Brave New World

1. Brave New World Seminar

2. Toward the end of the book, the Controller Mustapha Mond sums up the benefits of living in the brave new world: “The world’s stable now. People are happy; they get what they want, and they never want what they can’t get.” • It sounds like perfection, and yet the world Mond describes is deeply, intentionally horrifying. Why? What exactly is so bad about this society of the future? Is there anything good about it, anything we could learn from and try to adapt to our own uses?

3. Max Frisch once wrote that “Technology [gives us] the knack of so arranging the world that we don’t have to experience it.” (1957) Evaluate Frisch’s assertion in light of this novel.

4. Discuss a range of ways in which Huxley prepares the reader for the ending of his work.

5. Discuss to what extent the opening pages establish the nature and development of the remainder of the novel.

6. “A chronological sequence is only one way (though a powerful one) of telling a story.” Discuss Brave New World in this light of this statement, commenting on how the “story” is told, and what effects are produced by the way the narrative is conducted.

7. Explore the ways in which the presentation of the family, or its absence, has shaped your understanding of Brave New World.

8. How does Huxley use moral issues to develop Brave New World?

9. Writers are often concerned with problems of inequality. How, and to what extent, is this issue treated in Brave New World?