Summary of criticism of Huxley's 'Brave New World' by William W. Matter
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Course
Comparative and contextual study (H472)
Institution
OCR
Summary of criticism of Huxley's 'Brave New World': 'The Utopian Tradition and Aldous Huxley' by William W. Matter - includes simplified summary of article and relevant quotes from the critic
Name of article and author:
William W. Matter – The Utopian Tradition and Aldous Huxley
Summarise the article in less than 50 words:
Matter compares Huxley’s three dystopian novels and discusses his inspirations regarding
previous ideas on utopian societies.
Key Quotation 1: ‘a condemnation of utopian goals’
Key Quotation 2: ‘The society of A.F. 632 is "perfectly" terrifying to the creative
individual who wishes to test the gates of heaven and hell, and
who seeks to find doors of perceptions’
Key Quotation 3: ‘emphasize the inhumanity of a "perfect" world’
Key Quotation 4: ‘It was fear of the institutionalization of men that alarmed such
satirists as Huxley and Orwell’
Key Quotation 5: ‘Brave New World serves as a powerful warning that man may reach
the so-often sought for state of the ideal commonwealth.’
Key Quotation 6: ‘When pleasure and escape become unavoidable goals, Huxley
reasons, the individual lives in a nightmarish ideal society that cannot
allow him the right to be unhappy’
Key Quotation 7: ‘Huxley is one of the very few utopists to allow heroic struggles and
sorrow to enter into the earthly paradise’
Specific moments/characters linked to the critic’s key ideas in the novel:
Conditioning
Soma
Entertainment in the World State
The Noble Savage
Do you agree or disagree with the critic’s interpretation? Why?
I agree that Huxley is clearly opposing traditional utopian ideas, as he seems to denounce
industrialization and scientific progress used for the pleasures of mankind, as well as the
idea of stability and the absence of unhappiness, since, he argues, it causes the removal
of all freedom and individual importance from society, making human existence
fundamentally futile.
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