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BRAVE NEW WORLD by Aldous Huxley (hier online bestellen)
The story:
The novel opens in the Central London Hatchery and Conditioning Centre, in the years A.F., or After Ford.
Ford is the God-surrogate, a corruption of the name Freud, the controversial psychosexual psychologist.
The Director of Hatcheries and Conditioning is leading a tour group of young students around a lab. He
explains the scientific process by which human beings are fertilized and custom-made, and shows them the
Social Predestination room, where workers create the social castes. They pass onto the conditioning rooms,
where they reinforce the caste divisions by sleep-teaching.
There are some short interludes between Mustapha Mond, Resident Controller of Europe, and the students;
Lenina and her friend Fanny; and Bernard Marx and Henry Foster.
Lenina confirms with Bernard that she would like to go on a trip with him to The Savage Reservation.
Following her departure, there is more bitterness on the part of Bernard concerning his own inferiority.
Lenina and Henry eat dinner, go on a soma-holiday, and see a concert of synthetic music. Later, they have
sex. The next day is Bernard Marx's Solidarity Service Day. A group of men and women sing and take soma
together, and it eventually turns into an "orgy-porgy".
Lenina and Bernard go on a date. He tries to show her the ocean, and to express some of his subversive
views to her, but she cries. She convinces him to take soma, and they go back to his rooms and have sex.
The next day, when Lenina asks him if he had fun, Bernard is pained at the way she seems to degrade
herself.
He and Lenina go to The Savage Reservation. Lenina shudders at the unclean conditions. They meet John,
The Savage. He tells his story to Bernard, and it turns out that he is the illegitimate son of the
Director and Linda, a woman who disappeared twenty-five years ago.
John tells Bernard his life story. He feels desperately unhappy and alone. Bernard identifies with John
and invites him to return to London with them.
Bernard triumphantly presents Linda and John, the Director's lost woman and illegitimate son. The
Director is laughed out of office. Bernard is the big man on campus.
Lenina is interested in The Savage, and so she takes him out, and much to her chagrin, they do not have
sex.
The Savage refuses to appear at an assembly. This shatters Bernard's reputation. Lenina is absent-minded,
thinking about the Savage. He tells her he loves her and she undresses. Disgusted by the sexual degradation
of the society, he violently rejects her.
The Savage is in the Hospital for the Dying to visit his mother. He hears the low-caste workers and several
children talking badly about her and has a violent reaction. Suddenly, Linda wakes, recognizes him, and
dies. He attempts to destroy a large supply of soma, causing a riot, and the police take him away, along
with Bernard and Helmholtz.
The three meet with Mustapha Mond. Mustapha Mond and the Savage speak of religion. Mond says that there
is a choice between machinery, scientific medicine, and universal happiness-- or God.
The Savage flees, planning to become independent. He repents by whipping himself. One day a photographer
makes a popular film about The Savage. The Savage becomes a celebrity. There is a huge riot which turns
into an orgy. The next morning, reporters find that the Savage has hung himself.
About the author:
Aldous Leonard Huxley (July 26, 1894 – November 22, 1963) was an English writer and one of the most
prominent members of the famous Huxley family. He spent the latter part of his life in the United States,
living in Los Angeles from 1937 until his death in 1963. Best known for his novels and wide-ranging output
of essays, he also published short stories, poetry, travel writing, and film stories and scripts. Through
his novels and essays Huxley functioned as an examiner and sometimes critic of social mores, norms and
ideals. Huxley was a humanist but was also interested towards the end of his life in spiritual subjects
such as parapsychology and philosophical mysticism. By the end of his life Huxley was considered, in some
academic circles, a leader of modern thought and an intellectual of the highest rank
Extract:
"And this," said the Director opening the door, "is the Fertilizing Room."
Bent over their instruments, three hundred Fertilizers were plunged, as the Director of Hatcheries and
Conditioning entered the room, in the scarcely breathing silence, the absent-minded, so-liloquizing hum
or whistle, of absorbed concentration. A troop of newly arrived students, very young, pink and callow,
followed nervously, rather abjectly, at the Director's heels. Each of them carried a notebook, in which,
whenever the great man spoke, he desperately scribbled. Straight from the horse's mouth. It was a rare
privilege. The D.H.C. for Central London always made a point of personally conducting his new students
round the various departments.
"Just to give you a general idea," he would explain to them. For of course some sort of general idea they
must have, if they were to do their work intelligently—though as little of one, if they were to be good
and happy members of society, as possible. For particulars, as every one knows, make for virtue and
happiness; generalities are intellectually necessary evils. Not philosophers but fretsawyers and stamp
collectors compose the backbone of society.
.....
Buchdaten:
BRAVE NEW WORLD by Aldous Huxley
Sprache: Englisch
Taschenbuch - 184 Seiten - Penguin Books
Erscheinungsdatum: 1. November 1986
ISBN: 0060821418
Preis: € 6,95
More works from the same author:
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