom to be happy somehow attract you differently? Somehow, let's say, in your own way, and not according to the general model? ") But, as it turns out later, the main reason for Bernard's dissatisfaction is a feeling of envy and wounded pride. (“Bernard hated them, hated them. But they were two, they were large, they were strong - “Bernard hated, hated them. But there are two of them, they are tall, they are strong”). Having gained popularity, he stops noticing the shortcomings of life in the World State. And, in the end, he not only stops dreaming of freedom, but also tearfully begs the Supreme Controller not to send him outside the “wonderful world.” Thus, raised in a hatchery and having no idea what a family is, Bernard, although different from his contemporaries, is still not capable of becoming a real rebel hero. But in the middle of the novel, the author introduces us to another character - the Savage. This is what they call it in the Beyond World, where John dreamed of going since childhood. The hero grew up on a reservation among the Indians, where, like Bernard in his society, he was an outcast. However, the Savage has a mother whom he truly loves, an irresistible thirst for knowledge, and, unlike Bernard, he does not read reference books. It is the Bible and the works of Shakespeare that shape John’s character and help him become a person capable of entering into conflict and fighting a merciless system (“But I don”t want comfort. I want God, I want poetry, I want real danger, I want freedom, I want goodness. I want sin” - “I don’t want conveniences. I want God, poetry, real danger, I want freedom, and goodness, and sin"). But Huxley shows us that one such lone rebel cannot change anything. After all, only he is able to see and appreciate the horror of what is happening, while the rest are completely satisfied with their lives, in which there is nothing but pleasure. Therefore, just like for Shakespeare’s Hamlet, this unequal struggle ends in a tragic ending for John. Thus, Huxley invites his readers to think about what can happen to a society that sacrifices its freedom and culture for the sake of civilization, and whether it is worth paying such a high price for material goods.

To summarize, we can say that, despite external prosperity, the World State cannot be called utopian. And “Brave New World,” having all the main signs of a dystopia, is not the author’s dream of an ideal future, but a warning of danger.

Bibliography:

Ivin A.A. Philosophy: Encyclopedic Dictionary. M.: Gardariki, 2004. - 1072 p.
Pavlova O.A. Metamorphoses of literary utopia: theoretical aspect. - M: Volgograd, 2004. - 247 p.
Huxley O. Brave New World: A Dystopian Novel. Per. from English O. Magpies. M.: Book Chamber, 1989. - 132 pp..
Shadursky M.I. Literary utopia from More to Huxley: Problems of genre poetics and semiosphere. Finding the Island - M: LKI. 2007. - 165 p.
Shishkina S.G. Origins and transformations of the genre of literary dystopia in the twentieth century / S.G. Shishkina; Ivan. state chemical technology univ. - Ivanovo, 2009. - 230 p.
Huxley A. Brave New World - Harper Perennial, 1998. - 252 p.
Huxley A. Letters of Aldous Huxley, ed. by Grover Smith, New York and Evanston: Harper & Row, 1969. - 176 p.

Detail of the cover of the original edition

This dystopian novel takes place in a fictional World State. This is the 632nd year of the era of stability, the Ford Era. Ford, who created the world's largest automobile company at the beginning of the twentieth century, is revered in the World State as the Lord God. They call him “Our Lord Ford.” This state is ruled by a technocracy. Children are not born here - artificially fertilized eggs are grown in special incubators. Moreover, they are grown in different conditions, so they produce completely different individuals - alphas, betas, gammas, deltas and epsilons. Alphas are like first-class people, mental workers, Epsilons are people of the lowest caste, capable only of monotonous physical labor. First, the embryos are kept in certain conditions, then they are born from glass bottles - this is called Uncorking. Babies are raised differently. Each caste develops reverence for the higher caste and contempt for the lower castes. Each caste has a specific color of costume. For example, alphas wear gray, gammas wear green, epsilons wear black.

Standardization of society is the main thing in the World State. “Commonality, Sameness, Stability” - this is the motto of the planet. In this world, everything is subordinated to expediency for the benefit of civilization. Children are taught truths in their dreams that are recorded in their subconscious. And an adult, when faced with any problem, immediately remembers some saving recipe, memorized in infancy. This world lives for today, forgetting about the history of mankind. “History is complete nonsense.” Emotions and passions are something that can only hinder a person. In the pre-Fordian world, everyone had parents, a father's house, but this did not bring people anything except unnecessary suffering. And now - “Everyone belongs to everyone else.” Why love, why worries and drama? Therefore, from a very early age, children are taught to play erotic games and are taught to see a being of the opposite sex as a pleasure partner. And it is desirable that these partners change as often as possible, because everyone belongs to everyone else. There is no art here, there is only the entertainment industry. Synthetic music, electronic golf, “blue senses” - films with a primitive plot, watching which you really feel what is happening on the screen. And if for some reason your mood has gone bad, it’s easy to fix; you only need to take one or two grams of soma, a mild drug that will immediately calm you down and cheer you up. “Somy grams - and no dramas.”

Bernard Marx is a representative of the upper class, an alpha plus. But he is different from his brothers. Overly thoughtful, melancholic, even romantic. He is frail, frail and does not like sports games. There are rumors that he was accidentally injected with alcohol instead of a blood substitute in the embryo incubator, which is why he turned out so strange.

Lenina Crown is a beta girl. She is pretty, slender, sexy (they say “pneumatic” about such people), Bernard is pleasant to her, although much of his behavior is incomprehensible to her. For example, it makes her laugh that he gets embarrassed when she discusses plans for their upcoming pleasure trip with him in front of others. But she really wants to go with him to New Mexico, to the reserve, especially since permission to get there is not so easy.

Bernard and Lenina go to the reserve, where wild people live as all humanity lived before the Age of Ford. They have not tasted the benefits of civilization, they are born from real parents, they love, they suffer, they hope. In the Indian village of Malparaiso, Bernard and Lenina meet a strange savage - he is unlike other Indians, he is blond and speaks English - albeit some ancient one. Then it turns out that John found a book in the reserve, it turned out to be a volume of Shakespeare, and learned it almost by heart.

It turned out that many years ago a young man, Thomas, and a girl, Linda, went on an excursion to the reserve. Thunderstorm began. Thomas managed to return back to the civilized world, but the girl was not found and they decided that she had died. But the girl survived and ended up in an Indian village. There she gave birth to a child, and she became pregnant in the civilized world. That’s why I didn’t want to go back, because there is no shame worse than becoming a mother. In the village, she became addicted to mezcal, an Indian vodka, because she did not have soma, which helps her forget all her problems; the Indians despised her - according to their concepts, she behaved depravedly and easily got along with men, because she was taught that copulation, or, in Fordian terms, mutual use, is just a pleasure available to everyone.

Bernard decides to bring John and Linda to the Beyond World. Linda inspires disgust and horror in everyone, and John, or the Savage, as they began to call him, becomes a fashionable curiosity. Bernard is tasked with introducing the Savage to the benefits of civilization, which do not amaze him. He constantly quotes Shakespeare, who talks about things more amazing. But he falls in love with Lenina and sees the beautiful Juliet in her. Lenina is flattered by the Savage's attention, but she cannot understand why, when she invites him to engage in “mutual use,” he becomes furious and calls her a harlot.

The Savage decides to challenge civilization after he sees Linda dying in the hospital. For him this is a tragedy, but in the civilized world they treat death calmly, as a natural physiological process. From a very early age, children are taken to the wards of dying people on excursions, entertained there, fed with sweets - all so that the child is not afraid of death and does not see suffering in it. After Linda's death, the Savage comes to the soma distribution point and begins to furiously convince everyone to give up the drug that is clouding their brains. The panic can barely be stopped by releasing a pair of soma into the queue. And the Savage, Bernard and his friend Helmholtz are summoned to one of the ten Chief Governors, his fortress Mustafa Mond.

He explains to the Savage that in the new world they sacrificed art, true science, and passions in order to create a stable and prosperous society. Mustafa Mond says that in his youth he himself became too interested in science, and then he was offered a choice between exile to a distant island, where all dissidents are gathered, and the position of Chief Administrator. He chose the second and stood up for stability and order, although he himself perfectly understands what he serves. “I don’t want convenience,” the Savage replies. “I want God, poetry, real danger, I want freedom, and goodness, and sin.” Mustafa also offers Helmholtz a link, adding, however, that the most interesting people in the world gather on the islands, those who are not satisfied with orthodoxy, those who have independent views. The savage also asks to go to the island, but Mustafa Mond does not let him go, explaining that he wants to continue the experiment.

And then the Savage himself leaves the civilized world. He decides to settle in an old abandoned air lighthouse. With his last money he buys the essentials - blankets, matches, nails, seeds and intends to live away from the world, growing his own bread and praying - either to Jesus, the Indian god Pukong, or his cherished guardian eagle. But one day, someone who happened to be driving by sees a half-naked Savage on the hillside, passionately flagellating himself. And again a crowd of curious people comes running, for whom the Savage is just a funny and incomprehensible creature. “We want bi-cha! We want bi-cha!” - the crowd chants. And then the Savage, noticing Lenina in the crowd, shouts “Mistress” and rushes at her with a whip.

The next day, a couple of young Londoners arrive at the lighthouse, but when they go inside, they see that the Savage has hanged himself.

Retold

Today, Aldous Huxley’s terrible prophecies will not surprise anyone. What seemed disgusting, vile, unnatural and yet unlikely in the first half of the 20th century, in the 21st is already the reality of our lives, if, of course, we look closely. We are living through a time when forecasts made a century ago can be checked and assessed to what extent their author was close to the truth. People reread Orwell, Zamyatin (the novel “We”), Odoevsky, Huxley, criticizing, thinking about it, checking: who guessed right? Whose did you take? More precisely, which scenario of universal loss turned out to be the most realistic?

A brave new world is based on the strongest World State. The year is 632, the era of stability, the Era of Ford - the deity and inspirer of the era. Ford is the creator of the world's largest automobile company. “Our Lord Ford” replaces God both on the religious level (people pray to him and rituals are held in his honor) and on the everyday level (people say things like “Ford knows him” or “save Ford”). Technocracy has covered the entire world, except for special reservations, which are left as nature reserves, since the climatic conditions in those places were considered economically unfavorable for establishing stability.

main feature Huxley's dystopia is that in his world biological discoveries (Bokanovsky's method) make it possible to carry out genetic programming: artificially fertilized eggs are grown in special incubators using various techniques. As a result, we get a caste society, where each group is prepared in advance for a certain functional load.

Where does the title "Brave New World" come from? It is spoken by John in the novel, this is a quote from Shakespeare’s “The Tempest” (words by Miranda). The savage repeats it several times, changing the intonation from enthusiastic (like Shakespeare) to sarcastic (at the end of the novel).

What genre: utopia or dystopia?

The genre nature of the novel leaves no doubt about its definiteness. If utopia is a fairy tale about a happy future that one would like to achieve, then dystopia is a scenario for the future that one would like to avoid. Utopia is an ideal, it cannot be realized, so the question of its implementation is rhetorical. But writers want to warn humanity about its opposite extreme, point out the danger and prevent it from going beyond the pages of books. Of course, based on all its characteristics, Brave New World is a dystopia.

But there are also utopian aspects to this novel. Many people note that the natural programming of people, the mentality of consumption and caste are the foundations of stability, which the modern world so lacks. In essence, Huxley solved all the pressing problems of humanity, completely subordinating the planet to the will and consciousness of the world government. Even biological and physical laws fell prostrate before the mighty thought of the alphas. Isn't this the ultimate dream? There is no war, no epidemics, no social inequality (no one is aware of it, everyone is satisfied with the place they occupy), everything is sterile, planned, thought out. Even the opposition is not persecuted, but simply expelled from the country and lives with like-minded people. Isn't this what we all strive for? So figure out whether the author depicted a utopia?

But in the beautiful fairy tale, reality clearly emerges: morality, culture, art, the institutions of family and marriage, as well as the very essence of choice, are sacrificed to order, because human life is predetermined and programmed from the very beginning. For epsilon, say, the opportunity to become alpha is taken away at the genetic level. This means that all our ideas about freedom, justice, love are destroyed for the sake of comfort. Is it worth it?

Description of castes

Standardization of people is the main condition for harmony in the Fordist era and one of the main themes in the novel. “Commonality, Sameness, Stability” is a slogan in the name of which everything that is in the human soul is destroyed. Everything around is subordinated to expediency, material and rough calculation. Everyone “belongs to everyone” and lives for today, rejecting history.

Alphas- first-class people, engaged in mental work. Alpha plus people occupy leadership positions (Mustapha Mond is his chief), alpha minus people are lower ranks (commandant on the reservation). Their physical parameters are the best, as are other opportunities and privileges.
Betas– women who represent pairs for alphas. There is a plus and a minus to betas: smarter and dumber, respectively. They are beautiful, always young and slender, smart enough to fulfill their duties at work.
Scales, deltas and finally epsilons- working classes. Deltas and gammas are service personnel, agricultural workers, and epsilons are the lower strata of the population, mentally retarded performers of routine mechanical work.

First, the embryos remain in strictly defined conditions, then they “hatch” from glass bottles - “uncorked.” Individuals, of course, are raised differently. Each of them develops respect for the higher caste and contempt for the lower castes. Even their clothes are different. The difference is in color: alphas are in gray, epsilons are in black, deltas are in khaki, etc.

The main characters of the novel

Bernard Marx. His name is a combination of the names of Bernard Shaw (a writer who welcomed socialism and communism in the USSR) and Karl Marx (an ideologist of socialism). The writer was ironic about the Soviet regime, which he considered the prototype of his fictional state, so he assigned to his hero the names of such people who were significant for the ideology of the USSR. , like socialism, at first looked pleasant, conquered with its opposition to evil for the glory of good, but by the end of the novel it revealed its ins and outs.
Alphas of the highest order sometimes fall out of line, because they are overdeveloped. So was the psychologist Bernard Marx, the main character of the work “Brave New World.” He is skeptical about the entire progressive world order. His friend, teacher Helmholtz, is also in opposition. Bernard developed a negative perception of reality because “they poured alcohol into his blood substitute.” He is 8 cm smaller than other alphas and uglier than them. He feels his own inferiority and criticizes the world if only for the fact that he cannot enjoy all the benefits due to him. Girls ignore him, his bad temper and “strangeness” scare his friends away from him. The bosses also have a negative attitude towards the employee, feeling there is something wrong with him, but Bernard works well, so he manages to keep his job and even use his official position to somehow attract women. If in the first part the hero plays a rather positive role, then by the end his vile and cowardly essence is exposed: he betrays his friends for the sake of vanity and the dubious benefits of his world, which he so animatedly denied.
John (Savage)- the second main character in the novel “Brave New World!” His personality was shaped by a volume of Shakespeare that he found on the reservation. Linda taught him to read, and from the Indians he adopted the habits, philosophy of life and desire to work. He was glad to leave, since the “white-skinned” son of the “lascivious bitch” (Linda “used” everyone) was not accepted into the tribe. But as soon as he arrived in the New World, his disappointment knew no bounds. Lenina, whom he fell in love with, could have been invited to his place for the night by any man. Bernard turned from a friend into a pathetic money-lover: he used John to force society to love and accept himself. Linda, in the oblivion of soma (this is a synthetic drug that is given to all members of society as a cure for anxiety and sadness), did not even recognize him and, in the end, died. John rebels against the New World by staging a riot: he threw out a soma, calling a flock of deltas to freedom, and they beat him in response. He settled alone near London in an abandoned airport. Knocking out the vice from his body, the Savage tortured himself with an improvised whip, prayed all night long and worked as hard as he could. However, he was relentlessly pursued by reporters and curious Londoners, constantly invading his life. One day a whole crowd of onlookers arrived, and Lenina was among them. The hero, in a fit of despair and anger at her lust, beat the girl to the delight of the distraught spectators. The next day the savage hanged himself. Thus, the ending of the novel is a verdict on that suffocating progressive world, where everyone belongs to everyone, and stability outweighs the very essence of human existence.
Helmholtz Watson– His initials are taken from the names of the German physicist Helmholtz and the founder of behaviorism Watson. From these real-life people, the character inherited a consistent and strong desire for new knowledge. For example, he is sincerely interested in Shakespeare, understands the imperfection of the new art and tries to overcome this wretchedness in himself by mastering the experience of his ancestors. Before us is a faithful friend and a strong personality. He worked as a teacher and was friends with Bernard, sympathizing with his views. Unlike his friend, he actually had the courage to resist the regime to the end. The hero sincerely wants to learn sincere feelings and acquire moral values by becoming familiar with art. He realizes the wretchedness of life in a wonderful world and goes to the island of dissidents after participating in John's protest.
Lenina Crown– her name is derived from the pseudonym of Vladimir Lenin. Probably, the author wanted to show the vicious essence of the heroine with this name, as if hinting at Ulyanov’s ability to please both ours and yours, because many researchers still consider him a German spy who organized a coup in Russia for a tidy sum. So, the girl is just as immoral, but she was programmed that way: among them it was even considered indecent not to change a sexual partner for a long time. The whole essence of the heroine is that she always does what is considered the norm. She does not try to get out of the rut; even a sincere feeling for John cannot dissuade her from the correctness and infallibility of the social system. Lenina betrays him, it costs her nothing. But the worst thing is that she does not realize her betrayal. Frivolity, primitive and vulgar tastes, stupidity and inner emptiness - all this applies to her characterization from the first page to the last. By this, the author emphasizes that she is not a person, the dialectics of the soul is unusual for her.
Mustapha Mond– His name belongs to the founder of Turkey, who recreated the country after the First World War (Kemal Mustafa Ataturk). He was a reformer, he changed a lot in the traditional Eastern mentality, in particular, he began a policy of secularism. Thanks to his activities, the country got back on its feet, although the order under him was not gentle. The hero's surname belongs to the British financier, founder of Imperial Chemical Industries, Alfred Mond. He was a noble and wealthy man, and his views were characterized by radicalism and categorical rejection of the labor movement. Democratic values and ideas of equality were alien to him, and he actively opposed making any concessions to the demands of the proletariat. The author emphasized that the hero is contradictory: on the one hand, he is an insightful, intelligent and constructive leader, and on the other, he is an opponent of all freedom, a convinced supporter of the caste social system. However, in Huxley’s world it merges harmoniously.
Morgana Rothschild- her name belongs to the American banking magnate John Pierpont Morgan, philanthropist and talented entrepreneur. However, he also has a dark spot in his biography: during the civil war he sold weapons and made a fortune from the bloodshed. Apparently, this is what hurt the author, a convinced humanist. The heroine got her surname from the Rothschild banking dynasty. Their successful enrichment is legendary, and rumors of secret conspiracies and conspiracy theories float around their family. The genus is large, it has many branches, so it is impossible to say exactly who exactly the writer was thinking about. But, probably, all the rich got it just because they are rich, and their very luxury is unfair, while others are barely making ends meet.

Issues

The stability of the New World is described in the Supreme Controller's remark:

Everyone is happy. Everyone gets what they want, and no one ever wants what they can't get. They are provided for, they are safe; they never get sick; they are not afraid of death; they are not annoyed by their fathers and mothers; they do not have wives, children and lovers who can bring strong experiences. We adapt them, and after that they cannot behave differently than as they should.

The main problem is that artificial equality, which turns out to be biological totalitarianism, and the caste structure of society cannot satisfy thinking people. Therefore, some alphas (Bernard, Helmholtz) are unable to adapt to life; they feel not unity, but loneliness, alienation from others. But without conscious members of society, a brave new world is not possible; they are the ones responsible for the programming and well-being of everyone else, deprived of reason, free will and individuality. Such people either perceive service as hard labor (like Mustapha Mond), or leave for the islands in a state of painful disagreement with society.

If everyone can think and feel deeply, stability will collapse. If people are deprived of these rights, they turn into disgusting, slow-witted clones, capable only of consuming and producing. That is, there will no longer be society in the usual sense; it will be replaced by functional castes, artificially bred, like new varieties of potatoes. Therefore, solving the problems of the social structure with genetic programming and the destruction of all its main institutions is the same as destroying society as such in order to solve its problems. It’s as if a person decapitated himself because of a pain in his head...

What is the meaning of the work?

The conflict in the dystopia “Brave New World” is not only a dispute between the old and new worldviews. This is a confrontation between two answers to the eternal question “does a good end justify any means?” Mustapha Mond (the embodiment of the New World ideologue) believes that freedom, art, individuality and faith can be sacrificed for the sake of happiness. The savage, on the contrary, for the sake of all this wants to give up saving stability, he believes that it is not worth it. Both of them are programmed by upbringing, so the conflict turns into a collision. The savage will not accept the “white lie”, on the basis of which the “brave new world” was built, he was brought up by the highly moral ideals of Shakespeare’s times, and Mustafa consciously chooses stability, he knows the history of mankind and is disappointed in it, so he believes that there is no need to stand on ceremony, and all means are good to achieve this very “good”. This is the meaning of the work.

Huxley should be pleased. Many note that this particular writer was right when he came up with “feelings” (a movie without meaning, but completely reproducing the feelings of the characters), “soma” (a drug equivalent to today’s weed, LSD, which even a child can acquire), “mutual use” ( an analogue of free love, sex without obligations), etc. Not only the forms coincide (helicopters, electromagnetic golf, artificial analogues of food), which can still be attributed to the technical progress of civilization, but also the essential characteristics: the spirit and letter of the “brave new world” has been absorbed by our reality. Firstly, people of all ages are obsessed with sex, not love: they look young, expose their naked bodies online, wear revealing outfits in order to be not beautiful, no, sexy. Married women, married men, small children, their grandparents, young couples against the backdrop of a fat plastic heart on Valentine's Day - everyone sells themselves, exposing themselves and making faces for the illusory approval of followers. They dump their secrets for everyone to see, publishing candid photographs, details from their personal lives, addresses, phone numbers, place of work, etc. Secondly, gay leisure is now a drunken gathering, like Huxley’s act of unity: men and women take soma, see hallucinations and feel closeness in the euphoria of narcotic bliss. Common interests or beliefs are abolished, people simply have nothing to talk about, which means there is no basis for unity, except for soma, alcohol or other joy stimulants. The list could go on for a long time, but modern man himself understands what’s what.

Plot

The novel takes place in London in the distant future (around the 26th century of the Christian era, namely in 2541). People all over the Earth live in a single state, whose society is a consumer society. A new chronology begins - the T era - with the advent of the Ford T. Consumption has been elevated to a cult, the symbol of the consumer god is Henry Ford, and instead of the sign of the cross, people “sign themselves with the sign T.”

According to the plot, people are not born in the traditional way, but are raised in special factories - human factories. At the stage of embryonic development, they are divided into five castes, differing in mental and physical abilities - from the “alphas”, which have maximum development, to the most primitive “epsilons”. To maintain the caste system of society, through hypnopaedia, people are instilled with pride in belonging to their caste, respect for the higher caste and contempt for the lower castes. Due to the technological development of society, a significant part of the work can be performed by machines and is transferred to people only to occupy their free time. People solve most psychological problems with the help of a harmless drug - soma. Also, people often express themselves with advertising slogans and hypnopedic attitudes, for example: “Sam gram - and no drama!”, “It’s better to buy new than to wear old”, “Cleanliness is the key to well-being”, “A, be, tse, vitamin D is fat in cod liver, and cod in water.”

The institution of marriage in the society described in the novel does not exist, and, moreover, the very presence of a permanent sexual partner is considered indecent, and the words “father” and “mother” are considered rude curses (and if a shade of humor and condescension is mixed with the word “father”, then “mother”, in connection with artificial cultivation in flasks, is perhaps the dirtiest curse). The book describes the lives of various people who cannot fit into this society.

The heroine of the novel, Lenina Crown, is a nurse working on a human production line, most likely a member of the "beta minus" caste. She is in a relationship with the nursery psychologist Bernard Marx. He is considered unreliable, but he lacks the courage and willpower to fight for something, unlike his friend, journalist Helmholtz Watson.

Lenina and Bernard fly to an Indian reservation for the weekend, where they meet John, nicknamed the Savage, a white youth born naturally; He is the son of the director of the educational center where they both work, and Linda, now a degraded alcoholic, despised by everyone among the Indians, and once a “beta” from the educational center. Linda and John are transported to London, where John becomes a sensation among high society and Linda becomes a drug addict and dies of an overdose as a result.

John, in love with Lenina, has a hard time taking the death of his mother. The young man loves Lenina with a sublime love that is inappropriate in society, not daring to confess to her, “submissive to vows that were never spoken.” She is sincerely perplexed - especially since her friends ask her which of the Savages is her lover. Lenina tries to seduce John, but he calls her a whore and runs away.

John's mental breakdown is further intensified due to the death of his mother, he tries to explain concepts such as beauty, death, freedom to workers from the lower caste "Delta" - as a result, he, Helmholtz and Bernard are arrested.

In the office of the Chief Executive of Western Europe, Mustapha Mond - one of the ten who represent real power in the world - a long conversation takes place. Mond openly admits his doubts about the “universal happiness society,” especially since he himself was once a gifted physicist. In this society, science, art like Shakespeare, and religion are actually banned. One of the defenders and heralds of dystopia becomes, in fact, a mouthpiece for presenting the author’s views on religion and the economic structure of society.

As a result, Bernard is sent to a branch of the institute in Iceland, and Helmholtz to the Falkland Islands, and Mond, although he forbids Helmholtz to share exile with Bernard, still adds: “I almost envy you, you will be among the most interesting people whose individuality has developed to that they have become unfit for life in society.” And John becomes a hermit in an abandoned tower. In order to forget Lenina, he behaves unacceptable by the standards of a hedonistic society, where “upbringing makes everyone not only compassionate, but extremely disgusted.” For example, he self-flagellates, which the reporter unwittingly witnesses. John becomes a sensation - for the second time. Seeing Lenina arrive, he breaks down, beats her with a whip, shouting about a harlot, as a result of which a mass orgy of sensuality begins among the crowd of onlookers, under the influence of the constant soma. Having come to his senses, John, unable to “choose between two types of madness,” commits suicide.

Names and allusions

A number of names in the World State belonging to bottle-grown citizens can be associated with political and cultural figures who made major contributions to the bureaucratic, economic and technological systems of Huxley's time, and presumably also to those same systems in Brave New World:

Bernard Marx(English) Bernard Marx) - named after Bernard Shaw (although a reference to Bernard of Clairvaux or Claude Bernard is possible) and Karl Marx.
Lenina Crown (Lenina Crowne) - under the pseudonym of Vladimir Ulyanov.
Fanny Crown (Fanny Crowne) - named Fanny Kaplan, known mainly as the perpetrator of the failed attempt on Lenin's life. Ironically, in the novel Lenina and Fanny are friends.
Polly Trotsky (Polly Trotsky) - named after Leon Trotsky.
Benito Hoover (Benito Hoover listen)) - named after Italian dictator Benito Mussolini and US President Herbert Hoover.
Helmholtz Watson (Helmholtz Watson) - after the names of the German physicist and physiologist Hermann von Helmholtz, and the American psychologist, founder of behaviorism, John Watson.
Darwin Bonaparte (Darwin Bonaparte) - from the emperor of the First French Empire Napoleon Bonaparte and the author of the work "On the Origin of Species" Charles Darwin.
Herbert Bakunin (Herbert Bakunin listen)) - named after the English philosopher and social Darwinist Herbert Spencer, and the surname of the Russian philosopher and anarchist Mikhail Bakunin.
Mustapha Mond (Mustapha Mond) - after the founder of Turkey after the First World War, Kemal Mustafa Atatürk, who launched the processes of modernization and official secularism in the country, and the name of the English financier, founder of Imperial Chemical Industries, an ardent enemy of the labor movement, Sir Alfred Mond ( English).
Primo Mellon (Primo Mellon listen)) - after the surnames of the Spanish prime minister and dictator Miguel Primo de Rivera, and the American banker and Secretary of the Treasury under Hoover, Andrew Mellon.
Sarojini Engels (Sarojini Engels listen)) - after the first Indian woman to become president of the Indian National Congress, Sarojini Naidu, and after the surname of Friedrich Engels.
Morgana Rothschild (Morgana Rothschild) - named after the US banking magnate John Pierpont Morgan and the surname of the Rothschild banking dynasty.
Fifi Bradloo (Fifi Bradlaugh listen)) is the name of the British political activist and atheist Charles Bradlow.
Joanna Diesel (Joanna Diesel listen)) - named after the German engineer Rudolf Diesel, inventor of the diesel engine.
Clara Deterding (Clara Deterding) - named after Henry Deterding, one of the founders of the Royal Dutch Petroleum Company.
Tom Kawaguchi (Tom Kawaguchi) - named after the Japanese Buddhist monk Kawaguchi Ekai, the first confirmed Japanese traveler from Tibet to Nepal.
Jean Jacques Habibullah (Jean-Jacques Habibullah) - after the names of the French Enlightenment philosopher Jean-Jacques Rousseau and the Emir of Afghanistan Habibullah Khan.
Miss Keith (Miss Keate) - named after one of the most famous directors of Eton College, John Keith ( English).
Archbishop of Canterbury (Arch-Community Songster of Canterbury ) - a parody of the Archbishop of Canterbury and the decision of the Anglican Church in August 1930 to restrict the use of contraception.
Pope (Pope listen)) - from Pope, a Native American leader of the rebellion known as the Pueblo Rebellion.
Savage John (John the Savage) - from the term "noble savage", first used in the drama The Conquest of Granada ( English)" by John Dryden, and later erroneously associated with Rousseau. Possibly an allusion to Voltaire's novel The Savage.

Return to Brave New World

Book in Russian

Utopia and dystopia of the 20th century. G. Wells - “The Sleeper Awakens”, O. Huxley - “Brave New World”, “The Ape and the Entity”, E. M. Forster - “The Machine Stops”. Moscow, Progress Publishing House, 1990. ISBN 5-01-002310-5
O. Huxley - “Return to the Brave New World.” Moscow, publishing house "Astrel", 2012. ISBN 978-5-271-38896-5

Notes

Links

Brave New World in the Library of Maxim Moshkov
"My Life, My Achievements" by Henry Ford.

Categories:

Literary works in alphabetical order
Works of Aldous Huxley
Dystopian novels
Novels of 1932
Satirical novels

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Covers of some Russian editions of the novel “Brave New World” “Brave New World” (English: Brave New World) is a dystopian, satirical novel by the English writer Aldous Huxley (1932). The title contains a line from... ... Wikipedia

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Aldous Huxley. “Brave New World” - dystopian novel

Huxley's inherent interest in purely philosophical and sociological issues was most consistently embodied in the dystopia Brave New World (1932), replete with the recognizable sounds of Shakespeare (The Tempest) and Swift (the Lagado Academy from Gulliver's Travels). Huxley’s book, which was a direct continuation of E. I. Zamyatin’s experiment undertaken in the novel “We,” appears as a work that gave rise to a genre tradition that was greatly developed in the dystopias of J. Orwell and other prose writers of the 1940s and 50s. Under Huxley's pen, a depressing picture of a society of triumphant technocracy emerged, for which progress is synonymous with the complete rejection of spiritual diversity and the suppression of everything individual in the name of social stability, material well-being and a standard incompatible with the thought of freedom. The action, set many centuries ahead in Ford-era America, is full of direct echoes of Huxley's anxieties about the increasing impersonality that he perceived as a direct product of his era, with its shaky ethical standards creating a rich breeding ground for totalitarian regimes. History of creation. As Huxley himself wrote, “Brave New World” was largely a polemical response to the model of an ideal “scientific” society proposed by Wells in the novel “Men Like Gods”: “I am writing a novel about the future “brave new world”, about the horror of Wells’s utopia and about rebellion against it." And later Huxley notes that the theme of the book is not the progress of science itself, but how this progress affects human personality. Compared to other works of dystopians, Huxley's novel is distinguished by the material well-being of the world, not false, falsified wealth, like Orwell's in "1984", where a person's mental suffering is closely related to his well-being, but truly absolute abundance, which ultimately leads to personal degradation . Man as a person is the main object of Huxley's analysis. And Brave New World, more than other works of this genre, is relevant precisely because of Huxley’s emphasis on the state of the human soul. Topic, idea, problem. O. Huxley, when creating a model of the future “brave new world,” synthesized the most dehumanizing features of “barracks socialism” and Huxley’s modern mass consumer society. However, Huxley considered the “truncation” of personality to dimensions subject to cognition and programming not simply as belonging to some particular social system - but as a logical result of any attempt to scientifically determine the world. “Brave New World” is the only thing that humanity can achieve on the path of “scientific” reconstruction of its own existence. This is a world in which all human desires are predetermined in advance: those that society can satisfy are satisfied, and those that cannot be fulfilled are “removed” even before birth thanks to the appropriate “genetic policy” in test tubes from which the “population” is bred. “There is no civilization without stability. There is no social stability without individual... Hence the main goal: all forms of individual life... must be strictly regulated. The thoughts, actions and feelings of people must be identical, even the most secret desires of one must coincide with the desires of millions of others. Any violation of identity leads to a violation of stability and threatens the entire society” - this is the truth of the “brave new world”. This truth takes on visible shape in the mouth of the Supreme Controller: “Everyone is happy. Everyone gets what they want, and no one ever wants what they can't get. They are provided for, they are safe; they never get sick; they are not afraid of death; they are not annoyed by their fathers and mothers; they do not have wives, children and lovers who can bring strong experiences. We adapt them, and after that they cannot behave otherwise than as they should,” Huxley writes in the novel. One of the unshakable foundations of Huxley's dystopian “brave new world” is the complete subordination of Truth to the specific utilitarian needs of society. “Science, like art, is incompatible with happiness. Science is dangerous; she must be kept on a chain and muzzled,” argues the Supreme Controller, recalling the time when, rightly, according to his current ideas, they wanted to punish him for going too far in his research in the field of physics. The world in the novel is represented by one large state. All people are equal, but they are separated from each other by belonging to any caste. People who have not yet been born are immediately divided into higher and lower by chemical influence on their embryos. “The ideal distribution of population is an iceberg, 8/9 below the waterline, 1/9 above” (words of the Supreme Controller). The number of such categories in the “brave new world” is very large - “alpha”, “beta”, “gamma”, “delta” and further alphabetically - up to “epsilon”. It is noteworthy here that Epsilons in the “brave new world” are specially created to be mentally disabled for the dirtiest and most routine work. And therefore, the upper castes consciously refuse all contacts with the lower ones. Although both epsilons and alpha pluses all go through a kind of “adaptation” process through a 2040-meter conveyor belt. But the Supreme Controllers can no longer enter the category of “happy babies”; everything that is accessible to an ordinary “unadapted” person is accessible to them, including the awareness of that very “white lie” on which the “brave new world” is built . Even the forbidden Shakespeare is understandable to them: “You see, this is forbidden. But since I make the laws here, I can break them.” In Huxley’s dystopian world, “happy babies” are far from equal in their slavery. If the “brave new world” cannot provide everyone with jobs of equal qualifications, then “harmony” between man and society is achieved through the deliberate destruction in man of all those intellectual or emotional potentials that will not be needed for, in the truest sense of the word, written in type of activity: this includes drying out the brains of future workers, instilling in them a hatred of flowers and books through electric shock, etc. . To one degree or another, all the inhabitants of the “brave new world” are not free from “adaptation” - from “alpha” to “epsilon”, and the meaning of this hierarchy is contained in the words of the Supreme Controller: “Imagine a factory, the entire staff of which consists of alphas, then there are individualized individuals... adapted so that they have complete free will and are able to take full responsibility. A person, uncorked and adapted as an alpha, will go crazy if he has to do the work of a mentally defective epsilon. He will go crazy or start destroying everything... Those sacrifices that epsilon must make can only be demanded from epsilon for the simple reason that for him they are not victims, but the line of least resistance. He is adapted in such a way that he cannot live any other way. Essentially...we all live in bottles. But if we are alphas, our bottles are relatively very large.” Huxley speaks of a future without self-awareness as a matter of course - and in Brave New World we are presented with a society that arose according to the will of the majority. True, against the backdrop of the majority, individuals arise who try to oppose their free choice to universal programmed happiness - these are, for example, two “alpha pluses”. Bernard Marx and Helmholtz Watson, who also cannot fully fit into the structure of the “brave new world” due to their physical disabilities; "What they both shared was the knowledge that they were individuals." And Bernard Marx, in his inner protest, reaches the following maxim: “I want to be myself... Disgusting myself. But not by someone else, no matter how wonderful.” And by chance, the Savage, taken from the reservation, who discovered “Time, and Death, and God” for himself, even becomes an ideological opponent of the Supreme Controller: “I would rather be unhappy than have that false, deceitful happiness that you have here.” In a word, Huxley’s novel “Brave New World” presents the struggle between the forces that affirm a dystopian world and the forces that deny it. There is even an element of spontaneous rebellion - a Savage shouting “I have come to give you freedom!” trying to disrupt the distribution of the state drug - soma. However, this rebellion does not shake the foundations of a dystopian society - to eliminate its consequences, it was enough to spray the state drug soma in the air from a helicopter and broadcast “Synthetic Speech “Antibunt-2”. The desire for self-awareness and free moral choice in this world cannot become an “epidemic” - only a select few are capable of this, and these few are urgently isolated from the “happy babies”. In a word, Bernard Marx and Helmholtz Watson will be sent “to the islands” specially intended for intellectuals who have seen the light, and the freedom-loving speeches of the Savage became a universal laughingstock - realizing this, the Savage hanged himself. “Slowly, very slowly, like two slowly moving compass needles, the legs moved from left to right; north, northeast, east, southeast, south, southwest, west; then they stopped and after a few seconds slowly began to turn back, from right to left. South, southwest, south, southeast, east...” - this is how the novel ends. Moreover, this happens against the background of joyful exclamations of the inhabitants of the “brave new world”, eager for an unusual spectacle. Thus, it turns out that the Savage is pushed to leave life not by those who control the dystopian world, but by its ordinary inhabitants who are happy in this world, and therefore this world, once built, is doomed within the framework of the model created by Huxley to stability and prosperity. Author's assessment. Dispute with Orwell. In 1959, in his essay “Brave New World Revisited,” Huxley, having traced the evolution of Western civilization from the time of the creation of the novel “Brave New World” to the time of the creation of this essay, came to the conclusion that there was a consistent and very rapid movement of precisely in a direction where the end point is a world order that is essentially akin to the dystopian world order of the “brave new world.” And if, while working on the novel “Brave New World,” as Huxley admits in the essay “Brave New World Revisited,” he still believed that the triumph of such a world order was possible but in a very distant future, now, at the end of 1950 -x, such a world order will open up to him as a near future. At the same time, in his essay, Huxley scientifically analyzes the factors of real life that objectively contribute to the triumph of just such a world order: this is, first of all, overpopulation, which makes the concentration of power in one hand vitally necessary; further - these are the achievements of science, starting with the discoveries of I.P. Pavlov (it is noteworthy that in the dystopian “brave new world” Pavlov is canonized - along with Ford, Freud, Marx and Lenin - as the creator of the scientific substantiation of the system of manipulating people on an unconscious level) and ending with scientifically organized propaganda; finally - the creation of drugs related to the state drug soma in the “brave new world”. In justifying the reality of the danger, Huxley enters into an argument with George Orwell in this essay. If J. Orwell saw the main danger for civilization in the formation of scientifically organized systems of suppression, then Huxley believed that the achievements of science of the 20th century make possible mass “deindividuation”, much less crude in its external forms, but no less effective, based not on direct violence, but on the exploitation of human nature. Actually, even in his letter to J. Orwell dated October 21, 1949, Huxley, recognizing Orwell’s novel “1984” as a serious cultural phenomenon, nevertheless, entered into a dispute with Orwell precisely on the problem of the real prospects of society. In this regard, Huxley writes: “In reality, the unlimited implementation of the “boot on the face” policy seems doubtful. I am convinced that the ruling oligarchy will find a less difficult and less expensive way of governing and satisfying the lust for power, and that this will be reminiscent of what I described in the novel Brave New World. Further in this letter, Huxley describes the achievements of science that make this course of events possible (Freud's discoveries, the introduction of hypnosis into psychotherapeutic practice, the discovery of barbiturates, etc. ) - as a result, according to Huxley, “...Within the lifetime of the next generation, the rulers of the world will understand that “adaptation in infancy” and hypnosis associated with the use of drugs are more effective as tools of control than clubs and prisons, and that the thirst for power can be satisfied through instilling in people a love for their slavery just as fully as through flagellation and “driving in” obedience. In other words, I feel that the nightmare of 1984 is destined to become the nightmare of a world that has more in common with what I imagined in Brave New World. In his essay “Brave New World Revisited” (1959), Huxley continues his debate with Orwell by arguing that a potential “deindividualized” society would not be based, as Orwell modeled, on direct violence, but would be a “nonviolent totalitarianism.” “and that at the same time all the external attributes of democracy will even be preserved - precisely because this kind of world order corresponds to the basic laws of human nature. John Wayne, polemicizing with Huxley, the author of the novel “Brave New World,” says that the real threat to the civilized world lies not where Huxley sees it - not in the movement towards “harmony” that erases personality and in the growth of mass consumption , but in the coming overpopulation, depletion of natural resources and the associated strict control of consumption - “Huxley depicted a wonderful old world, a world experiencing a great material flourishing... In the world to which we are heading, the danger will be devil worship and burning witches,” wrote the English press.. As for the danger of the embodiment of the dystopian world from Huxley’s novel “Brave New World,” Huxley, considering until the very end of his life such an outcome quite possible and unacceptable in its pure form, nevertheless, in his later “positive programs” include elements of a compromise with this kind of world order. And if for Huxley during the creation of the novel “Brave New World” there were two options: either “harmony” in the version of “Brave New World” - or the chaos and suffering of Huxley’s modern world as the inevitable payment for Freedom, the knowledge of Good and Evil, and finally - for preservation of the “I”, then Huxley in the last years of his life will strive for the convergence of these models of the world order - in the name of preserving freedom, knowledge and Personality, but at the same time - and overcoming suffering as an integral part of human existence.