HUXLEY -BRAVE NEW WORLD

1. Would you rather take a magic pill every day to never feel sad or angry, or feel real sadness when bad things happen?
2. Would you rather have a mother and father who love you best of all, or live in a world where nobody has parents and everyone belongs to everyone?
3. Would you rather be made by scientists to love a simple job from the day you are born, or have the freedom to pick any job you want, even if you fail?
4. Would you rather watch loud, exciting movies and play group games all day long, or sit quietly alone in a room to think big thoughts?
5. Would you rather forget all old history and old sad books so you can live an easy life today, or remember history with all its wars and pain?

 

Happiness vs. Freedom

• Would you be willing to take a daily pill that eliminates all sadness, anxiety, or pain, knowing that in return you would lose the ability to feel deep emotions?
• If you could live in a perfect world with no war, poverty, or disease, would you accept a government that decides every single aspect of your life (job, relationships, thoughts)?
• Can true happiness even exist if we don't know what suffering is?

Science, Technology, & Control

• To what extent is it right to use genetic engineering and technology to create the "perfect" human being or the "ideal" citizen?
• If technology could instantly satisfy your every material desire, would you truly be free, or would you just be a controlled consumer?
• What value do art, literature, or history have in a society that lives exclusively in the present and in pure comfort?

Identity & Human Relationships

• In a world where concepts like "mother," "father," and "family" are considered vulgar and illegal insults, how would our understanding of love and human connection change?
• Is it better to belong to a community where everyone thinks exactly the same way to guarantee peace, or to risk chaos to defend individual identity?
• If your entire personality and career path were decided in a lab before you were even born, would you still try to rebel?

BRAVE NEW WORLD

The novel opens in the Central London Hatchery and Conditioning Centre, in the years A.F., or After Ford. 
Ford is the God-surrogate that many citizens of the World State believe is also Freud, the famous  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.

The psychological conditioning process must ensure that people will like their condition, their social destiny.

Lenina  Crowne is a Beta girl. She's been dating regularly with Henry Foster despite the government ban on long-term sexual relationships.
To avoid trouble, Lenina agrees to go on a trip with Bernard Marx. They'll visit  The Savage Reservation, in New Mexico,  where people can live according to the old lifestyle- in other words, they can have the signs of age, they can get married, they can experience feelings like love and they can have children without using any scientific process.

Before leaving, 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 has  learned to read using a book called The Chemical and Bacteriological Conditioning of the Embryo and The Complete Works of Shakespeare, the latter given to Linda by one of her lovers, Popé. 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. 

Lenina is interested in The Savage, and so she takes him out, and much to her chagrin, they do not have sex.
The shame of being a “father”—the very word makes the onlookers laugh nervously—causes the Director to resign, leaving Bernard free to remain in London.
John becomes very popular in London  because of his strange life led on the Reservation. But while touring the factories and schools of the World State, John becomes increasingly disattisfied with the  society that he see.

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, Linda, who has been on permanent soma-holiday. 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

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 Novel Study Answer Key

• How are children created and classified in the World State? Children are not born naturally; they are decanted in hatcheries using the Bokanovskification process (cloning and splitting human embryos). They are chemically and psychologically conditioned and classified into rigid castes: Alphas, Betas, Gammas, Deltas, and Epsilons, ranging from intellectual leaders to manual laborers.

• Why does Bernard Marx feel out of place among Alpha-Pluses? Despite being an Alpha-Plus, Bernard is physically shorter and stunted compared to his peers, which rumors attribute to an accidental drop of alcohol into his blood surrogate during conditioning. This breeds deep insecurity, critical independent thought, and social alienation.

• How did John’s mother, Linda, end up living on the Savage Reservation? Linda visited the reservation decades earlier with the Director (Thomas). She fell into a ravine, was abandoned, and because she was pregnant, could not return to the World State due to the intense social stigma and taboo of natural motherhood.

• Why does Bernard bring John and Linda back to London? Bernard uses them as leverage to save himself from exile. By exposing the Director as a biological father, Bernard publicly shames him and secures his own social protection and popularity.

• What goes wrong when Lenina tries to pursue a relationship with John? A cultural clash occurs: Lenina expects casual, recreational intimacy dictated by World State conditioning, whereas John views her through the lens of Shakespearean romance, purity, and chastity. When John rejects her advances violently and calls her names, Lenina is utterly confused and horrified.

• What causes John to start a riot at the hospital? The death of his mother, Linda, in a drug-induced soma sleep. Distraught by the mindless conditioning of dying children, John tries to throw away their daily soma rations to free them, triggering a violent public riot.

• How does Mustapha Mond explain the ban on art and religion to John? Mond argues that stability and universal happiness require the elimination of high art, science, and religion. True art and deep spiritual faith depend on suffering, conflict, and passion—things the World State sacrifices to maintain total social order.

• How does John's story end after he flees to the lighthouse? Seeking solitude, John retreats to an abandoned lighthouse to purify himself. However, curious tourists and media helicopters track him down, turning his self-flagellation into a spectator sport. Overwhelmed by guilt, shame, and harassment, John ultimately hangs himself.

Part 2: Task-Based Activities & Classroom Exercises

1. Reading & Critical Analysis Task: The Two Worlds

• Activity: Compare the World State and the Savage Reservation using a comparative mindset.

• Discussion Prompts:

  • Which society values individual freedom more, and what are the heavy costs of that freedom?

  • How does Huxley use Shakespeare as a bridge between these two cultures?

2. Creative Writing Exercise: The Lost Diary Entry

• Prompt: Put yourself in the shoes of Lenina Crowne the evening after her disastrous encounter with John. Write a 200-word diary entry expressing her confusion, her lack of comprehension regarding John's "primitive" ideas of love, and her reliance on soma to cope with emotional distress.

3. Listening & Speaking Debate Task: Happiness vs. Truth

• The Scenario: Divide the classroom into two groups:

  • Team A (The World State Advocates): Argue that a society free of pain, disease, and sorrow (at the expense of art and truth) is morally superior.

  • Team B (The Savage Advocates): Argue that human dignity requires experiencing real suffering, authentic emotion, and freedom of choice. (by A.I.)

About one month ago, one of my English colleagues, the English conversation teacher and I had students from two classes, (one from Liceo Linguistico and one from Liceo Scientifico) do an English activity, whose inspiration was taken from an Italian TV programme, " Per un pugno di libri".

The activity came from the idea of a possible activity that students from two different classes could do together (Parallel Class).

So the students were divided into two groups and were asked to stand into two rows. They created two "queues". Each student had to answer a question or translate a sentence and if he/she failed he/she was out, while if the answer was right (from the grammar point of view and from the point of view of coherence) he/she went back behind the row related to his/her group.

The group having the last student left won the game.
These are the questions we asked for:

1. How often a month do you eat out?
2. What’s the past participle of the verb sleep?
3. How do you call the people who sit and watch a performance at a theatre or a cinema?
4. Where do young people in this town usually spend their free time?
5. Translate: Dov’è tuo fratello? E’ andato nel parco a giocare a calcio
6. What’s the past simple of the verb ride?
7. What’s the word used to refer to the raised area in a theatre where actors perform?
8. Translate: Vorrei che tu mi accompagnassi alla stazione dei bus
9. What’s the past participle of the verb think?
10. Qual è il significato della frase What do you look like?
11. Which month and day were you born?
12. What’s the name of the British Prime Minister?
13. What are you going to do tomorrow afternoon?
14. Could you speak English when you were three?
15. What is Promessi Sposi about?
16. Translate: Stavo guardando la TV quando il telefono squillò
17. What’s the past participle of the verb learn?
18. Qual è il significato della frase What’s the matter with you?
19. Translate. Ho fame, ora mi preparo un panino
20. What’s the past simple of the verb bring?
21. What is a traditional breakfast in your country?
22. How do you call the words of a song?
23. Translate: smetti di guardare la TV. La guardi da tre ore
24. What’s the name of a person whose job is to find talented musicians and singers?
25. Translate: Ho appena perso il treno. Devo prendere il prossimo
26. What’s the verb meaning “prendersi cura”?
27. Which countries make up Great Britain?

Some of the mind maps made by the students in the third class  about the effects of drugs and alcohol

Video SparkNotes: Aldous Huxley's Brave New World summary

1984-words and expressions

Words and expressions used in the book

Airstrip One

Part of Oceania, once known as Britain.

Doublethink is the act of accepting two contradictory beliefs as correct. Doublethink is due to a lack of cognitive dissonance—thus the person is completely unaware of any conflict or contradiction. According to  George Orwell, doublethink is: “…..to believe that democracy was impossible and that the Party was the guardian of democracy, to forget whatever it was necessary to forget, then to draw it back into memory again at the moment when it was needed, and then promptly to forget it again….”

Ministry of Love (Newspeak: Miniluv) It enforces loyalty to Big Brother through fear, and repression, as well as systematic brainwashing. Referred to as "the place where there is no darkness", its interior lights are never turned off. It is arguably the most powerful ministry, controlling the will of the population.

 Ministry of Peace (Newspeak: Minipax) serves as the war ministry of Oceania's government, and is in charge of the armed forces, mostly the navy and army. The Ministry of Peace may be the most vital force of Oceania, as the nation is at war continuously with either Eurasia or Eastasia and requires just the right force in order not to  win the war, but to keep it in a state of equilibrium.

Ministry of Plenty (Newspeak: Miniplenty) is in control of Oceania's planned economy. It deals with rationing food, supplies, and goods. Telescreens often make reports on how Big Brother has been able to increase economic production, even when production has actually gone down.

Ministry of Truth (Newspeak: Minitrue) is the ministry of propaganda. In reality it serves the opposite: it is responsible for any necessary falsification of historical events.

Newspeak The official language of Oceania and the new language of the Party, devised to meet the ideological needs of Ingsoc (English Socialism). The goal of Newspeak is to reduce the English language to the fewest words possible blackwhite – to believe that black is white, to know that black is white, and to forget that one has ever believed the contrary , doublethink -the act of simultaneously accepting two mutually contradictory beliefs as correct,  unperson -someone of whom, after his or her execution, any evidence that he or she ever existed was erased, free – meaning negative freedom (without) in a physical sense, only in statements like "This dog is free from lice", as the concepts of "political freedom" and "intellectual freedom" do not exist in Newspeak.

“Un-“ is a Newspeak prefix used for negation. It is used as a prefix to make the word negative, since there are no antonyms in Newspeak. Therefore, for example, warm becomes uncold. On the other hand, the Party controls one’s ability to think negatively by  allowing only the positive term preceded by “un-“. For example, the concept of “bad” can be expressed only with ungood.

 

Party Slogans Examples include: “War is Peace”; “Freedom is Slavery”; “Ignorance is Strength.”

War is peace: nobody questions the Party while at war. People are focused on war and they have no energy and no time to fight against  the systemor be aware of internal problems. It brings people together.                            

Ignorance is strength: if people remain ignorant, they will not question the Party. If they can’t recognize the negative aspects of the system, the Party will be stronger and stronger.                                                                 
Freedom is slavery: if people are free to think for themselves, do things and express ideas, they may realize and oppose the contradictions. So everybody is made weak. They may become slaves to their own ideas and not be strong under one idea from the Party. As a result, they are brought to think that freedom is indeed enslavement.

Telescreen

An oblong metal plaque that looks like a dulled mirror and acts like a television, a camera, and a listening device for the Inner Party and Thought Police. There is no way to shut it off completely, and it keeps tabs on all Party members.

Thought Police

It is used by  the Inner Party that seeks out those against the System, searching out anyone with even the smallest thoughts against the Party or Big Brother. Their powers of observation force everyone to live as though they are always being watched or listened to.

Thoughtcrime

Thinking against the Party, complaining about the Party, doubting Big Brother, or questioning any Party action or "fact."

Two Minutes Hate
Daily requirement for all Party members. Organized group of members watches Party presentations on a telescreen denouncing Goldstein and war enemies (either Eastasia or Eurasia), and celebrating Big Brother. Causes great outbursts of hatred such as directed screaming and violence at screen representations of the enemy.

https://docs.google.com/file/d/0B6hEHomT8SeTVjZxZl96WGk4aVU/edit

 

 

A Hard rain’s a gonna fall  BOB DYLAN (commentary)

The song is connected to the situation of upheaval and unrest that characterized the 1960’s, in particular the Cuban missile crisis, when after the installation of nuclear-armed Soviet missiles on Cuba in October 1962, many people feared the world was on the verge of a nuclear war. However, it seems that Bob Dylan wrote the song some months before the Cuban missile crisis.

Anyway, the song comes from the ferment of the 1960’s, characterized by a general atmosphere of young people’s rebellion and social protest.

Yet, the song may come from any period, since it has no specific historical references and the prevailing dimension is mythical.

As singer and song writer Bob Dylan said, "There would be no music without the words." He produced many songs of social protest.

This song was based on an old medieval ballad whose  title is  "Lord Randal", in which a mother asks her son lots of questions (beginning with "Where have you been?"), leading him to reveal he has been poisoned.

The answers in this song are not symmetrical and balanced like in the original Lord Randal but get longer and longer as the song goes on.

No time is mentioned, no setting is fixed; we have a series of effective, powerful, intense images.

Bob Dylan once said: "Hard Rain is a desperate kind of song. Every line in it, is actually the start of a whole song. But when I wrote it, I thought I wouldn't have enough time alive to write all those songs so I put all I could into this one."

The hard rain of the song may be the fallout, consisting in the radioactive particles that are carried into the atmosphere after a nuclear explosion or accident and gradually fall back as dust or rain.

Dylan himself still  introduced this song by saying “hard rain meant something big was about to happen”, maybe a sort of nuclear catastrophe, a sort of final apocalypse.

In other words the hard rain that is going to fall is a reference to all the bad things that will happen in the world if we don't stop them.

This song is characterized by the use of a lot of adjectives- misty, crooked, sad, dead, black, young, ugly, damp, dirty….

It is also the song  of numbers- twelve, six, seven, a dozen, ten thousand (three times). repetitions and alliteration.

The blue eyed son may be symbolic of an innocent child witnessing terrible events, seeing the wrongs committed and realizing they will lead to destruction or a terrible damage on an awesome or catastrophic scale.

In the first stanza Dylan is saying that he has been to many different places all around the world and he has seen many different weird, dreadful things. Probably the twelve misty mountains are volcanoes, the six crooked highways represent mankind’s dishonesty, the seven sad forests are the trees that are dying because of the climate change, the dozen oceans are dead because of  the same problem.

In the second stanza, he is saying that children are surrounded by violence since their birth, the black are persecuted and even badly hit in some places in the world, cruelty and brutality are increasing more and more, there could be a “ladder”, that is a tool to escape but “that ladder” is so wet and slippery that  it cannot be used….and if you climb it, you may fall off and die, maybe the idea is that no one can change his condition and improve that in some way.

 Here he  is referring to racial hatred, segregation laws, the impossibility to change, the indifference to sorrow. He is also saying that those who want  to speak out against injustice cannot do that,  because they are not allowed to criticize society and point out its negative aspects.The future world will be so violent, senseless, absurd and immoral that even children will have to use  weapons  and defend themselves, changing themselves  into frightful soldiers.

In the third stanza, he is suggesting that people could catch some warning signs coming from nature and society.  The thunder and the wave may suggest some terrible natural catastrophe ( a terrible tsunami…), maybe brought about by human beings, for example a nuclear war.  Probably they will be people (drummers) who will play so fast that their hands will burn in order to warn about the possible dangers for the mankind. Some others will choose another way-they will use a soft and confidential tone of voice to warn of dangers.

However, no one will take the signs of warning seriously, even some of them will laugh, making fun of those who can see the truth- the awful, direful destiny human beings are going to meet.  The poet will die unheard and the clown, who is supposed to tell the truth in a joyful, disrespectful way, will die in a very narrow road closed at one end, because nobody will be interested in his words. People will go on thinking of themselves, even when clearly there are people who suffer ( “ I heard one person starve”).

In the fourth stanza, he is going on to claim that violence and death will be very close to children, because they will be exposed to more and more wars,  discrimination will be more and more manifest, violence against women won’t come to an end but it will grow more and more, emotions will be extremely strong, either in the positive way or in the negative one. In spite of that, he met a girl and she gave him “a rainbow”, a symbolic image referring to peace and equality, promoted by the 60’s civil rights movement.

In the last stanza, the longest one, he is saying that in one way or another he wants to help those who can’t help themselves. He wants to go to the worst places in the world, to those places where humans suffer more for being subjected to a real ugly situation, because of starvation, because of extreme pollution, because of the poor, dirty houses, because of the lack of justice. The poet is claiming that he will stand by these people even when he will “sink”, he will go down, to a lower level himself.

Finally, he is promising that he will educate himself , trying to know well the subject he is going to talk about, before “singing”,  making public declarations about that.

The song deals with the following themes- war, greed, racial hatred, the end of the world, corruption, exploitation, death, indifference to art, loss of innocence. However, along with these negative themes there are the positive ones- hope, love, the importance of memory and the vital role of the artist.

In a 1963 radio interview Dylan said, “In the last verse, when I say, ‘the pellets of poison are flooding the waters’, that means all the lies that people get told on their radios and in their newspapers”.