Episode 303: Aldous Huxley's "Brave New World" Ch. 8-13

Summary

The Literary Life Podcast

Episode 303: Aldous Huxley’s "Brave New World," Ch. 8–13
Date: November 18, 2025
Hosts: Angelina Stanford, Thomas Banks
Guest: Ella Hornstra

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Episode Overview

In this deep-dive episode, the Literary Life crew explores Chapters 8–13 of Aldous Huxley’s Brave New World, unraveling the novel’s complex layers of parody, literary allusion, and philosophical exploration. The conversation centers on moving past surface-level connections to our contemporary world, instead examining Huxley’s satirical and parodic craftsmanship. The hosts illuminate how understanding parody, literary references (especially to Shakespeare), and myth enriches engagement with the text—preparing listeners for a fuller appreciation of Huxley’s ultimate message.

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Key Discussion Points & Insights

1. How to Read Beyond the Surface

• Angelina’s Reading Philosophy (09:45–14:20):
  Emphasizes not reducing Brave New World to a mere prophecy about our times or a shallow dystopian prediction. Instead, she frames the novel as a literary exaggeration and an artistic game, encouraging readers to seek deeper meaning by focusing on the artistic and literary elements.

  “When you explore the artistic and literary elements, you actually can get a deeper meaning out of the book than just, ‘Hey, there are some things in this book that kind of relate to my life.’” (13:01 – Angelina)

2. Satire vs. Parody: The Difference Matters

• Defining Satire and Parody (17:36–27:31):
  The distinction is foundational for understanding Brave New World. Parody is described as a game—inviting readers to recognize the world’s upside-down-ness and become right side up.

  “Satire is a lesson. Parody is a game.” (17:43 – Quoting Nabokov via Angelina)
  “When the whole world is upside down, the person who’s right side up looks upside down.” (23:08 – Angelina)
  Ella adds that the game of parody reveals its meaning only once readers play along by assembling the narrative’s puzzle pieces.

• Parody & the Gospel (25:32–27:31):
  Angelina outlines how Christian narrative itself is a "parody" in this literary sense, with Christ’s actions and the entire Gospel narrative being “upside down” to the world’s expectations.

3. Allusions: Shakespeare, Myth, and More

• Shakespeare’s Centrality (37:39 onward):
  John the Savage’s language and worldview are shaped by Shakespeare—Hamlet, Othello, The Tempest, Romeo and Juliet, Troilus and Cressida, and “The Phoenix and the Turtle.”

  “He quotes a total of, I think, 12 plays...” (38:02 – Thomas)
  The hosts discuss each allusion’s significance, especially as storytelling tools for John’s psychological and moral struggles.

• John as Shakespearean Hero and Mythic Figure (28:25–32:25): John is a composite of Caliban, Ferdinand, and Othello—simultaneously both insider and outsider, marked by mythic rites of passage and tragic longing.

4. The Savage’s Dual Education and Alienation

• Ella: John’s upbringing is a blend of “nursery rhymes about children in bottles” from his mother and Zuni/Hopi mythology from Native elders (38:23–39:00).
  He possesses a Shakespeare volume from a sacred Native chamber, symbolically combining old and new mythologies.

5. Freudian and Literary Parody

• Freudian Critique (36:04–41:37):
  The “childhood memories” trope and Oedipal undertones satirize both Freud and misreadings of Hamlet.
• Bernard's Inferiority Complex (39:00, 53:53):
  Parodies the psychoanalytic obsession with trauma and neurosis, providing a lens on the broader culture's emotional anemia.

6. Upside-Down World: Civilization as Savagery

• Savage/Society Paradox (27:31–32:25):
  The “civilized” are the true barbarians; John is exiled for being emotionally and spiritually whole, reflecting the world’s inversion.

  “Even calling the savage a savage is upside down because he’s not a savage. He’s the civilized one…” (27:43 – Angelina & Ella)

7. Parodic Mirroring of Ritual and Religion

• Artificial vs. Natural: Wombs and Initiation (46:22–47:08):
  Sacred Native chambers are mirrored in the artificial hatchery, as both sites of “rebirth”—but one is natural, the other mechanical.
• Ritual, Pain, and Meaning (49:00–50:33): John’s yearning for suffering and atonement is contrasted with the world’s obsession with perpetual pleasure.

  “He wants pain. He thinks pain will be meaningful. This is the counterpoint to Freud’s pleasure principle...” (50:28 – Angelina)

8. The Role of Soma and the Escape from Suffering

• Lenina and Linda’s Use of Soma (52:05, 60:15):
  Soma as a numbing agent symbolizes the denial of reality and true feeling—contrast with John’s willingness to suffer, echoing Shakespeare’s melancholic lovers.

  “He wants to feel his feelings. He wants to feel his pain, and she wants to escape.” (71:33 – Angelina)

9. Machine vs. Magic (61:46):

• John as Bearer of Magic/Meaning:
  The world’s mechanical, uniform “magic” (the “feelies,” propaganda, and triply-titled bureaucrats) stands against the real, soul-stirring magic of Shakespeare.

10. Religious Language Turned Upside Down (57:09, 57:13):

The society’s technocratic dogmas parody Christian scripture and ritual (“heretical,” “Alpha Plus to whom so much has been given...”), emptying them of substance.

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Notable Quotes & Memorable Moments

• On Surface Readings:

  “Don’t limit yourself to this surface reading of, you know, ‘Wow, our lives are like Brave New World.’ Because if you do that, you will miss the even bigger and more profound point of the book.”
  — Angelina (11:53)

• On Parody:

  “In a nutshell, parody is the idea that when the whole world is upside down, the person who’s right side up looks upside down.”
  — Angelina (23:08)

• On Civilization and Savagery:

  “Even calling the savage a savage is upside down because he’s not a savage. He’s the civilized one.”
  — Ella (27:37), Angelina (27:43)

• On Shakespeare’s Literary Fabric:

  “He quotes a total of, I think, 12 plays and then the poem, the Phoenix and the Turtle.”
  — Thomas (38:02)

• On John’s Encounter with Parodic Othello:

  “Othello… in this world, it’s very odd to be monogamous and have an affection for a single person… because everyone belongs to everyone else.”
  — Ella (68:31)

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Highlights with Timestamps

Literary Criticism & Reading Guidance

• 05:04 – Commonplace quotes: C.S. Lewis, Plato’s Symposium, Paul Kingsnorth
• 09:45 – Angelina clarifies her approach to reading literature (against simple real-world analogies)
• 14:20 – Explains intention behind focusing on literary rather than “horizontal” life-connections

Satire, Parody, and Inverted Worlds

• 17:43 – Distilling the difference: “Satire is a lesson. Parody is a game.”
• 23:08 – Parody as a puzzle: “When the whole world is upside down, the person who’s right side up looks upside down.”

Shakespearean Allusions

• 37:39–48:12 – Breakdown of John’s Shakespeare references; misquotation and thematic ties to Hamlet, Othello, The Tempest
• 55:02 – John’s idealization of Lenina through Romeo and Juliet, Troilus and Cressida

Cultural Critique and Satire

• 33:27 – Huxley’s mocking of California’s “cult of fun” and pep
• 35:15–36:04 – California slang “pneumatic” in the characterization of women

The Savage’s Ordeal

• 43:51 – Zuni/Hopi mythology, John’s dual inheritance
• 49:00 – John’s desire for crucifixion as a means of meaning

Parody of Religion & Meaning

• 57:09, 57:13 – Parodied religious language in the administrative world

Parody of Othello in the Feelies

• 66:01–68:01 – Hilarious send-up of Othello as a surrogate-passion film

John & Lenina: Tragedy and Comedy

• 70:30 – John fears Lenina “may not be who I think she is”; performance of idealized love
• 85:23–89:33 – The climactic (and farcical) Shakespearean breakdown when Lenina makes a sexual advance and John is horrified

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Deep Dives and Extended Analyses

The Zuni Trial of Lovers Folktale (73:04–75:52)

• Ella recounts the myth Huxley alludes to in John’s language—paralleling the themes of illusion, reality, ordeal, and true union, which runs throughout the novel.

“The Phoenix and the Turtle”: Alchemical and Mystical Unity (81:05–83:17)

• Discussion of Shakespeare’s obscure poem as a meditation on divine and mortal union, appearing when the novel confronts meaning in a mechanized, anti-human world.

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Humorous & Memorable Moments

• Nabokov’s Butterfly Collection (20:05):
  “Did you know he traveled with his butterfly collection? …He was a world class lepidopterist.” (Thomas)
• Feelies Parody (68:31–69:36):
  Ella can’t help but “roll around on the couch” laughing at Huxley’s over-the-top Othello film, featuring a character brain-damaged into monogamy.
• Michael York as both “Logan’s Run” lead and narrator of Brave New World (49:00):
• Linda’s “Reverse Virgin Birth” (59:24):
  John’s natural conception is miraculous—and thus scandalous—in a world where sexual pleasure is decoupled from procreation.
• Multiple “safest helicopters” and Alice in Wonderland references (91:17):

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Concluding Insights

Parody (“the game”) is the key to understanding Huxley’s book.
Huxley’s purpose is not to present a direct target for satire, nor a pessimistic prophecy, but to disturb readers with an upside-down world and provoke a reorientation toward essential truths about human nature, suffering, and meaning. The literary references, especially to Shakespeare, serve both as cultural memory and as a measure against which the Brave New World is to be judged.

“When you get the bigger reading…the smaller readings come, too. But if you just look at the surface, it doesn’t work in the other direction.” (13:33 – Angelina)

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For Next Time

The upcoming episode will bring the Brave New World series to a close, resolving the puzzle-game of parody and exploring whether the perceived nihilism of Huxley’s ending is a misreading by those who miss the novel’s deeper structure and purpose.

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Further Resources

• Wikisource: Shakespearean Quotations in Huxley
• Zuni Folktale: "The Maiden of Matsuhi and the Red Feather"

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Notable Timestamps

• 09:45 – Reading philosophy and connecting beyond surface parallels
• 17:43 – Parody vs. Satire
• 23:01 – Parody as inversion; literary examples
• 27:31 – Civilization as savagery
• 37:39 – Role of Shakespeare in shaping John’s reality
• 49:00 – John’s pain and the “pleasure principle”
• 66:01 – The feelies as parody of Othello
• 81:05 – Analysis of The Phoenix and the Turtle

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For a full understanding and an artful reading of Brave New World, listen to the podcast or revisit the literary works referenced within—including Shakespeare’s tragic and mystical plays. The Literary Life Podcast guides you through the puzzle, piece by piece, with intellectual rigor, cultural wit, and contagious literary enthusiasm.

Transcript

[A]

This is not just another book chat podcast. Lifelong reader Cindy Rollins joins teachers Angelina Stanford and Thomas Banks for an ongoing conversation about the science, skill and art of reading. Well, explore the lost intellectual tradition and discover how to fully enter into the great works of literature. Learn what books mean while delighting in the sheer joy of imagination. Each week we will rescue story from the ivory tower and bring it to your couch, your kitchen, and your commute. The literary life is for everyone because in the words of Stratford Caldecott, to be enchanted by story is to be granted a deeper insight into reality. Join us for an ever unfolding discussion of how stories will save the world. This is the Literary Life Podcast. Back to the Literary Life podcast. This is episode three of our series on Aldous Huxley's Brave New World. I am Angelina Stanford, here with special guest Ella Hornstra and my own alpha plus, Mr. Banks.

[B]

Hello. Hello. I don't know about that alpha plus thing, though.

[A]

You were gonna say something. You think you're an Epsilon?

[B]

Well, maybe. I don't know. Get down happy medium.

[A]

Get back into the mind.

[B]

I'd like to think I would be, you know, maybe a Gamma or something like that.

[A]

Maybe again, wow. One can. Hopefully. The journey of the soul to becoming a Gamma.

[B]

Yeah.

[A]

I would just like to point out.

[B]

My sadder aspirations right there.

[A]

I have, in fact, had a violent passion for you. No. No surrogate needed.

[B]

Oh, okay.

[C]

All right.

[B]

This is getting kind of steamy already. We're making the audience uncomfortable because all five seconds.

[A]

Well, you know, it's what I do. Before we jump in with this next section of Brave New World, I've got some pretty good news for everybody. It's that time of year for our Christmas sale at the House of Humane Letters. And we know that you wait up all year to get all your purchases during this sale. And we have so much stuff in the store. I cannot believe how much stuff we have done over just over the last year. So make sure you peruse carefully in the store because there's a lot of new things and at least working on putting together some new bundles and some new ads so y' all can actually see what's in the store, because there is a lot. But if you're new, our Christmas sale every year, it starts this. Not this Friday. Sorry, starts Friday, November 21st. And it's going to run through the end of the year. I think it's just because I was a homeschool mom for so long that I was insistent that our Christmas sale run till after Christmas, because homeschool Moms get money as Christmas gifts and we want to be able to spend it on these things. And so the sale goes to the end of the year and there's no code needed. Everything's already been marked down for you. So this is all previously recorded. Webinars, mini classes and conferences will all be 20% off. So no, nothing live or current, not the new conference or Droughts class or anything, but anything previously recorded. Which means my PO webinar will be for sale that we just had this week and it will be for sale as well in there. And I think the PO webinar went really well. The feedback's been really good and positive. So yeah, check, check that out as well as well. Ella's Webinar and mini class. Mr. Banks's webinars and Mini class. We've got just a ton of stuff, so help yourself in there. And also a quick reminder that we moved our literary, our annual Literary Life online conference to January. So mark your calendars for that and you can register for that while you're picking up all your Christmas goodies. We've got gift cards as well if you're thinking about gifting some of these items to people. And we've also got Dr. Drought's class on the Vikings coming up as well. So all things to put on your radar. And like I said last time, you can pick up Dr. Drought's Viking webinar at the Christmas sale for a steal. And then if you like what you see, sign up for his semester long class. All right, that is what we've got going on at the House of Humane Letters. And I flew through that really, really quickly because I have a feeling this is going to go again a while. We're going to try to not take you here for the next three hours. I know our faithfuls are like, please, please, yes, we want three hours. No, no, we have other things we need to do today. But there's a lot, there's a lot to talk about in this section. So why don't we get started with our commonplace quotes. Mr. Banks, what do you have for us?

[B]

I have a quotation from C.S. lewis's letters. Here he is writing, I believe, to his brother Warren and he says, what a series of rediscoveries life is. All the things one used to regard as the nonsense grown ups talk about have one by one come true. Drafts, rheumatism and Christianity.

[A]

That's a very Puddleglum kind of quote.

[B]

It is, but actually, no, that really is true. I mean, I don't have Rheumatism yet. But I have reached a point in my life where I do try to guard against drafts. Mr. Woodhouse, you're like this, too. I mean, don't deny it.

[A]

No, I totally am. I catch a chill.

[B]

You're much more draft conscience even, probably, than I.

[A]

No, it is. It is very true. I wasn't gonna call you out on that. When you read that quote, I was thinking, oh, wow, that's very much you. But I wasn't gonna say it.

[B]

No, it's true. That's true. Yeah.

[A]

You are the grumpy old man of.

[B]

The House of Humane Letters cardigan and peon.

[A]

This is very true. This is very true.

[B]

You got me some warm slippers a Christmas or two ago.

[A]

I did.

[C]

I did.

[A]

It's my job to keep Mr. Woodhouse warm and craft free. Yes, correct. All right, Ella, what kind of commonplace quote do you have for us today?

[C]

Mine actually comes from Plato's Symposium, which has been kind of an interesting companion to the brave new world. I've been reading it at the same time for class. And so this is an English translation by Chris Emlund Jones. And he says, for this is the real difficulty with ignorance in not being fine and good, nor wise. One thinks oneself quite adequate. So he who does not think he is lacking has no desire for that which he does not think he lacks.

[A]

Oh, that is very apropos.

[B]

Yes. Yeah, no, I'm gonna have to read the Symposium again sometime. It's been a number of years.

[C]

It's honestly been a complete delight to me.

[B]

It used to be my favorite dialogue of Plato's, and I think it might still be. It's quite funny, too.

[C]

Oh, yes.

[A]

Well, excellent. My commonplace quote comes again from Paul Kingsnorth's against the Machine on the unmaking of humanity. And I. I have such, like, a panic in my gut because I'm so afraid I missedaid his name last time. I'm afraid I said Kings nor Kingsworth instead of King's North. And all I can say about that is life with dysgraphia. The. The letters dance around. So my apologies if I said his name wrong. This book is fabulous. It is so good. I, I, I'm, I'm on a mission now to make everyone read it. And you guys, you guys have got to read this book. It is so good.

[C]

But I.

[A]

There's everything. Everything in this book is commonplaceable. Seriously, everything. But I found one that I thought was very apropos to brave new World. I mean, this book really could not. You're saying Plato is a good companion to Brave New World. I'm saying this book is a really good companion to Brave New World. So he's describing. This is just. I don't know, how many chapters are we into the book at this point? This is chapter four. This is chapter four. So it's still. He's still fairly early, setting up his argument, and he's talking about how he had gone on a family vacation. So he and his wife and children, and. And they're out in a small town. Small, you know, not London. But he does have this experience. Even worse when he gets to London. But he has this epiphany while he's kind of sitting with his family eating ice cream. Just kind of looking around, I saw that everything around me was dedicated solely to the immediate gratification of the senses. There it was all of a sudden, right in my face. Eating, drinking, buying colorful things, boats, vans, bikes, beer, steak, new clothes, secondhand clothes, burgers, chocolate bars, old castle, stately homes, cappuccinos, pirate adventure parks, golf courses, spas, tea rooms, publishers, pubs, food, drink, fun, entertainment, games, probably some sex somewhere in the mixed. All of it came together suddenly into a kind of package of sensory overload. And I saw that this was what we were, what we had become, without really thinking about or planning it. Stimulating the senses, then reacting to the stimulus, profiting from it all. This was what our society was all about. Feeding the pleasure centers, spending and spending to keep it all coming at us.

[B]

A world of synthetic everything.

[A]

Yeah, yeah, yeah.

[B]

Including synthetic personalities.

[A]

Oh, yes. Well, I mean, that's the whole influencer culture, right?

[B]

Yeah, yeah.

[A]

You know, algorithm chosen just. Just for you. And when I brought this quota in, I started thinking about kind of the bigger picture here for what we do on the podcast. We just, like the opening says, this is an ongoing conversation about how to read the literature. And I know that there has been some confusion amongst listeners, and especially if you're new, you might be confused listening to this kind of stuff. When I say things like, when you read, you're not supposed to connect. I mean, I say. I say it. I'm quoting fry, I'm quoting C.S. lewis, I'm quoting a long lineage of people. This isn't coming from me, but when I point out that the traditional way to read is not to read a book and then try to connect it to things in our life, or to say, oh, this thing in this book is like this thing in my life, that we're actually supposed to be connecting it to something different, something better, something bigger. I think that causes a lot of confusion. And so I started thinking about that as we were approaching this book. And so hopefully this is going to clarify some things. Like, it is completely natural when reading Brave New World to think about the fact that the exaggeration Huxley gives us, the absurd, comical exaggeration, has actually become our reality. Okay, that is a completely natural good thing to think about. And I'm not saying you shouldn't think about that, but you shouldn't make the mistake of thinking that Huxley wrote a prophecy and that prophecy has come true, because he is very, very clear. We're going to talk about this a lot when we get to the last episode. He. He's very clear in stating, this was not a prophecy. I'm not a prophet. I was not predicting anything. I was giving an exaggeration. So while it's fine, I mean, look, I'm not gonna pretend I don't do it either. I'm not saying it's wrong to be like, oh, wow, this thing in their culture is like this thing in our culture. And, you know, we are also inevitably comes to mind. Right? Like, okay, so I'm not saying. Don't hear me say you're wrong to think about that. What I am going to say is don't limit yourself to only thinking about that. Don't limit yourself to this surface reading of, you know, wow, our lives are like Brave New World. Because if you do that, you will miss the even bigger and more profound point of the book. Again, there's nothing wrong with those kinds of surface observations, but we want to be able to look deeper. So what we're going to do, and you might have noticed we have not spent time on this podcast talking about those kinds of horizontal things. Talking about, oh, this is like this thing, and this is like that thing. We have tried instead to keep our focus on the literary elements. And sometimes when I say that, I think people hear me saying, I don't want to talk about the really important stuff, like our lives here. I just want to talk about literature. Actually, that's upside down. I.

[C]

What?

[A]

What? If you've been listening to this podcast at all, you'll see that our view is when you explore the artistic and literary elements, you actually can get a deeper meaning out of the book than just, hey, there are some things in this book that kind of relate to my life. That's a limited way to read. Not saying it's wrong to make those connections, but it's very limited. And we don't want to be limited. Right? We want to get past the surface and get the bigger meaning. And the cool thing that ends up happening is when you get the bigger reading, you get all the smaller readings too. It's not an either or. So if you get, if you get the bigger reading that we hope to lead you to in the last episode, you will get all the smaller things too. You will get, oh, this is like our life and this and this and this, you'll get all of that. But if you do it the other way around, if you just look at the surface, it doesn't work in the other direction. All you get is the surface. You will not also get the deeper meaning. So we're trying to avoid reducing our reading. We want to make everything bigger, not smaller. And so I just wanted to clarify that because I think sometimes for some, some listeners, not our long time listeners, not in the Patreon, but every now and then I'll see kind of a random comment on the Internet and somebody thinks I'm saying, you know, it's morally wrong to think about something in your life while you read. And I am absolutely not saying that. We're saying we just don't want to be limited by that. We want the bigger. So to that end, let's talk about some literary elements because, man, they are slapping us in the face in this section. There's. There's so much and it's getting so good. I wish I could see Ella's face right now. She looks like she just set, you know, next to a big juicy steak. Like she's got that hungry look on her face, like she's so ready to.

[C]

I don't think I've ever had this reaction to a steak. This is better than a steak.

[A]

Nice. Yes. No, we are the same. I have never salivated over a steak like I do over a book. This is absolutely true.

[B]

Rereading it reminds me that because it had, as I said, it had been a number of years since I had read this one, that it's a deceptively easy book to half remember or to think you know better than you did. Because I'm finding. Yeah, no, I'm finding I've forgotten so much about it. And Christopher Hitchens actually wrote a very interesting essay about this book. It was, I think, published originally as a Forward to a 2005 edition of it. And he said that it's kind of typical of the world we live in that a lot of people think the brave new world is a phrase that Huxley coined himself. Just as he says a lot of Americans Hitchens is an Englishman. A lot of Americans think that no man is an island was coined by Ernest Hemingway.

[A]

No.

[B]

Yeah.

[A]

It's a John Dumb sermon, in case anybody's wondering.

[B]

But. But yeah, it's one of those books that because it's on so many high school and college reading lists, we all feel we know it a little bit better than we do. I think.

[A]

That'S a Hemingway thing that's done.

[B]

Oh, yes.

[A]

Ask not for whom bell tolls.

[B]

Yeah, yeah.

[A]

No, I shouldn't get distracted by this, but I once stumbled onto an Internet fight between people who should know better. And the fight was about the phrase for whom the bell tolls. And someone had said it was an English phrase, which it is. It's from a John Donne sermon. And some people who really should have known better were excoriating this person about, how dare you. This is an American phrase. This is Ernest Hemingway. You have. Please exit the room. You are embarrassing our entire country on a more.

[B]

A more trivial level. But there's a. Do you remember that movie Garden State from the early 2000s with Natalie Portman? The guy from Scrubs? Anyway, there's a scene where two characters are trying to remember the name of the guy who wrote this book. And they think about it for a while and one says, huxtable, Aldous Huxt.

[A]

Oh, no.

[B]

Yeah.

[A]

All right, so there have been some follow up questions, some good follow up questions in the Patreon asking for more explanation about satire and parody. So I thought we would start off with that because honestly, there might not be anything more important for understanding than what is a parody to make sense of the ending. And in my view, your ability to understand the ending of this book is 100% going to be related to your. If you understand parody or not. Otherwise you're going to think this book is the most depressing, nihilistic thing you've ever read, which many, many people on the Internet will say, including college professors who frankly should know better. And we'll talk about that when we get to the final episode. But let's start off with more. Because we introduced the idea of parody. I'm going to expand it in this episode and then we'll bring it all the way home in the next one. But I'm going to start off with a quote that I think is fantastic. It's by the author of Vladimir Nabokov. Very short little quote. Satire is a lesson. Parody is a game.

[B]

Oh, I think that's pretty good.

[A]

I love that. Now everybody's scratching their head saying, but what does that mean. Okay, I'm going to try to explain.

[C]

Look at Ella.

[A]

Ella.

[B]

I would disagree with the first half of it, actually, but I think you could say that a lot of satirical writers tend to have an object lesson in mind. Perhaps maybe as a. As a generalization, it's fair.

[A]

Well, I think his point was trying to separate parody from satire. I think he's making a point about parody more than he's making about a point about satire. Go, Ella. Say it. Say it. Oh, I was just going to say.

[C]

It might be the case that the game only becomes apparent when you play it. So this might. It might be here as we go through more than it will now.

[A]

Exactly. No, I like that. And I. So here's how I took satire as a lesson. Northrop Fry calls satire militant irony, which another. Right. Another phrase that I love. He says that in Anatomy of Criticism. I don't. I agree with you. That's not. Not all satire has what I would call an object lesson, but it.

[C]

It is.

[A]

It is intentional in that it is directed at something. Right?

[B]

Oh, yes.

[A]

It's like this. This institution, this thing, this human.

[B]

It's identifying folly or misbehavior.

[A]

Yes.

[B]

Corruption or something.

[A]

Or as you know, maybe it tends.

[C]

To become a lesson.

[A]

Yeah. And people can. People can walk away and think this thing was attacked. Right. And that's not how parody works. That's why I was making the distinction last week, that he's parodying Christianity. He's not satirizing Christianity. He's not attacking Christianity. He's parodying it. That's not the same thing. I love what you just said, Ella. That the. What it means, that parody is a game only becomes apparent when you have played the game. I think that that is exactly right.

[C]

I think it goes back to meeting the work on its own terms.

[A]

Exactly. So. And I've explained it, too. It's like. It's like opening a jigsaw puzzle box. You know, when you dump it out, it just looks like chaos and all the pieces are upside down. Right. And if you. If all you do is look at the puzzle pieces dumped out and you look at a parody book as just a bunch of random puzzle pieces knocked around, it's easy to walk away and say, well, that's nihilist. It doesn'. And you don't realize that the upside down pieces is an invitation for you to flip them all over and then see how they fit together and. Ta da. Now you have a puzzle to go.

[B]

Back to that the source of that quotation, you just Brought in Vladimir Nabokov. Did you know that? Nabokov. And it's Nabokov, by the way, not Nabokov. He was very particular about this. And I was corrected.

[A]

I should have asked you before I.

[B]

Said it, but this is funny. It's fine. It's something I forget myself. Did you know he traveled with his butterfly collection? No, I find that endearing. And no, he was. He was a world class. Yeah, he was a world class lepidopterist amongst.

[C]

Wait, so he had a comfort butterfly collection?

[B]

Yeah, yeah. I can't remember who it was, but someone. I was listening. I was listening to an interview years ago on. I think it was Charlie Rose with some writer or other, and he talked about as a young man, he was staying in the Grand Hotel in Montreux, Switzerland, and there was this odd, eccentric Russian he ran into in the restaurant of the hotel, and he recognized him as this internationally famous Russian writer, and he was traveling with a case of butterflies.

[A]

Wow.

[B]

Yeah.

[A]

Yeah, wow. Not quite as, like, ostentatious as, say, Lord Byron, who traveled with a menagerie of a lion.

[B]

He had a pet eagle for a while.

[A]

Yeah. And he traveled.

[C]

Really?

[A]

This just puts all of our celebrities to shame. He actually had Napoleon's carriage, a replica of Napoleon's carriage. And he traveled around in that with animals. He had what, a lion, an eagle?

[B]

It's really good for him to get.

[A]

It's basically the Siegfried and Roy of.

[B]

Romantic poets getting through customs back then. I think that illustrates that. That was a lot easier if you were a person of means anyway.

[A]

Right?

[B]

Yeah, I just got my comfort eagle here. Comfort tiger.

[A]

I gotta up my game, man.

[B]

Yeah, yeah.

[A]

All right, let's get back to parody here. Okay, so let's go back to our idea of the puzzle, right? When you dump out a bunch of puzzle pieces and they're all just, you know, upside down, right? And you see just the back, and there's no picture on there, or even when you start to flip them over, it just looks like chaos, Right? The point is not to leave you there. The point is that you're supposed to put it together, right? That's the game. You're putting it together. And part of what has happened in our extraordinarily didactic age, I mean, I'm not sure that any more didactic age than ours has ever lived. We think it is the duty of the author to spell it out for us, Right. That he is giving us some picture of the world which we can then approve or disapprove of. And that is simply not how parody works. You are supposed to put together the puzzle.

[C]

Right?

[A]

So there are several things going on here.

[C]

Definitely helps if you can actually see the pieces, too. So.

[A]

Well, that. Right.

[C]

Things like not knowing Othello do make this book that much harder.

[A]

Well, that's right. And. Or Brave New World. I mean, the guy's putting on the title, hello, this is the Tempest. And we're like, oh, don't. We don't get it. Right. So, yeah, you have to be able to see the pieces, which is hopefully what we're going to do for you here. And also, I think if you're spending all of your time reading the book thinking about, oh, this is like the mall, or this is like modern advertising, then again, you're going to miss the pieces and not be able to put them together, which is kind of the whole point that I'm trying to make here. So in a nutshell, and I really am going to. I'm trying to make this succinct. But if you're wanting to know where have I talked about this the most? It was in the second Harry Potter class, because I argue that book five of Harry Potter is a parody book. And so I spent. Spent several days explaining what parody was. We had charts, we had graphs, we broke it all down. So that is. You can pick that up in the Christmas sale if you really want to deep dive on this. But in a nutshell, parody is the idea that when the whole world is upside down, the person who's right side up looks upside down. This is what happens in Shakespeare with the fool, right? So the fool looks crazy, he looks nuts, he looks upside down. But he's the one person who knows truth, right? The one person who can say what's going on on. So he's actually right side up in an upside down world, so he looks crazy. So the idea is that in. As we put together the pieces of a parody, we realize, wait a minute, the book's not upside down, we're upside down. We're upside down, and the author is trying to flip us right side up. Okay? So that is my. My nutshell thing. And we'll try to see what that looks like through Brave New World. But I want to. I want to throw this out there, too, because I think that there's a certain kind of person who is very uncomfortable with the idea that we were turned upside down. That seems to them that can't possibly be right. But it's not that we're turned upside down. It's that we're being turned right side up. We're already upside down. Like, think about the duffel pods in Voyager, the Dawn Treader, right? They're already upside down. They have to be popped right side up. And so one of the ways that I explain this in class is to explain that the gospel actually is a parody story. It is an upside down story. So what do I mean by that? Well, the story starts with Christ coming down. He's up there, and he comes down. He descends, and he comes down in a gloriously upside down way. He is born of a virgin. That's upside down, right?

[C]

This will also come up in these chapters.

[A]

Okay, yes, yes, we'll bring it all in. He's born of a virgin, right? That's not natural. That's upside down. That's like something straight out of Alice in Wonderland. That doesn't happen. Not only is he born of a virgin, but when he's born, he's literally born upside down. Like we all are, head first, right? He comes into the world, God as man, through a virgin, upside down, head first. Then what does he do in his ministry? He does things like turn tables upside down. This is one of the first things he does to initiate his ministry is he flips tables upside down, like he is signaling to us. He is the guy coming to show us, us that we are in an upside down world and we need to be flipped right side up. So he flips that over. He flips the tables over. Then he goes around saying completely upside down things like be last to be first, die to live. Right? That's all upside down language. Then, in a really extraordinary upside down move, life itself dies and by dying, defeats death. Okay? That's all upside down. That's all parody language. Then what does he do after that? He ascends. He goes right back up. But here's the thing, and here's how parody works. When he goes up at the end, he doesn't just go by himself. He takes us all up with him. He has righted us. We are the up, the right side up in the upside down world. And that's why we look nutty to a whole lot of people. So that's it. Again, the point of an upside down story, it's not to confuse us morally, it's to turn us right side up. And there's a lot of. I mean, I'll just leave that out there. There's a lot of working parts of what this looks like in a story, but you need to be thinking, too, that it's like, it's like going through the looking glass, you know, if I want to raise my right hand, then I actually raise my left hand. Right. Everything's reversed. That's what upside down is. Ella, you want to explain something?

[C]

I was just going to say this is kind of obvious in the Brave New World, because everything that we know is natural is unnatural to them.

[A]

Yes, right. Exactly. Exactly. And one of the ways that Ella and I like to explain parody to ourselves is the idea. You have a bouncy boy. We said it together. Stereo bouncy ball. Because how do you make the ball go up? You throw it down. You throw it down and then it bounces up. So that's the idea. Everything is going to be reversed. And just like she said, even calling the savage a savage is upside down because he's not a savage. He's the civilized one. The civil. The quote, unquote civilized people. They're the savages. And everything natural he loves. And they have called it all unnatural. All right, I think we're ready to jump into the chapters now. Hopefully you guys are pausing and just thinking, wait, she just blew my mind. That the gospel is upside down parody. But hopefully this makes us a little more comfortable with what Huxley is doing.

[B]

Since you brought up John the Savage, it's interesting to me that. And this is another thing I'd forgotten, that Huxley uses him sort of in more than one way. I mean, so we have this. We have in some ways, kind of a parallel to the setup in the Tempest with people of unlike worlds being brought together by a series of fortuitous circumstances. And I had remembered that John the Savage is obviously the Caliban character, which he is. Caliban being the. The savage, who is. Who has been domesticated, if you will, by. By Prospero the Magician. But he's also. He also falls in love. John the Savage also falls in love. And as this kind of. This kind of idealized, chivalrous sort of feeling towards. Towards Lenina. And this, of course, is going to produce a complicated outcome, but he's kind of a Ferdinand character as well. Ferdinand, the inexperienced young guy who's falling in love for the first time.

[C]

I mean, when we first meet him, he's by the mesa that looks like a shipwreck, so.

[B]

Exactly.

[A]

So, yeah. Right. Yeah. Oh, there's lots I didn't remember.

[C]

I don't know if this is a good time to mention this, but I think Huxley is using savage in the same way that Shakespeare uses black to describe Othello, that he's the one that is black on the outside and yet pure of heart, whereas Iago is fair seeming and yet deceitful and dark on the inside. And I think the same contrast is being set up with Jon and those of the Brave New World. The savage is actually the civilized one, and the civilized people are the savages.

[A]

Right. And we mentioned this in the Othella podcast, which you guys should definitely check out. But black is not, when it's used in medieval and Renaissance literature, is actually not a reference to skin color. It doesn't mean African. In fact, there's a lot of evidence that Othello, the character, is actually Middle Eastern. And he was interpreted to be Middle Eastern for a long, long time in the plays. But for example, I was just reading the medieval Lay Sir Orphea with my medieval lit students, and this Celtic king goes out into the wilderness, and when he comes out, the fairy king says to him, you are too black to touch this woman. He didn't turn into an African. He's still a Celtic king. It means he's dirty, he's rough, so he's dark on the outside. So when Shakespeare calls Othello black, right. He just means he's rough on the outside. As you know, it probably actually meant more like swarthy. Anyway, it's not an ethnic kind of comment. It doesn't mean he's African. And you're absolutely right. The point is that it's inside. Everything's up, flipped upside down. Right. So Iago is actually fair on the outside, but he's got a black heart on the inside. And Othello looks black on the outside and is pure on the inside. And you're right, the same thing is going on with John Savage here.

[C]

And I think some people make a mistake and think that there is a. I have seen all this accused of racism towards Native Americans because of ravening world, so.

[A]

Oh, but the Native Americans are clearly better than the English people. Wow. Just because they're offended at the word savage. But he's not. Okay, so this is a great example. But this is what I'm saying.

[C]

He's not using it that way.

[A]

But Huxley is not calling John Savage a savage. It's the characters are calling him that. And the characters are clearly wrong. Again, we make the mistake as modern readers of thinking that books, novels, literature are philosophical delivery systems and that this is the author's view of the world. And it is not. It is not. And I've heard people say things like, well, if the characters call him savage, then the author needs to come out and explicitly say he's not the Savage, they are. And if he doesn't, then he's a racist. But the thing is, he does say it. You just don't know how to read if you can't tell that he does not think John Savage is the savage. Mustafa Mond is the Savage, as we'll see later in the book.

[B]

Okay, well, chapter eight, I discovered something about Mustafa Mond. Reading up about the background of some of the naming of characters. We had said that Mond, and this is true, that Mond is the French word for world, or M O, n D e would be the French spelling. There actually was a billionaire tycoon in the 1920s and 30s by the name of Sir Alfred Mond, who was the. Who was the. What we would call CEO of a large chemical and pharmaceutical company. It would be like if you name the character, like Pfizer today or something like that.

[A]

The world is Pfizer. That's his name. Okay, nice, nice. Okay, so just to remember from last time, we said that Huxley is satirizing Freud and Ford and Wells. So let's jump right in with chapter eight, because I found it extremely amusing.

[B]

Evidently, also California.

[A]

Oh, yes.

[B]

And Huxley did not have some special grievance against California. I mean, he lived there in the last decades of his life. He died in California. But the first time he went there, I think he was a little bit put off by some of the young people especially and the American cult of. Call it, say, the American cult of fun. This feeling that. And I think probably every thinking person feels this from time to time, that much of our national culture is a kind of organized conspiracy to force you to enjoy yourself.

[A]

Oh, wow, that is so well said.

[C]

I heard somewhere, I was a podcast, that Huxley went to Visit the satirist H.L. mencken in California, and they went together to a film set in Hollywood. And they watched them filming this scene, and the director was screaming at a young star on stage, commanding her to show more pep constantly. And so in Brave New World, every girl in the Brave New World is set into this. This Persona of pep that they have to give out. And it's like the compound of Hollywood versus the compound of the reservation.

[A]

Yeah, there is something kind of Hollywood about.

[B]

I was gonna say most of the young women in this book seem like they just got off rush week or something like that, pledging to their sorority of choice.

[A]

Right. And they're bubbly and happy and bubbly and so. Okay, there's been a lot of talk online about what does the pneumatic mean? And I think some of you are just overthinking this. I don't think pneumatic means a drill. I think it just meant bubbly and peppy. And apparently pneumatic was California slang for a kind. A particular kind of girl. But also it comes from a T.S. eliot poem, right?

[B]

Yeah, there's a poem of his. It's really kind of make your skin crawl poem called Whispers of Immortality. And it's a reflection on death, the fear of death, lust and modernity. And modernity.

[C]

Well, isn't that a very new world?

[B]

Yeah, it's actually. That's a lot of T.S. eliot poems. Maybe. But anyway, we're going to be reading it after this episode is over with.

[A]

Yes. This will be the poem at the end.

[C]

Also, the whole hug me till you drug me honey thing is a California slang.

[A]

Yeah. Oh, okay. Okay. No, no, that tracks.

[B]

Wait, was that an actual song?

[C]

I don't know if it was an actual song. I was listening to someone saying that the. The words he's using are like. It was a. It was a trend in California at the time. I don't know. I would need to. I would need to find out. It might be.

[A]

That's fantastic. All right, so chapter eight. I love this because John the Savage is the first thing he does in his conversation with Bernard is start talking about his childhood. Let me remember my childhood. This is a. This is a send up, a Freud, Right. Lay on the. Lay on the couch and tell me about your mother. And this is what he does.

[C]

But also, Bernard, porn sounds that there's some kind of breakdown. It seems like there's some kind of breakdown in time between the reservation and the brave new world. Like we're on different planets.

[A]

Yes, yes, yes, yes. So he has a happy childhood with his mother until other men are on the scene. And there are so many different layers of things that are going on, I can hardly contain myself.

[B]

So first of all, he doesn't belong anywhere. I mean, he's not welcome really with the people actually of the local Puebla culture because he's not really one of them fully. Even though he's lived there all his life, they don't accept him as one of their own. And obviously we see he does not fit into the to the world state with all of its pleasures and follies that he's going to be introduced to.

[A]

Exactly.

[B]

He's kind of a character who's not at home in this world.

[A]

Exactly.

[B]

It doesn't have a place for him.

[A]

Exactly. And so he. On page 130. Sorry, wrong. We don't all have them. This is not my class. We do not all have the same book. In this chapter, he tells the story of how he receives the complete works of William Shakespeare. And then the first quote he gives is from Hamlet.

[B]

By the way, I. I was looking up each of the Shakespearean quotations and allusions, and someone actually quite nicely on Wikisource, put together an entire article of Shakespearean quotations and Aldous Huxley's Brave New World. So if you do.

[C]

I think I found the same page.

[A]

Yeah, I feel really stupid because I looked every single one up, the ones that I didn't recognize, and wrote them in my book.

[B]

He quotes a total of, I think, 12 plays. And then the poem, the. The Phoenix. The Phoenix and the Turtle. Yeah. And actually, there's one point where John misquotes. He. He quotes as being from the Tempest, something that is actually from A Midsummer Night's Dream.

[A]

Oh, well, that's because the two of.

[C]

Them are very alike.

[A]

Indeed they are. That's right. The two, they.

[C]

Before we get to the Shakespeare, which I'm excited to talk about, there's some interesting things going on in the fact that he's getting two different educations. He's getting nursery rhymes from his mother about children in bottles. And then he's getting the mythology of the native peoples from the elders at two different times in the day, which is kind of interesting. But also, Linda is forced to be a natural mother, kind of despite herself. And there are times even when she hates it and gets mad at John and yet ends by kissing and hugging him because she just can't help herself.

[A]

Yes, yes. And he is a comfort to her. He is her shame and her comfort. All right, so he's quoting Hamlet. I basically. I'm just going to jump in. There's three different things going on in this scene. So he's describing how he hates Pope, and he sees him lying in the bed with his mother and has a murderous rage. And he quotes Hamlet here. Okay, so I'm going to take these one at a time. So we've got the Hamlet thing, because Hamlet, of course, is about a son who wants to kill his mother's lover, which is his uncle. Right. Okay. So must kill him. But a lot of people make the mistake. I mean, look at the Mel Gibson version of Hamlet of reading into Hamlet, doing a Freudian reading and reading an Oedipal complex in there. So this is Freud's idea that all men want to kill their fathers and marry their mothers. And he called that the Oedipal complex. Huxley is satirizing that. He's satirizing that by giving this suggestion that John's problem is he has an Oedipal complex, which of course is not going to be his problem, but he's satirizing that. And he's satirizing the misreading of. Of Hamlet there. He also satirizes Freud's complexes by giving a Bernard the most over the top inferiority complex, which is a phrase we're so well known to us we probably don't realize Freud invented it. So he's. He's playing with a lot of those Freudian things, but the other thing going on. So he. He's got the Hamlet quote and he's got the Oedipal complex thing. So he's jealous of his mother's lover, blah, blah, blah, and kills her. But when he looks at them together, okay, one day when he came in from playing, the door of the inner room was open and he saw them lying together on the bed, asleep, White Linda and Po' pay, almost black beside her with one arm under her shoulders and the other dark hand on her breast. And one of the plaits of his long hair lying across his throat like a black snake trying to strangle her. That's Othello. That's Othello. That's Desdemona. And we're gonna see that Othello is also gonna have a big thing in this book. And it's gonna be set in the hilarious scene with the feet.

[B]

Jealousy starts to enter into this plot pretty strongly about this point.

[A]

Right.

[C]

Also, violent passions that need no surrogate.

[B]

Yeah.

[C]

And I think there's a scene when he first feels the passion. He feels like he's empty. Right. And then his blood rushes up to his face and he couldn't think of words. So the only words that came to him were Hamlets that he'd read in the Shakespeare.

[A]

Yes.

[B]

You know, another thing, and I haven't thought of this until I read that Hitchens essay. There's an interesting moment of awakening that occurs in 1984, which has a parallel here when Winston Smith, early in the book, is trying to remember the past because his childhood, you know, occurred around the same time that the. This new world state of English socialism had been established. The first word that he remembers of the old world that existed around the time he was born and was destroyed is Shakespeare. He's trying to remember new talismans and signs of the old world. He has, like, A couple of nursery rhymes come into his head like oranges and lemons say the bells of St. Clement's and then he remembers the word Shakespeare. And he has this vague sense that this is the word that sums up the older England, the older civilization that we've wiped out.

[A]

Yes. I want to point out a fantastic little scene here that points out we've got a parody. It's when he learns to make pottery and so Mitsima makes the pot and then John tries to make one and it's a crooked parody of Mitzima's. He stood beside it looking at the two pots. He had to laugh. This is literally what Huxley is doing in the book. He's putting two pots together, one that's in a good pot and one that's a crooked pot. And all you can do is laugh at it. That is the whole point. All right, next we have. He gets his heart broken and then he's rejected by the tribe. I think Ella has a bunch she wants to say about this. That.

[C]

Yeah, there's. Oh, there's a lot. He brings in a lot of mythology from both the Zuni and the Hoppy peoples, the Native American tribes. One thing I, I loved the scene where he, he lies in bed at night and he's thinking about heaven in London because London is the bedtime.

[B]

The.

[C]

The London of the brave new world is the subject of the bedtime stories his mother tells him. And, and he also dreams of the director of World Hatcheries and awonawilona, who is a. Who is a God in the Zuni mythology. He's the All Container. His name literally means the All Container. So he's dreaming of the director of the Bottle Baby Factory and the All Container from the Native American mythology.

[A]

Right. Oh my gosh, that's brilliant. So Mustapha Mond is the parody of the All Container guy. Yes, because he's the All. All Pharmacy. Yeah. Wow.

[C]

Well, because remember, our whole world is inside the bottle, so.

[A]

Right.

[C]

This is. Which I, I just think is brilliant. Also, I, I had to do a bit of research. I remember being confused. It. It was a hang up for me when I first read this book because it bugged me that I didn't know what the foreign words were that John was saying. And I couldn't settle with the fact that it would just be nonsense. I kind of thought it came from somewhere. It does come from somewhere. They all came from one Zuni folktale. So Huxley just took out these phrases and words and put them into John's mouth and they're all from the same story. And it'll come up later that the story is the Trial of Lovers or the Maiden of Matsuhi and the Red Feather. And there's a good English translation online. You can find it. It's great. It's intentional. It's very intentional.

[A]

And you will bring this up in just a few chapters when we have some other scenes. Okay. And so when he is rejected by the tribe and they won't let him go through his ordeal, his ritual, his threshold crossing, as Murcia Eliade would say, into manhood, they are rejecting that. So his first thought is to kill himself. Actually, we should just look.

[C]

Go ahead. But also, we need to mention where the Shakespeare book came from.

[A]

Go for it.

[C]

Because po' Pay brings him the complete works of Shakespeare, and his mother said it must be true because it's hundreds of years old. And I looked into it, and it looks like it's all full of nonsense. And it came from the Antelope Kiva, which is the sacred ceremony where they were having the rite of passage that he wasn't allowed to go into. So he is reading the book from this sacred chamber under the ground, which is the one that we saw in the scene at the beginning of their time in the reservation when they're watching the snake dance. This is where the snake dance takes place, with the. The image of Christ, the crucifixion, and. And the eagle that comes up out of that chamber. So just like those images came up out of the chamber, the Shakespeare did, too. So he has. He didn't. He wasn't allowed the rite of initiation in the chamber, yet he's reading the book that none of them have read.

[A]

Right. And when they go on, these. These native boys, when they go on these ordeals, isn't the idea they go through some kind of physical ordeal so that they will have a vision?

[C]

Yes. And. And things. Something, some kind of mystical vision is revealed in this sacred chamber. It's very much like the chamber in the Eleusinian Mystery.

[A]

Okay, so go ahead and finish all your thoughts, and then I'm gonna look.

[B]

By the way, for anyone who does not know the Eleusinian mysteries, this was one of the most famous of the mystery cults in the Greek world. And to be initiated into it promised one eternal life of some kind.

[C]

Yes.

[B]

Yeah.

[C]

Also, though, this sacred chamber, which is, you know, a womb of the earth, if you will, if you're going to be reborn during this ceremony, is paralleled exactly to the chamber where of the. Of the hatchery because there's red light and they all circle down in this line down into the chamber. So anyway, right.

[A]

So have we got an artificial womb versus the mother womb?

[C]

Correct.

[A]

All right, Mr. Banks, read this passage because this, this will be important for later. For later it's going to be very important.

[B]

All alone outside the pueblo on the bare plain of the mesa. The rock was like bleached bones in the moonlight. Down in the valley, the coyotes were howling at the moon. The bruises hurt him. The cuts were still bleeding. But it was not for pain that he sobbed. It was because he was all alone, because he had been driven out alone into this skeleton world of rocks and moonlight. At the edge of the precipice, he sat down. The moon was behind him. He looked down into the black shadow of the mesa, into the black shadow of death. He had only to take one step, one little jump. He held out his right hand in the moonlight. From the cut on his wrist, the blood was still oozing. Every few seconds a drop fell, dark, almost colorless in the dead light. Drop, drop, drop. Tomorrow and tomorrow and tomorrow. He had discovered time and death and God.

[A]

All right, and of course that's a Macbeth reference there, but there is a break in the narrative and it's even marked for us by a little kind of after it sign there. So there is a break. He discovered time, capital T, death, capital D, God, capital G. And then it cuts. Go ahead.

[C]

Which are the three pillars that are gotten rid of in the brave new world. They don't have time because they all live in the eternal present. They don't have death because they're trying to defeat it and they don't have God.

[A]

Yes, yes.

[B]

I was slow to pick this up, but nobody ages.

[A]

That's right.

[B]

In eternal youth till 16, until you.

[A]

Die and then that's it.

[B]

You know, another, which seems terribly young.

[A]

To me, I gotta say.

[B]

Do you remember a sci fi movie from the 1970s called Logan's Run?

[A]

Yes.

[B]

Okay. With. Oh man, what was his name?

[A]

Right.

[B]

Michael York.

[A]

Yes.

[B]

Okay. It was Michael York who's the narrator.

[A]

Of Brave New World, oddly enough.

[C]

Okay.

[B]

And, and so this, this movie, and it's. It's a 70s sci fi movie. Like there are some things about it that are very cheesy, but it's this society, a very brave new worldish society where you party hard, you have, you know, irresponsible sex and you know, drugs and all that until you're 30 and then you like self incinerate or something like that, and everyone just agrees to do this, except the one, the main guy decides, what if there's a life after 30 and has to flee the society, who then is which then is trying to kill him? So, yeah, that seemed. I hadn't put that together before, but that seems another odd cultural sort of spin off, if you will, of this book.

[A]

No, you're absolutely right. So then it switches to Bernard, or as the English would say, Bernard. Bernard and John talking. And John says that he stood against a rock in the middle of the day in summer with my arms out like Jesus on the cross. What on earth for? I wanted to know what it was like being crucified, hanging there in the sun. And then a couple lines down, he says, why? Because I felt I ought to if Jesus could stand it. And then if one has done something wrong besides, I was unhappy. That was another reason. So this is the second time now that we see John insisting he want. He wants the scapegoat ritual. He wants to be part of the atoning ritual. He wants pain. This is the counterpoint to Freud's pleasure principle and that all the evil in the world comes from pain. And here John wants. Wants pain. He thinks pain will be meaningful. Go ahead.

[C]

And it. It appeals to Bernard because Bernard has this idea that he also would like suffering, although he doesn't actually want it, he just likes the idea of it.

[A]

But. Oh, almost said something that's. We haven't gotten to that chapter yet. Never mind, never mind, never mind. And then we get to. We get to John's excitement about the fairy world of London. Do you remember what Miranda says? And then he says, oh, brave new world. And then he repeats, oh, brave new world, he repeated. Well, first he says, is, are you married to her? And he's like, of course not. He's like, awesome. Oh, brave new world, he repeated, which again, as Mr. Banks said, this is from the Tempest. Oh, brave new world that has such people in it. Let's start at once. And Bernard says, hadn't you better wait till you actually see this new world? So good.

[C]

Should we summarize again exactly the scene where Miranda says that what's going on?

[A]

Go for it.

[C]

Far away, Miranda has been raised with only her father Caliban, in a fairy, basically, in these magical forces on an island. And she says, oh, brave new world that has such people in it. When she beholds for the first time the man destined to become her future husband, who is also the. The only other human being she's ever seen beside her father after he shipped.

[A]

John, that's literally John Lenina is basically the first woman that looks like him. A European woman that he's seen other than his mother.

[C]

Yep. Wow.

[A]

Okay, so Ladina, meanwhile, in chapter nine, deals with everything that's by going on overdosing. Go ahead.

[C]

The evolution of oh, Brave New World from this excitement and wonder to horror in these next chapters is good.

[A]

Absolutely. All right, so Lanina takes a bunch of Soma because, I mean, who can deal with all this horror that she's been through? So she's out. Very interesting that she's out for a lunar eternity. That's very Alice in Wonderland under the moon. Meanwhile, Bernard shows he's not a complete idiot and he is going to use this to his advantage immediately to save his job and not get sent to Iceland. So while. Go ahead.

[C]

Is there something kind of Iago esque in Bernard in these chapters? Just because he has this great plan and he is playing with everyone else? Like his pieces.

[B]

Yeah. There is something conspiratorial about him.

[C]

And I mean, Popey is described as Iago in an earlier chapter when. When John says a man can smile and smile and smile and still be a villain.

[A]

Yes. So one of the things like what you said about John is Caliban and he's Ferdinand. There's going to be a lot of morphing of the Shakespeare.

[B]

I don't think we're meant to understand that each character corresponds to one character.

[A]

Because this is part. This is part of the parody thing. Right. Like the puzzle pieces, everything's morphing. And especially in the scene where Lenina attempts to seduce John in chapter 13, he is just firing off so many different Shakespeare lines and plays.

[C]

Things shift and change much like they would in a dream. And the line between what is dream and what is reality is very important in the Tempest because the people who are dreaming might think that they're awake. And the people who think that they're awake might be seeing an illusion.

[A]

That's also a big part of Alice in Wonderland.

[C]

And it's an important part of the Tempest because again, Iago is not as he seems. Seeming and being are two different things.

[A]

No, that's Othello.

[C]

Yes, I mean, that's. Isn't that what I said? I meant Othello.

[A]

Yeah, I know you did, but just correcting it for the audience, I was.

[B]

Gonna say that the reflection of this story, the reflections of the Tempest in this story, it's almost kind of like the same relationship between an image that is projected onto a Funhaus mirror that's also cracked.

[A]

Yes, yes.

[B]

It is reflected, but in a heavily distorted sort of form.

[A]

No, that's very good. That's very. Again, it's being fragmented into puzzle pieces. And we have to put the puzzle together. So John sneaks in and sees Lenina sleeping. And so here's where we see some morphing, right? He was Hamlet. He was Caliban. Now he's about to morph into Ferdinand. But Po Pay was Othello. But now look at this. He goes over there and he kissed her perfumed acetate handkerchief and wound a scarf around his neck. That's Othello. That's Othello.

[C]

Oh, yeah.

[B]

There's an important plot device there with the handkerchief that is lost and which he sees as a sign of betrayal.

[A]

So he has just kind of morphed into Othello. And again, jealousy going to be a big thing. And then we've got. He quotes Troilus and Cressida, and then Romeo and Juliet. Those are two tragedies, guys. That's not. This does not bode well for this.

[C]

Also Romeo and Juliet. What's real and what's an illusion? Because Juliet is not actually dead. Of course, at first he thinks she's dead. All the things.

[A]

All the things. Exactly. Exactly. And he is ashamed of himself for even thinking any impure thoughts of her, which is again, that's very Romeo.

[B]

It's all Ferdinand also.

[A]

Yeah, right. Very idealized. Very. I'm in love with the idea of love. And she's so pure. And I can't taint her. And of course, we find out in chapter 13 why it is he's so standoffish. Because he wants to prove himself worthy of her. And so, in a world in which everything is immediately available to you, there is no delayed gratification at all. Because delayed gratification is source of trauma and neuroses. Right. He takes the position that the delay of it increases it. You're more valuable to me. To me if we wait. If I prove myself. If I am worthy of you. Oh, it's just so Good. Okay, chapter 10. I love this. It's this big assembly line, this big machine hive. Right? It's not a beehive. It's a machine. Buzz, buzz, buzz.

[C]

So, well, we kind of skip seamlessly from the reservation to the fertilizing room. Again.

[A]

Exactly. Exactly. So. And we walk into kind of an in media rest moment where the director is letting Henry know that he's about to fire Bernard. And Bernard's gonna get sent to Iceland because of his unorthodox views. And He's a threat to society. We also see a lot of biblical parody language. He's an Alpha plus to whom so much has been given and from whom, in consequence, so much must be expected.

[C]

It is better that one should suffer than that the many should be corrupted.

[A]

Exactly. Again, so this is not mocking Christianity. This is upside down. This is parody. Right. By his heretical views on sport and soma, by the scandalous unorthodoxy of his sex life, by his refusal to obey the teachings of R. Ford and behave out of office hours even as a little infant. Here, the director made the sign of the tea. He has proved himself an enemy of society, a subverter, ladies and gentlemen, of all order and stability, a conspirator against civilization itself.

[B]

Of the various religious or quasi religious elements in this book, one of my favorite, and I've forgotten this also, but it made me laugh, is instead of the Archbishop of Canterbury, the arch chief songster of Canterbury.

[A]

That was hilarious to me.

[B]

That was hilarious.

[A]

That was hilarious. All those little moments. And the fact that they call, they accuse him of heresy, points out, you know, the religious nature. Yeah.

[B]

We don't have gods anymore, but we do have heresies still, in one way or another.

[A]

Exactly. And then I have to say, Bernard plays his cards very well. In comes Linda, in all her grotesqueness. And why is grotesqueness a big deal? Why is it a big deal that she's fat? Because that's natural. That's. That's a natural thing. And they're unnatural. Right. She looks old. She looks fat. And they. They have been chemically enhanced to stay youthful and perfect. And so in the face of somebody, in the face of so much nature, they are repelled, repulsed.

[C]

And the thing that breaks the ice during this horrible scene for them, which is kind of a courtroom scene, like Bernard's having his hearing, and he's like, well, I fall to the witness stand. Linda, who you left all these years ago in the reservation, the thing that breaks the ice is John daring to say, my father.

[A]

He comes in.

[C]

So that's so hilarious because he bows.

[B]

And everyone kind of cringes at the word father itself.

[A]

Yeah.

[B]

Like, not just that. He's revealing that this is, you know, this is a scandalous relationship here, but that the word father itself is kind of a dirty word, like the word mother and wild and.

[A]

But it's more comical. Mother is really obscene, but father is comical. Is this where you want to talk about Linda and the birth of John and what's going on?

[C]

No. It occurred to me this week that the birth of John is in. In some ways kind of a reverse virgin birth. Because the really miraculous thing is that she begot a child naturally.

[B]

Oh, you're right.

[A]

Yeah.

[C]

Because she has. I mean, she has. She has relations with everyone and never gets pregnant. That's the world that they live in. Really miraculous thing. And she keeps saying like, how did this even happen? How did.

[A]

You know? I did the drill. You know I did the drill. How did this happen? Yeah, it's almost. Yeah. No, that was very well spotted, Ella. Excellent one. Yeah, it's basically a virgin birth here. All right, so then chapter 11. He becomes a celebrity now. And Bernard gets this kind of a status by proxy of John's celebrity here. Linda gets back to society and by which she means Soma, an eternal Soma holiday.

[C]

Was absolutely horrified that of all the scents she chose, she wanted Pachuli to be slowly dripping in her room constantly. Agreed, agreed.

[A]

Very, very, very California. Very hippie there. And John doesn't like it. He doesn't like that her. She immediately gets on the Soma eternity.

[C]

Also, the director of hatcheries has to resign because he naturally fathered a child.

[A]

Yes. This is scandalous.

[C]

Which is just so ironic. Yeah.

[A]

In the scandalous. Okay, so John really fights the doctors on this, but he has to give in and. Because it's going to shorten her life. And he doesn't want to shorten her life. Right. He would rather. He says this over and over. I would rather be unhappy and be free and alive. And she would rather be dead. And he fights on that. But he has to give in. And so there she's given all of it. But I love that it's all described as a labyrinth. The music of the radio was a labyrinth of sonorous colors. A sliding Palpatine labyrinth that led but what beautifully inevitable windings to a bright. The right center of absolute conviction.

[C]

We also see language of dueling enchantments here because Shakespeare. Shakespeare is described as exercising a kind of magic over John. It affects the way his blood runs and creates a pulse inside him and all these things. But then the voice of Mustafa Mond is also described as having a resonance that affects everything. And. And this also. She's living inside this kind of dream world of enchantment.

[A]

I was almost thinking of it as magic versus the machine.

[C]

Oh, yeah, yeah. It's the. Shakespeare's the anti spell.

[A]

Good success goes to Bernard's head. So he goes from having an inferiority complex to superiority complex. So more Freud or Freud there.

[C]

He refused to forego the Privilege of criticizing his order.

[A]

This is where I wrote machine versus Magic. They are. He's on the. The. The train and the station master says 1250 kilometers an hour. What do you think of that, Mr. Savage? John thought it very nice. Still, he said Ariel could put a girl around the Earth in 40 minutes. That was so good. So good. Again from the Tempest, Mustafa Mound is reading Bernard's reports and is. Is concerned about this line partly on his interest being focused on what he calls the soul, which he persists in regarding as an entity independent of the physical environment. Whereas I tried to point out to him. Right. So John is concerned about eternity.

[B]

Does it seem that Mustafa Mond is in some ways kind of the Prospero or maybe the anti Prospero of this particular world?

[C]

I think.

[B]

But he's losing control of his spirits. Yeah, yeah, that's a half formed thought. You don't have to agree with it.

[A]

Well, so Ariel is trapped in the cloven pine. Right. And she has to be set free. And there's a little bit of Jon with that, too.

[B]

Okay, I hadn't thought of that.

[A]

Okay. So he's getting the tour and it's not having the effect of him because now, as Ella pointed out earlier, now he's looking at and saying, oh, brave new world. Oh, brave new world. That has such people in it. So now it's not.

[B]

When that line is repeated, it becomes more and more ironic. Tellingly so.

[A]

Yes. And. And then he vomits. We find out he refuses to take Soma. So it's. It's not. It's not going well. And he goes to school and he sees the kids learning and they all. They're all laughing at the savages. They're watching this film.

[C]

They're watching a sacred ceremony.

[A]

Yeah, they're watching a sacred ceremony and.

[C]

They'Re like a documentary and laughing at it.

[A]

And so that's part of the upside down. They laugh at every good thing. They laugh at rituals. They laugh at things like falling.

[B]

This is the bad old world that we're happy to outgrow.

[A]

Yes.

[C]

Yeah. They're laughing at the Penitentes. So penitents confessing before the cross.

[A]

Right? Right, exactly. Exactly.

[B]

They go to the library and do they read Shakespeare? Asked the savage as they walked on their way to the biochemical laboratories. Past the school library. Certainly not, said the headmistress, blushing. Our library, said Dr. Gaffney, contains only books of reference. If our young people need distraction, they can get it at the Feelies. We don't encourage them to indulge in any solitary amusements.

[A]

And of course, that is how modern people look at Shakespeare and literature as a distraction. And a lot of people misunderstand what I say on this podcast when I say we're not supposed to analyze or, like, look for a lesson. And they think I'm saying we just read for mere entertainment or distraction. And that is not. That's not what I mean. I mean that the truth of art is not comprehended in the intellect. It is apprehended beyond the intellect. It is apprehended in the soul. That. That's what we're getting at. All right. Where were we? Oh, he even makes a Merchant of Venice reference when he sees Soma. He calls him casket. So he's. He's. He's connecting Soma to death. Oh, that's it. The Ford chief justice and the arch community songster of Canterbury, the president of the internal and external secretions Corporation. This is hilarious.

[B]

Yeah, this is one of my favorite parts right here.

[A]

This is so funny. They refer to what's going on as more real than reality. And we've got. Okay, so then they go to the feelies. We have to go to the feelies. This is hilarious. All right. The whole thing they're watching is a total parody of Othello. Mr. Banks, summarize Othello.

[B]

So Othello is a story. It's Shakespeare's great tragedy of romantic jealousy. Othello is the Moorish general in the employ of the Venetian republic. He's their greatest soldier. And he, without her father's blessing, marries the young noblewoman Desdemona, who is, of course, white. So you have this mixed race marriage which is not approved by many people. Nonetheless, they love each other. They marry in spite of people's not wanting them to. And then he is sent to the island of Cyprus on a military mission, bringing with him Desdemona and of course, his staff officers, one of whom is inexplicably envious and embittered against him. His name is Jago. And while they are there, Iago convinces, slowly poisons Othello's mind against his wife, convincing him that she has been unfaithful to him with his young lieutenant Cassio. And Othello, who is taken in by this, you know, the famous one who loved not wisely, but too well. In a fit of rage, he then murders his wife and realizes only afterwards that she was innocent, and then kills himself.

[C]

I. I should say I read. I reread Othello this week, and it had been. It's definitely at Least been a few years since I read it. And I had totally forgotten that there's a tempest on their way to Cyprus. So they come out of this tempest to land on the island of Cyprus.

[A]

Wow.

[C]

Yes, I really had forgotten that. And also Desdemona and Othello are separated because they're on different ships in the storm. They reunite on the island. But then, of course, you know, more things happen. But.

[B]

And it's. Yeah, once they reach the island that he starts to be poisoned against her and suspect her.

[C]

I mean, also the island of Aphrodite, isn't it the island of love?

[B]

It is the island of passion itself, yes.

[A]

And so you have that passion being contrasted to the surrogate passion through the whole. The whole.

[C]

The whole book.

[A]

Right. The surrogate passion stuff and even the surrogate pregnancy stuff is very interesting to me because it's like you can only go so far pulling away from nature. Right. So they have to have a fake pregnancy because you have to have certain hormones balanced. Right. And you have to have a fake passion because human beings, we need these things. Right. We're not. We're not actually machines. Ella, do you want to explain how the feely here is a parody of Othello? Because you and I were cracking up about this.

[C]

I think I was reading this like way too late at night and my sister was already asleep, so I was by myself. And I think I like, gave in too much to the humor of this moment. I was like rolling around on the couch, basically. But yeah, Othello. In this world, it's very odd to be monogamous and have an affection for a single person because everyone belongs to everyone else.

[A]

Only someone who's brain damaged.

[C]

He fell out of a helicopter and hit his head and developed some kind of weird passion for a single person. He would have her to himself. So he. He kidnapped her and had a. What A dangerous antisocial tete. A tete with her in the helicopter until she was rescued by three. Three men. And. And then later had all three of them at once. And he and the weird wild man who had hit his head was sent to a reconditioning center so that he could remember that everyone belonged to everyone else. And so I guess in this world, Iago, Rodrigo and Cassio all have. Have not. Lenina, My gosh. At the end, is that what's happening?

[A]

Apparently. Apparently. And of course John is horrified. He's also horrified of touching the knobs to make you feel the things in the movie. He, he. He doesn't.

[C]

The detail of the Bearskin rug for no apparent reason.

[A]

That is so hilarious. The reports were true. You actually can feel every fiber of that rug. So she comes out and she's happy, and he says, this is horrible. Horrible. But I thought it was lovely. It was base. He said indignantly. It was ignoble. She's like, why do you have to be so weird? Yeah.

[C]

And the beta blonde is his mom. Linda is a beta blonde?

[A]

That's right. Oh, that's right. That's right. I love this. Bound by strong vows that had never been pronounced obedient to laws that had long since ceased to run, he sat averted and in silence. And she thinks this is going to be her big moment. She's about to ask him to come up for a cup of coffee. I love the line.

[C]

He was obscurely terrified lest she should cease to be something he could feel himself unworthy of.

[A]

That's right. He's worried. If she likes this, maybe she is not who I think she is. If she tumbles off that pedestal, that's going to be rough. So he leaves her at the door, and she's so disappointed, and he says good night. And then he gets back in the taxi. Five minutes later, he was back in his room. From its hiding place, he took out his mouse, nibbled volume, turned with religious care. It stained and crumbled pages and began to read Othello. Othello, he remembered, was like the hero of three weeks in a helicopter. A black man. Meanwhile, she goes and takes a bunch.

[C]

Of three weeks and a helicopter goes on to haunt like all the rest of the dev.

[A]

Hilarious to me. So she takes Soma. But look at the contrast here. He's gonna read Othello because he wants to feel all his pain. Pain. He wants to feel all this melancholy. And she. She takes the soma. And that's a big thing in renaissance poetry. Maybe Mr. Banks will jump in here, but this. This. The melancholy lover. I'm gonna delight in the pain.

[C]

Oh, yeah.

[B]

I mean, that's all over any number of sonnet sequences from Shakespeare to Spenser to. Yeah, Dubilet.

[A]

Right. So he wants to feel his feelings. He wants to feel his pain, and she wants to escape.

[C]

I think he is kind of horrified because he's starting to see that this is a world where Desdemona is not actually chaste, but the opposite. Because in Othello. Othello, Desdemona is truly chaste and remains so. But the lie is that she's not in this world. The lie is that she is as.

[A]

He'S going to find out in chapter 13. All right, chapter 12. The savage has had enough, and he does not want to be carted around like a dog and pony show for Bernard. And Bernard gets mad. You know, the more we're thinking about it, I like your idea that Bernard is Iago because he definitely has an unexplained jealousy toward Jon.

[C]

Oh. I.

[B]

Cause, I mean, he's confronted with a more natural man than himself and is. And feels. Does it seem that he feels that this is a bad reflection on him and it forces him to confront the fact that he is.

[A]

That nobody really wanted to be with him.

[B]

Artificial product of this. Yeah, this shabby little world makes him.

[A]

Confront the fact that none of those people really wanted to be with him. They were using him to get close to John and he was believing his own hype there. But the. The John tells him to go to hell and he's like. But the arch community songster of Canterbury is here and he yells some Zuni out at him. Elliot.

[C]

Which is all from the same. So should I. Should I give a rundown of this folktale real quick?

[A]

Yeah. Let's tell us about the folktale. This is a.

[C]

This is a trial for lovers tale. And it goes like this. The chief priest of this tribe has a daughter that is of course, the most beautiful daughter on the land. And. And the wealthiest and many suitors want her hand, but she has to weed out the ones that actually love her from the ones who just want her wealth. Right. So she sets up a series of trials. We've seen.

[A]

It's a perilous maiden tale.

[C]

Yes, it's kind of Atalanta esque, actually. So the trial is that these. These young men have to come and they have to hoe this field in a single morning. But she sends out her friends, which are these mayflies and mosquitoes, to like, drive them nuts every morning, and none of them can stand any bit of discomfort, so they give up. And this happens again and again. But there's one poor, poor man, of course the one that is not wealthy, who cannot bring bridal gifts of any kind. And he comes and he. He goes to his grandmother to get the wisdom of the ancients, and his grandmother tells him how to avoid the mosquitoes so that he can actually successfully accomplish this trial. He does. They're madly in love, of course she comes down. Plot twist, though. This. This. This ma has an evil twin who is a witch and a sorceress.

[B]

So you're saying this is a soap opera?

[C]

Yes. Yeah. So this evil twin who is not actually a twin, but can put her, put on an enchantment so that she looks identical to her. She puts on the same clothes. She does this magic, right, so that she sounds like her and looks like her and comes and confuses the young man and begins to fight with the true maiden before them. And he can't see which is which. He assumes that the one that's fighting the strongest has to not be the.

[A]

One that he's in love with.

[C]

Surely he hits the wrong, the wrong one upside the head with a hoe and kills her. And it is, it is his love because he cannot tell the difference between illusion and reality. And then the story goes on because he, he must reunite with her and he go, he ends up going with her to the underworld. And it's a whole big thing. But anyway, that this is, all of these words are coming.

[A]

So this is it, right? John's in love with the illusion of, of lineage.

[C]

And, and actually the words that the priest is muttering over his rights that John is remembering in childhood come from a scene in the story where, where this young man is trying to journey with his love to the underworld. And he keeps losing sight of her. And in desperation he tries to hang himself. And these squirrels see him doing this and they're like, he can't give up. No, he's so close. So they summon a Himalayan hemlock tree which is kind of in and of itself double natured because hemlock is poisonous, but it's also a very strong, very beautiful tree and symbolizes life at the same time. So it is both death and life. And it grows up to save him from hanging himself, giving him ground beneath his feet. So anyway, that's, that's the story.

[A]

Wow, wow, wow. Okay, we have to keep reading because, yeah, there are things. Wow.

[C]

Stop.

[A]

Okay, all right, okay. So now after he shuts them out, Lenina is starting to really feel violent passions. She does not need a surrogate. She's feeling violent passion and she doesn't know what to do with it. Bernard's happy self confidence is gone, so now he's back to his inferiority complex. Meanwhile, John is in his room reading Romeo and Juliet. But, but actually the line, upstairs in his room, the savage was reading Romeo and Juliet. Okay, like if you don't hear the irony in that because it's contrasted to what everybody else is doing. And the so called savage is reading Shakespeare because he's not a savage. And then, oh, then actually we cut to this fantastic scene and we find out that Mustafa Mond Is censoring things. Right. Some of these guys have written papers and he says they're not safe. You want to look at some of these lines.

[B]

A New Theory of Biology was the title of the paper which Mustafa Mond had just finished reading. He sat for some time meditatively frowning, then picked up his pen and wrote across the title page. The author's mathematical treatment of the conception of purpose is novel and highly ingenious, but heretical and so far as the present social order is concerned, dangerous and potentially subversive. Not to be published. He underlined the words. The author will be kept under supervision. His transference to the marine biological station of St. Helena may become necessary. And by the way, St. Helena is the island to which Napoleon was finally sent in exile in the South Atlantic. A pity, he thought as he signed his name. It was a masterly piece of work. But once you began admitting explanations in terms of purpose, well, you didn't know what the result might be. It was the sort of idea that might easily decondition the more unsettled minds among the higher castes, make them lose their faith in happiness as the sovereign good and take to believing instead that the goal was somewhere beyond, somewhere outside the present human sphere. That the purpose of life was not the maintenance of well being, but some intensification and refining of consciousness, some enlargement of knowledge, which was, the controller reflected. Quite possibly true, but not in the present circumstance admissible. He picked up the pen again and under the words not to be published drew a second line thicker and blacker than the first, then sighed. What fun it would be, he thought, if one didn't have to think about happiness. That was a masterpiece by itself.

[A]

That's fantastic. Right? So we see that even in this very controlled world where everyone's being preconditioned and predetermined, it's still kind of fragile. There could be things that shake people.

[B]

Oh yes, the people. The people who rule this world are always paranoiacally aware that you know the secrets of it. You know the evil secrets of it are not really that hard to discover. And the. The facade might easily be seen through.

[A]

Yeah. Yes. All right, now we have the scene with Jon meeting Hels. And of course they. They get on thick as thieves. Right? You know?

[C]

Yeah. Bernard again is described like Iago, who just can't stop meditating upon small revenges for both his enemy friends.

[A]

Yes, yes, I even John quoting Shakespeare here is a. Is a contrast to that song Lenina was singing. Just like all the point encounter points stuff.

[C]

Which I mean Huxley wrote a book, Point Counterpoint. He's obsessed with that idea.

[A]

Oh, okay. So, Helmholtz, what did you think of Helmholtz's poem? Dear. When he tries to, you know, write something of substance about being alone for the. For the propaganda class he's teaching. Is this just supposed to be an awful poem?

[B]

Yeah, it reads like. It reads like. Like a really inept rewriting of some. Of T.S. eliot or Auden or one of. One of the high modernists, kind of.

[A]

So he's trying, but he's. He has. Well, he has been educated enough. How could he actually write?

[B]

You know, Huxley himself was a fairly accomplished poet.

[A]

I did not know.

[B]

He's not known for his poetry, but he did produce a few collections of it. And if he. If he had written nothing else, he might have a place in the, you know, minor ledges of poetic fame. I think he was. I think he was good.

[A]

Oh, that's good to know. So, okay, so Helmholtz is. He's feeling dangerous here. He just wanted to see what would happen. And now he's in big trouble.

[C]

And unlike Bernard, he's happy to take the consequences. Correct?

[A]

Correct. And you and I were laughing about this earlier, Mr. Banks at Helmholtz really like Shakespeare. He's like, man, that guy could have written some ads. That guy could. I know, some jingles.

[B]

He could have been so great on Madison Avenue, it's a pity he died 400 years ago.

[A]

I know. What a missed opportunity. He could have made some dough. But then John reads to him the Shakespeare poem the Phoenix and the Turtle. So why don't you guys tell our audience about this poem and what's going on?

[B]

The Phoenix and the Turtle. It's one of Shakespeare's handful of non dramatic, long or moderately long poems. And it is a allegorical elegy. I suppose it's one of his difficult, I think, pieces altogether. Ella, what would you want to add to that?

[C]

You know, it's kind of funny because it's. I guess Shakespeare adds his own to the rank of bird allegory poems. But he definitely wasn't the first to write this kind of poem.

[B]

No, no, it was fairly common, actually. It was. It was published as part of a collection, I think, of poems.

[C]

Yeah, I thought so.

[B]

Of the same type. But I mean, yeah, bird allegories. I mean, Chaucer and of course, you know, the immortal poem, the Persian Conference of the Birds. So every culture and, you know, time for a very long period had its own version of this, you know, this mystical. Yeah, mystical. Avian poem.

[C]

It is really mystical.

[B]

And, I mean, it's like nothing else that Shakespeare wrote. It's. It's harder. Yeah. Than much of what he wrote.

[C]

Yeah. The bird on the Arabian tree that is referenced here in these lines is, of course, the phoenix, and it's called the phoenix and the turtle because he's talking about the turtle dove. And the dove, also, historically, has been a sign of the soul or the spirit of some kind. And I think in a lot of ways, this can be read as an alchemical poem. This is the meeting of the human soul with the divine being, the phoenix or the fire, which is, again, he wasn't the first one to write a poem like this. This was this very common image.

[B]

But because the turtle dove is mortal and the phoenix is immortal.

[C]

Correct. And this whole. Neither two nor one was called, like, true union has been reached. Is a very mystical idea. But also union we've talked about is the thing that the brave new world talks about itself having and really has not at all, because they have no identity, so they can have no unity.

[A]

It doesn't have unity. It has uniformity.

[C]

Yeah.

[A]

Right. Now, I usually, if I'm teaching a book, I'll say to my students, you know, why this poem? Why right here? What would your answer to that be, Ella? Why? Why? Because we know every Shakespeare reference here is super intentional. Why this poem and why, Inspector? This scene.

[C]

I think it has to do with this tension that we're having between what we think we've created, this divine and magical thing. We think we have achieved unity, and really, we have. We've lost all of it. And I think Property was thus appalled that the self was not the same, which is very like the Tempest. Actually, Gonzalo has a speech in the Tempest that we couldn't find ourselves until we lost ourselves.

[A]

That's some good parody language right there.

[C]

And I think this is what's happening here. And neither two nor one was called reason in itself. Confounded saw, division grow together. Yeah.

[A]

So good. And so Helmholtz is all in. I really like Helmholtz. I'll just get cards on the table. I like Helmholtz a lot, and I love this scene because he's just like, man. Yes. I can almost taste it. This is amazing. And then John starts reading Romeo and Juliet and he's like, wait, wait, wait, wait. What? What. What all of this about? About whether he can have a girl or as a million girls, and they're trying to make her marry somebody she doesn't want. She's just taking It. This is ridiculous. And he laughs at it.

[B]

Don't buy this one.

[A]

Yeah, he laughs at it. So what he doesn't realize, of course, wasting.

[C]

Wasting phosphorus on a stone mount, stone monument.

[A]

They just killed themselves and wasted their phosphorus. That's terrible. But of course, what he doesn't realize is that as John is reading it, he is thinking of himself as Romeo and Lenina as Juliet. And so for Helmholtz to laugh that it's all ridiculous is for him to laugh at John that it's ridiculous to get this worked up over a girl. But then you. You flip to the next chapter, so the next page, really. And you're having a parallel conversation between Lenina and her friend, who's basically saying, you can't really get so worked up with a guy like this. Just go have somebody else. And she's like, I've tried. I can't. Right. So it's the parallel scenes. You should get a violent passion surrogate. And she thinks she didn't have a nerve of her. Not too much. I don't need that. And so her friend gives her the absolutely terrible advice of just go over there and take him. Then if you're gonna die of him, if you're gonna burn of passion, just go take him. So she takes some soma and decides to do it. So she shows up. Yeah, John.

[C]

John is saying to Lanina, I want. He wants to go through a trial of lovers. Like he wants to prove himself worthy of her because he knows he is unworthy. He wants to be Ferdinand. There's a reference to Ferdinand. He. When he says, there be some sports are painful, you know, but their labor delights in them. Sets off. That's. That's Ferdinand's line. When he's bearing what Prospero sets him a test to prove his loyalty to Miranda. And so Ferdinand is bearing these stacks of wood all over the island. And Miranda's like, no, I wish you didn't have to do it. And he's like, no, I want to. It's worth it for you, that whole thing. So that's what he wants to do. And Lenina's like, why would you do that when we could just be together right now, no delays, temporarily.

[A]

Right? Because he wants marriage and he wants the whole thing. So they're really having two different conversations. And it's quite a fantastic scene. Very, very well done.

[C]

And he's talking in all of these lines because he has this idea in her, in his head, and she can't understand.

[A]

She's just like, what?

[C]

What?

[A]

But he says. She's like, do you like me? Because I like you. And he says, I love you.

[C]

Okay.

[A]

But she's never talking about love. And he says, saying, I want to be worthy of you. I want to be tested. I want to marry you. And she's like, I'm not hearing any of that, but I want to unzip my clothes right now, please. Right. So she's just thinking, I. I just need to act on this passion. But she.

[C]

She.

[A]

Even though she does like him more than anybody else, and she says she's not envisioning monogamy, she is still very much of her world. She just wants to have an encounter with him. And so she attempts. But let's look at all the Shakespeare. Okay, so what do we make of all of this? I'm. I'm seeing. Seeing lots of the Tempest. I'm seeing Troilus and Cressida, Othello, more Tempests, timing of Athens and then some King Lear.

[B]

Yeah, yeah.

[A]

Othello, Troilus and Cressida again. And then Twelfth Night, because, yes, I sadly annotated my own copy and didn't think to Google it, but there you have it. Yeah.

[C]

So.

[A]

She'S starting to undress, and he's very confused about what's going on. He's retreating from her in terror. So at first, it's good. I love you. Let me prove myself to you. I want to marry you. And then she starts to understand, and he can't.

[C]

He can't interact with her without seeing himself as the blackamoor in three weeks in a helicopter. Like, that's. That is the theme of what's happening right now.

[A]

Know I love this line. Hug me till you drug me, honey. She, too, had poetry at her command. Okay, so what's going on? When he calls her horror impudent trumpet. That's Othello to Desdemona. Except that in Othello's case is a false accusation.

[B]

Here it actually true.

[A]

I mean, not by the rules of her culture, but by the rules of anyone else's culture.

[B]

He. He almost kills her here. Yeah, he's certainly angry enough. And he does hit her. He slaps her when she's running away. And she's frightened enough that she locks herself in the bathroom and won't come out, you know, while he's there. Yeah.

[A]

Yep. And he's still with Othell. Oh, thou weed, who are so lovely fair, and smells so sweet that the sense aches at thee. Was this most goodly book made to write. Horror upon heaven stops the nose at it. So this is.

[C]

Is.

[A]

I mean, they're saying his own ripped from him here. Yeah.

[C]

I mean, Othello is saying, is this all an illusion? Do you seem fair, but yet you're black inside? But here it's really. Oh, you're black inside and you just seem fair. This is actually true. And does amongst cases, it's not true. And the Savage is described as marching to the drums and music of magical words.

[A]

That's right. Impudence trumpet. Impudence trumpet. Impudence trumpet. The inexorable rhythm beats itself out. Impudence repeated. John, might I have my clothes? I mean, just. It's so good. It's so good. And then she's interrupted this moment. Tense moment is interrupted by a phone call. And we just hear his side of it. It's so good. Here, here, read the. Read his side of the phone.

[B]

Hello? Yes. If I do not usurp myself, I am, yes. Didn't you hear me say so? Mr. Savage speaking. What? Who's ill? Of course it interests me. But is it serious? Is she really bad? I'll go at once. Not in her rooms anymore. Where has she been taken? Oh, my God. What's the address? 3 Park Lane. Is that it? 3. Thanks. Lenina heard the click of the replaced receiver. Then hurrying steps. A door slammed. There was silence. Was he really gone? Oh, and that little narrative technique with a lot of dialogue either directly spoken or implied in a series of telephone exchanges. Evelyn Wall used that in some of his early novels as well. Since the telephone is a fairly new device still, it has possibilities for experimental novelists.

[A]

Nice. So after he leaves, she peeps open the door a little bit and Cici's gone and grabs her clothes and. And runs off. It was not till she was in the lift and actually. Okay, here's some nice Alice reference for you. It was not till she was in the lift and actually dropping down the well that she began to feel herself secure. Boom. You know, speaking of Alice in Wonderland, one of our students located online the script that Aldous Huxley wrote of Alice in Wonderland for Disney. It's online. You can find it.

[B]

Was it rejected for having too many drugs or something?

[A]

No, I think they thought it was too much like the book. That was too much like the book. And then another student, it was Natalia. So shout out to her. She's been on the podcast before, but she pointed out that even little phrases like safe as helicopters instead of safe as houses.

[C]

So I actually had to look that up. I noticed that myself. And I. I've always. I've Always wondered where safest houses came from. I think it actually, from what I was reading, unless this is incorrect, it actually originated during the rise of the housing industry as a safe form of investment. Houses are no longer a safe form of investment, but helicopters are.

[A]

That's what safest houses. Oh, okay. I always wondered about that, too. Well, I think we jam packed a whole.

[B]

We managed to keep it under two hours.

[A]

No, we did good. I was watching the clock and I have a feeling they're going to say, oh, this is another one to listen to more than once because we threw a lot in here. But we're going to bring it to an end next week and it'll probably be a long episode because there will be a lot to explain as the book comes to its conclusion and we're going to see, what does it mean? What is the game we have been invited to play? What is the puzzle we are putting together? What is the upside down that we are being turned right side up from? And if you keep that in mind, the ending is going to make a whole lot more sense. It's not. This ending gets falsely maligned. I feel quite punchy about it. So, you know, I might get on a soapbox. I might. I might get on a soapbox next week. I might yell at some people who have gotten this wrong. I might name names. We shall see. It means a lot to me that you guys are saying that the book is being redeemed for you. You guys are sharing the most horrific classroom experiences. Like. Like, it's sort. I'm starting to understand why people don't understand this book. Like, being taught it in high school and not being taught it's a satire. And just being like, so what do you think of this world he created? And is this a good world or a bad world? Those kinds of conversations. And no wonder they hated it. No wonder they were disoriented.

[B]

What cast would you belong to?

[A]

Exactly. But again, this is like dumping out a bunch of puzzle pieces and then being like, so what do you think of this movie mess? You like this mess? You don't like this mess? That's. It's pointless. Right? The point is you put together the puzzle. That's what you do with puzzle pieces. All right, well, hopefully that helped you today. Hopefully you're feeling a little more secure in your mind about what a parody is. And I'm looking forward to bringing this all home next week. Ella, thank you again for joining us. My gosh, your contributions have been amazing. And just, just. It's a lot of fun to talk with you about books. Always. Always.

[C]

Thanks for having me. I love this book.

[A]

All right, join us next week for the exciting conclusion of our series on Brave New World. And stick around to the end because Mr. Banks will be reading that T.S. eliot poem. Visit our patreon patreon.com literary life to find out about how you can join our forum and all the fantastic conversations that are going on there, as well as just help to keep this podcast on The Air and HouseOfHumaneLetters.com go check out our Christmas sale, our classes, our back catalog. Peruse and pick up all the goodies you've been waiting on all year. And until next time, keep crafting your literary life because stories will save the world. Thank you for listening to the Literary Life podcast brought to you by our loyal patreon sponsors. Visit HouseOfHumaneLetters.com to find Angelina and Thomas and to sign up for our newsletter with podcast schedules and more. And keep up with [e-mail] Join the Conversation at our member only Patreon Forum or our Facebook Discovery discussion group. Visit patreon.com theliterarylife to find out how you can sponsor this podcast and get great bonus content. Don't forget to subscribe, rate and review and check out our sister podcasts, the New Mason Jar and the well Read Poem. And now for a poem read by poet Thomas Banks.

[B]

Whispers of Immortality by tsle Elliot Webster was much possessed by death and saw the skull beneath the skin, and breastless creatures underground leaned backwards with a lipless grin. Daffodil bulbs instead of balls stared from the sockets of the eyes. He knew that thought clings round dead limbs, tightening its lusts and luxuries. Donne, I suppose, was such another who found no substitute for sense to seize and clutch and penetrate. Expert beyond experience, he knew the anguish of the marrow, the ague of the skeleton, no contact possible to flesh allayed the fever of the bone. Grishkin is nice. Her Russian eye is underlined for emphasis. Uncorseted, her friendly bust gives promise of pneumatic bliss. The couched Brazilian jaguar compels the scampering marmoset with subtle effluence of cat. Grishkin has a maisonette. The sleek Brazilian jaguar does not, in its arboreal gloom, distill so rank a feline smell as Grishkin in a drawing room, and even the abstract entities circumambulate her charm. But our lot crawls between dry ribs to keep our metaphysics warm.