Literature Discussion Group: November 2013

09 November 2013

Brave New Blog

Our next meeting is on November 18th, and we'll be discussing Brave New World by Aldous Huxley.

First Edition, Chatto & Windus, 1932

One thing you're going to notice right away about Brave New World is that there's a lot of sex.

Okay, not a lot of sex, exactly, but a lot of sex talk. In fact, that's the way the book starts--with a sex talk to new students touring the Central London Hatchery and Conditioning Centre. And this sex talk? It's not your mother's version of the birds and the bees.

In the society of Brave New World, children are neither conceived nor born in the ways we're used to, and as for how they're raised, well, let's just say "family" is a foreign concept for the Londoners of A.F. 632. It's a foreign world, for sure, but it's inspired by ours, and you're sure to see some practices and attitudes that resemble aspects of our society taken to the extreme. Casual sex is one. Consumerism is another. And yes, there are more.

Harper Perennial Classics Edition, 1998

Brave New Understanding

In order to help you better understand the reading, check out the Definitions and Clarifications on the right. Then consider the topics and questions below so you'll be ready for our discussion.

As usual: write, take notes, store ideas in your mental file cabinet--whatever works best for you. Just come ready to talk about this stuff. And feel free to bring some questions of your own for discussion.

For Your Consideration

Castes - There's a rigidly structured caste system in A.F. 632. What are the castes, how are they defined, and how is this social separation accomplished? What purpose does it serve? Is it effective? Do we have a caste system in the United States?
Sex - Why is there such a focus on sex in this novel? What role does sex play in the society of A.F. 632? How is that different from the roles sex and sexuality play in our society?
Simple Lifers - These folks are briefly mentioned in Chapter Three. Who were they, and what happened to them?
Soma - What is this magic drug? How is it used? Why is it used? Do you see any parallels to soma in our society?
Ford - What's all this business with Ford? What role does Ford play in this society, and why do you think Huxley chose Ford in particular?

Vintage Canada Edition, 2007

All right.

There are about a million more things to discuss in this book ...

... but we'll keep this list short so as not to overwhelm. If anything jumps out at you while you're reading--anything you don't get or want to discuss--write it down and bring it with you! We'll get through as much as we can.

Happy reading.

See you on the 18th.

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Looking For Hamlet Scholar Talk

This is another event at the PPL in March in honor of the First Folio Exhibit, and it's on Wednesday, March 9th from 12-1:30pm in the Rines Auditorium.

"Focusing on Hamlet, University of Southern Maine Professor Ben Bertram will examine the way editors, directors, actors, teachers, and scholars choose among folio, quarto, or conflated versions of the plays. He will also be accompanied by actors who will perform Hamlet’s soliloquies and join in a discussion of how Shakespeare’s words make it from the page to the stage."

Get the full description here.

Definitions and Clarifications

pneumatic, adj. - literally, full of air. This term is often used to describe women in BNW, and seems to suggest that a woman like Lenina, who's "wonderfully pneumatic," is buxom, curvy, shapely, and yes, even bouncy. But pneumatic could also have a second meaning here, and that is to indicate that someone is a bit of an air-head, light on the intellectual matter, or not bogged down by weighty matters or considerations.

viviparous, adj. - a creature that is viviparous gives birth to live young that develop inside the body, as in the way mammals reproduce. Humans are viviparous (at least, they were until A.F. 632).

Malthusian, adj. - based on the beliefs of Robert Thomas Malthus, a British economist who argued that "population tends to increase faster than food supply, with inevitably disastrous results unless the increase in population is checked by moral restraints or by war, famine, and disease." - The Free Dictionary

Pavlovian Conditioning, n. - also called Classic Conditioning, it's a way of getting a subject to make certain associations between two previously unrelated things; Ivan Petrovich Pavlov was the psychologist who discovered that if he always rang a bell right before feeding his dogs, they came to associate the sound of the bell with getting fed, and therefore would start to drool upon hearing the bell. Here's a great comic related to that experiment.

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