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The Hillsdale College Online Courses Podcast
Totalitarian Novels: Brave New World and Pleasure
00:26:24
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- [00:00]
Jeremiah Regan
Foreign.
- [00:09]
Juan Davalos
Welcome to the Hillsdale College online courses podcast. I'm Jeremiah Regan and I'm joined by my friend Juan Davalos.
- [00:15]
Jeremiah Regan
Welcome back, everybody. We are on to lecture three of totalitarian novels, Brave New World Pleasure. And in contrast with 1984, which was more on pain, the regime uses fear.
- [00:29]
Juan Davalos
And pain to gain loyalty.
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Jeremiah Regan
That's right. Here we move on to pleasure.
- [00:33]
Juan Davalos
That's right. So Dr. Arn explains to us, because this is a lecture from Dr. Arn, where he gives us a plot summary and literary analysis. Unlike the regime in 1984, which is the boot stamping on the human face forever, the regime in Brave New World promises freedom from pain, freedom from fear, indulgence in every type of pleasure, every type of strength, sensual delight, pleasure for the eyes, ears, mouth, and other things.
- [00:59]
Jeremiah Regan
And when we're reading this type of novels, what I like about studying totalitarianism through novel, through narrative is that you can kind of see elements of our own world in the novels. And obviously in 1984, it's more big Brother watching you and all the surveillance state and all that.
- [01:16]
Juan Davalos
We're thinking about the NSA and the Patriot act and stuff like that.
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Jeremiah Regan
Yeah. Here. When you think of Soma, the drug that the regime uses to bring pleasure to everybody and sort of mollify everybody's senses and their thumos, keep them docile. Right. Think of dopamine and all of the ways in which our society now, through the phones, through TikTok and social media and TV and all the forms of entertainment. Yeah.
- [01:45]
Juan Davalos
Push for consumerism, which is a big theme in Brave New World. Everybody needs to buy new things. You don't repair or mend anything. You throw it away and get the next one. That's a dopamine rush.
- [01:53]
Jeremiah Regan
Yeah. And that's something that we can all see now growing in our cult culture and in young people, and I see, especially right now, teenagers, how sometimes when they're dealing with something difficult in life, they're almost automatically going and detaching themselves from that into social media or their phones or something. And it's something that we can identify and help us manage. When you read it in narrative and in literature, because it gives you a different perspective on it.
- [02:26]
Juan Davalos
That's right. Are we letting the products of technology and scientific advancement distract us from the real human things like really live your life. It's a cliche and kind of a joke, but you should go touch grass, go outside and play and call your family members, do something meaningful with them. Those are the kind of things we think when we Learn about the regime in Brave New World and how it tries to pacify its citizens.
- [02:53]
Jeremiah Regan
And we thank you for listening to the courses. As you're probably driving or doing some chores and learning something new. I do want to invite you to come to the platform at Hillsdale Edu Course. We have tons of resources. We have outlines, study guides for you that give you sort of like an outline of each lecture and the main points and some quotes that you can draw from the course to help you learn it better, as well as access to books, to our DVDs, to Blu Rays. So go to Hillsdale Edu Course to access all of the resources that we have available for you.
- [03:31]
Juan Davalos
Now we'll turn to Dr. Arne with lecture three of totalitarian novels. Brave New World Pleasure.
- [03:43]
Larry Arne
Hello, welcome to this online course on totalitarian novels. My name is Larry Arne. I work at Hillsdale College. We have said in previous lectures that totalitarianism is a 20th century phenomenon that is a development on something as old as human vice and politics. Aristotle writes about it. It's a form of government that exists for the pleasure and convenience of the ruler at the expense of the ruled. They call that tyranny, the worst form of human association in the modern world. We call it totalitarianism. And that's because we've added two things to what the ancients knew of tyranny. And one is a sort of modern mass ideology that promises a utopia. And this utopia can justify every kind of horror in the present. And the other is science, liberated from all kinds of moral control, becomes technology, which comes from a Greek word for making. And science can be used to invent things, to remake the world, and they become the tool of the tyrant. The second book of the four that we're going to talk about, is the most delightful of them. The first one, 1984, we did last time, and that's the harshest of them. It welcomes you into a cruel and restrained world. There's a philosophic seminar at the end of the first one, conducted under torture, which would be characteristic. Brave New World is a fun world. It's exciting and intoxicating, literally. The book is very charming. It is, in a way, the opposite of 1984. And there is a correspondence between George Orwell, who wrote 1984, and Aldous Huxley, who wrote Brave New World, and who knew each other about who's right about what a future utopia or dystopia really is, what they are, which forecast would come true. They both thought that the worlds that they described were possible worlds. The main characters are several people in the novel that you should notice when you read the book. There's a man named Bernard Marx, who's very important. Several of the characters in the novel have surnames of communist heroes. Marx is one. Bernard Marx is a misfit in a regime that aims for standardization. And he has lots of internal struggles which the regime is organized completely to eliminate. One sees that it's not fully a utopia because it does not fully eliminate those internal struggles. He's a little shorter. He's important to the story. There's a woman named Lenina, and she's a sort of a sex figure and a central character. And she's a very desirable woman. Lots of people want her and she wants lots of other people. And she gets some of them. There's a man named Helmholtz, who's a scientist, an important man, and he's probably the most noble and ends up the happiest figure in the novel. There's a savage. His name is John Savage. He's the one in the novel who has read Shakespeare and quotes him quite a lot. There's one other who's done that. That other is Mustafa Mond, who's a world controller. And he keeps in a safe in his office. The great books locked up. They're not allowed to be out. Linda, she is a citizen of Brave New World who goes to a savage place, to a reservation where it's kept in conditions of pre Brave New World. It's a tribe, they live in an ancient way. And you can visit it if you get special permission. And she visited it and she got lost. And then she did something unthinkable. She had a baby. John. Well, start the plot. The plot begins in a hatchery. It's how babies are made. I said that the family is crucial last time and it's in 1984. In all these novels, it's a very important thing because it's the source of us and the source of much of our lives and a domain in which we can have control of our lives and exercise all the human capacities. Not everybody gets to be a plumber, but in 1984, Winston Smith has to fix the plumbing in somebody else's family. So that's a place where we operate and grow. And so adjusting the family has enormous consequences for public life. And in Brave New World they've simply eliminated it. It begins with a tour and it's very artful how he begins the novel because he wants to introduce us to this world, which on the surface is delightful. Babies Are manufactured in test tubes. They're on a big conveyor belt. Everything's temperature control. Large groups are manufactured at a time. They're always trying to get more because what comes out of each test tube is identical twins. They introduce alcohol or they deprive them of oxygen somewhere along the way to sort them into classes. The classes are arranged by mental capacity and also physical size. And they run alpha, beta, gamma, delta, epsilon. Epsilons are short, can hardly talk. They're the caste that does menial jobs. Alphas. They can think, they can create their top of the society. Also, they prove to be the most troubled group. It's a society in which everybody is identifiable. You learn after they get out of the hatchery that they're put in places where they're all raised together. And they use hypnopedia. That means at night they play things for them, to condition them and teach them things. I personally believe that's impossible. I don't think the human soul works that way. Probably you can be. You can remember things that are told you in your sleep, maybe. But understanding is an effort. You have to work. Wouldn't it be great if we could go to sleep and wake up and understand everything about these totalitarian novels? But come to find out it's a conscious effort. We have to work, we have to use energy, we have to use time. And we have a limited supply of both. One of the reasons we imagine God more perfect than us, when we imagine him more perfect than we, we imagine him able to understand everything all at once. We don't do that. We have to work to reduce us to manufactured items, which is, I think, one of the things going on in the world today. We have to picture ourselves as conditioned, formed by influences on us. And if we can control those influences, we can make people whatever we want, we can control them. As I say, I think that's impossible. But it's taken to the high state in the brave new world. Children are taught not to like books they don't want anybody reading. They are taught not to like flowers and natural things. They shock them or put screeching noises on when they expose the children to these things because they don't want them contemplative in any way. They want them to live together. They want them to be constantly active. They want them. When they work, after they work all day, they want them to go and play games. And the games have elaborate machineries to aid production and make sure that there's lots of economic activity. There's got to be a lot of Waste. In Brave New World, simply sitting down and reading a book is an antisocial activity. You meet this world controller who makes a visit to the hatchery and he comes into the story often soon after you leave the hatchery and you see where the kids are raised. Then you start meeting some people. You meet Lenina early on. She's a very attractive girl. The question arises, is she spending too much time with a man named Henry, having relations with him for a time instead of everyone? This is a slogan that everybody knows in Brave New World. They say it all the time. Everyone belongs to everyone else. That means you gotta fool around with a lot of different people, not get attached to any particular one. You live for pleasure. There's lots of devices. The music is really good. And the what. The way they put powder on themselves and scent themselves is very elaborate. And lots of devices to do it with when they get themselves all fluffed up. It's quite a production. They all have jobs. Lenina works in the hatchery. The jobs are scaled to their capacity and they're bred and conditioned for that. The jobs are not too hard for anybody. They could give them a lot more time off. It's very productive. In Brave New World, they have to waste a lot, but everybody's got to be busy. And then when busy is over, then they have activities at night. Lenina, as I say, is spending too much time with Henry. And one of her friends says, is that right? You know, you'll make yourself sad. And she defends it, but she admits the principle that she shouldn't spend too much time with him or any single person.
- [14:42]
Podcast Announcer
This show is a part of the Hillsdale College Podcast Network. If you like what you hear, please subscribe to your favorite. You'll get brand new episodes of all your favorite shows sent right to your device, and you'll help us know that you're out there listening. Never miss another episode by going to Podcast Hill. Hillsdale. Edu subscribe. That's Podcast Hillsdale. Edu subscribe or click the Follow or Subscribe button on Apple podcasts, Spotify or YouTube. Great books, great people, great ideas. Learning about these things is critical to being a well educated human being. And we can help with the Hillsdale Dialogues. Each week, Hillsdale College president Larry Arne joins radio veteran Hugh Hewitt to discuss topics of enduring relevance. And from time to time, they also talk about current events, but always with an eye toward more fundamental truths. And they want you to tune in to a conversation like no other. The Hillsdale Dialogues are posted every Monday on the Hillsdale College Podcast Network at podcast hillsdale.edu. that's podcast hillsdale Ed. Or listen via Apple Podcasts, Spotify, YouTube or wherever you find your audio.
- [16:09]
Larry Arne
Some women are bred to be able to breed and they are the source of the eggs that go into the hatchery. And the women have to cope with the fact that they're not able to breed and they have various medical procedures to do that. Try to keep him happy. You meet Bernard. Lenina has an attraction to Bernard. He's a funny looking little guy. They think the story about him is that maybe alcohol seeped into his test tube and that's what stunted him. And he's sort of curious and we find out that he's alienated from society in big ways because of this physical difference where everybody treats him different. But she likes him and he wants to be an intellectual. He turns out not to be a very noble person. But he styles himself in his mind that Marx has a friend and this man Helmholtz, who's a sort of. He's probably the most serious thinker in the novel outside Mustafa Mond, the World controller. And Helmholtz proves to be a good friend to him, but he himself is probably not worthy of that friendship. Bernard Marx. He persuades Lenina to go with him to this here reservation. She is appalled by it. It's hot, stinky, and they don't have all the conveniences all the time. There's a drug that they take, it's called Soma, which comes from an ancient word for the body. And this drug is the perfect drug because it's not addictive and it's easy to scale it to how much of a vacation you want. You can take too much, as one person does toward the end and kill yourself. But here's the thing. They've contrived so that your body is in really great shape until you die and then you die of a sudden. And this part is not fully plausible to me. They don't fear death and one of the reasons is they get a great soma holiday at the end and they can kill themselves with the drug. And their bodies are programmed to wear out of a sudden at the end. So Bernard takes her there and she doesn't have her conveniences and she's unhappy. He hears that he's being fired and transferred to Iceland. One of the things you learn in Brave New World is that punishments, they are available and they are used, but they are not harsh. He's very upset and then he discovers and the whole action of the novel Turns on this discovery. The director at his job, who has fired him, has years ago gone away to the reservation with a woman named Linda. And Linda is lost. Linda has to live in this reservation and it's not very happy. She doesn't have Soma, she has some alcoholic drug and she's abused by a man. She has a baby, John the Savage. And any talk of natural childbirth, that's what they think of as pornography. In Brave New World you don't mention in polite company childbirth or nursing a baby. Those are icky subjects. Foul. Well, she's had a baby. And this director who's fired Bernard turns out to be the father of the baby. And Bernard calls the World Controller and here we learn something about him. And he says, be a cool. And he has to get through to him. That's not easy. And he says it'd be a nice experiment to bring the Savage and his mother into the Society to see how people react. And the World Controller likes that. He likes experiments. One thing, it shows that he's at ease in his tyranny. He's not worried about rebellion. He also. We'll learn more about him in a minute. He likes to experiment on the Society. Well, Bernard brings them back and he goes into this place where he works to be publicly fired. And he introduces this woman who's grown old and she's ugly and they never see old, ugly people and his son. And she rushes up to the director and she's described. The director is disgraced and fired and Bernard is elevated, becomes the toast of the town. And the Savage is really interesting. John Savage, because he's very noble looking man and he quotes Shakespeare and odd stuff like that. So there's our plot. If you read the book, you'll see that this experiment with the Savage reveals people quite a lot. Lenina loves him and tries to have sex with him, but he thinks that's indecent. He thinks he should marry the girl unknown to her so they don't get on very well. And he even strikes her at one point when she comes onto him. Bernard makes a fool of himself, which he has a very large capacity to do and eventually falls out of favor. There's an interlude where Bernard has to go to a mandatory religious service and it's a parody of Christianity. They worship Henry Ford and sometimes Ford is called Freud. They conflate the two men and Ford invented the assembly line and mass production. And he's our Ford. And you go worship him and you drink soma, pass it around like a communion cup. Bernard can Never get into it properly. He's a misfit. But everybody has to pretend that they do. There's discipline in Brave New World. It looks on the surface, very pleasant, but there's lots of discipline. It comes down to a crisis. Linda, the mother of the Savage, goes to the place where you drink soma till you die, and he visits her. John, the Savage visits his mother. He's upset they're giving her the drug, tries to stop them, causes a riot. I mean, there's some fighting. These, by the way, are not very spirited people. And they quiet the riot by spraying soma vapor into the air. And they all end up at the World Controller's place. And here, I'll summarize at the end, quickly. It's very revealing. They have a punishment for when you don't work out in this society. You get sent to an island. The kind of people who get sent to the island are the most interesting kind of people, people who don't conform. And so actually the island is for. Is a sort of a reward. And we learned that the World Controller had the option of going to the island. He likes books and he likes to think. And he keeps his Plato and his Shakespeare and his. His great authors. And he's safe and reads them. They have to be locked up, but he's a powerful man. He reads them and he thought. He tells his story. As a young man, he was kind of a misfit himself, different than Bernard, who turns out to be cowardly and craven. In many ways, he's more like Helmholtz, who's a hero in the Thing. And Helmholtz is a great writer. He writes jingles for commercials and Hypnopedia training, and he's very good at it. But he's upset because he can't write anything serious. And the World Controller says, of course you can't write anything serious. There's no tension in your life. You have to suffer. Helmholtz goes off to the island, and the World Controller rather envies him. He says, but the Savage wants to go to the island, and the World Controller won't let him. It's probably the most cruel thing that happens in the novel. The Savage is a very unhappy and brave new world. It violates all the moral standards that he has learned by reading Shakespeare. There happened to be a volume of Shakespeare in the reservation where he grew up, and he wants to go. And the World Controller says, no, we'll continue the experiment. And at the end, the Savage finds a remote place and hides out and scourges himself, among other things, because he's upset with himself that he desires Lenina very much and he knows that's wrong. He's discovered and he becomes a tourist attraction and they besiege him. Everybody flies around on little helicopters in Brave New World. It's very convenient for the upper classes, upper caste I guess you'd say. Crowds gather and there's a bit of violence. He attacks one of them. At the end he found to have hung himself. That means that the World Controller experiments on him unto death, and he mostly appears in the novel as genial man, reflective man, benign man. But Brave New World is a world in which people are distorted and changed to make them compliant. And remember one of the themes from Aristotle, that people are diminished and demeaned to put up with tyranny. And these are shallow people in, on the surface, a very attractive and even delightful world. That's the novel. We'll talk about it with the.
- [26:57]
Jeremiah Regan
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