Episode 304: Aldous Huxley's "Brave New World" Ch. 14-End

Summary

The Literary Life Podcast

Episode 304: Aldous Huxley’s "Brave New World" Ch. 14-End
Date: November 25, 2025
Hosts: Angelina Stanford, Thomas Banks, Special Guest: Ella Hornstra

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Episode Overview

This final episode wraps up the podcast’s in-depth exploration of Brave New World, covering chapters 14 through the end. Angelina, Thomas, and guest Ella discuss Huxley’s ambiguous conclusion, interpret key symbols and narrative strategies, and situate the novel within literary tradition, focusing on satire, parody, the nature of dystopia, and how readers can draw hope even from tragic endings. The discussion is lively and rich with literary analysis, aiming to equip listeners to "read well" and encounter challenging works with insight.

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Key Discussion Points and Insights

1. Interpretations of the Ending and Reader Expectations

• Ambiguity: Huxley’s handling of John’s fate is intentionally ambiguous—he doesn’t portray the suicide in detail (17:10), which shifts focus to its symbolic import.
• Reader Discomfort with Tragic Endings:
  • Some view the ending as nihilistic or hopeless. The hosts argue this is a common but mistaken modern inclination, especially among American readers. Many great works (e.g., Antigone, To Kill a Mockingbird, Brideshead Revisited) don’t end with “good winning” in the traditional sense but still affirm values and critique society (18:42, 21:24).
• Literary Mode: Satire and Parody
  • The panel emphasizes that Brave New World is not just dystopia, but also satire and parody. In satire (e.g., Gulliver’s Travels), the lesson is often learned by the reader, not the character (24:09). Parody offers the reader puzzle pieces to assemble, not neatly packaged answers (29:05).

Quote:
"Satire works very different. In a satire, the author hides himself behind several layers of narrative...the moral center is in the reader. It's us, right? We are separate from this." – Angelina (24:09)

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2. Unity vs. Uniformity and the False Heaven of the Dystopian Society

• Northrop Frye’s Insight (08:32):
  • Uniformity is comfort without dignity; real unity tolerates dissent.
  • The Brave New World claims unity but delivers enforced uniformity – a key dynamic highlighted in the concluding chapters.
• Parody of Religious Rites:
  • Symbolic scenes (the “solidarity service”) mimic religious rituals but aim to dissolve individuality, not deepen communal ties (11:17, 12:30).
• “Happiness” as Control:
  • “Ending is better than mending”—the social order is maintained by ensuring everyone is content within their role, a “mock heaven.” (12:30)

Quote:
"A sense of unity is opposite of a sense of uniformity...Unity, so understood, is the extra dimension that raises the sense of belonging into genuine human life." – (08:32)

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3. Death, Dream, and Reality: Thematic Analysis of Chapters 14-18

• Linda’s Death:
  • Treated as a non-event, handled with drugs and routine, reflecting the society’s erasure of mystery (32:35).
  • Linda’s death is symbolic—her dying is depicted as waking up from a dream, an inversion that foreshadows John’s own arc (35:44).
• Nightmare Imagery:
  • The Brave New World is described as a “nightmare of sameness” and as a dream from which the savage tries to wake others (37:04, 39:57).
• Symbolic Awakening:
  • John’s final acts represent efforts to embrace real suffering, passionate experience, and self-mastery, in contrast to the artificial equanimity of the dystopia.

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4. Old World vs. New World – God, Suffering, and Authentic Humanity

• John’s Heroism:
  • John aspires to “be real”—to suffer, to choose nobility, even to be unhappy.
  • Key exchange:
    • "In fact, said Mustafa Mond, you're claiming the right to be unhappy. All right, then, said the savage defiantly, I'm claiming the right to be unhappy." (67:12)
• Asceticism and Mortification:
  • The role of suffering, passion, and ascetic practice becomes a battleground between John and the world controller (62:16, 67:12), echoing Christian and classical ascetic ideals.

Quote:
"But I don't want comfort. I want God. I want poetry. I want real danger. I want freedom. I want goodness. I want sin." – John, via Thomas, reading (67:12)

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5. The Final Symbolism: John's Death, Lighthouse, and Reader’s Role

• Not a Simple Suicide:
  • While John dies (by his own hand), the act is laden with religious, paradoxical, and dream/reality symbolism. It’s a form of waking up, of leaving the experiment behind (91:35, 94:40).
• Parodic Inversion:
  • In a dream-world, to die is to wake; the lighthouse is a symbol of direction and guidance for the reader.
  • John’s feet, swinging "like compass needles", are interpreted as pointing the way out for both characters and readers (93:39).
• Parallels to Ascetic Saints and Alice in Wonderland:
  • His retreat to the lighthouse, mortification rituals, and waking in the light signal spiritual transformation and escape from the false reality.
• Ambiguity as Puzzle:
  • Huxley doesn’t force a fixed answer—the reader’s experience and interpretation matter most (97:15).

Quote:
"In an upside down world, dying is waking up... He is no longer in, like, symbolically, spiritually trapped in the nightmare world. They’re trapped in the nightmare world. He is free." – Angelina (95:29)

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6. Literary and Biographical Connections

• Trilogy Context:
  • Huxley intended Brave New World as part of a trilogy, paralleling with his later works (Ape and Essence, Island) (49:06).
• Influences and Allusions:
  • Texts referenced include works by Edith Wharton, Shakespeare (The Tempest, Othello), William James, Cardinal Newman, and classical/medieval sources.

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7. Alternative Readings and Rich Interpretive Possibilities

• Ella's Theory:
  • The novel could be read as John's initiation trial, begun on the reservation, culminating in his spiritual "awakening" at the end (101:28).
• Hosts’ Consensus:
  • Though particulars vary, all agree the ending is tragic, not hopeless; John remains himself, and the reader emerges the wiser.

Quote:
"The important thing about John... he's the only character who has anything really, other than his passions to act on, which gives him a kind of humanity... him becoming simply another bee in this particular hive would be a far worse fate." – Thomas (97:15)

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Notable Quotes and Moments (with Timestamps)

• On satire and the reader’s role:
  • "The moral center is in the reader. It's us, right? We...are separate from this." – Angelina (24:09)
• On modern reader expectations:
  • "A lot of modern readers...think a novel is a philosophical delivery system." – Angelina (22:20)
• On John’s ultimate claim:
  • "I'm claiming the right to be unhappy." – John (67:12, read by Thomas)
• On the meaning of John’s death:
  • "The death is actually a birth." – Angelina (105:53)
  • "This is the movie Inception, where...to die in that dream is to wake up." – Ella (98:44)
• Reflecting on the tragic vs. hopeless ending:
  • "There's a distinction between a book with a tragic ending and a book with a hopeless ending." – Thomas (107:27)
• Interpreting the lighthouse scene:
  • "The lighthouse with him hanging from it actually does become a lighthouse...to show how to not crash on the waves..." – Angelina (93:41)

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Important Timestamps

• 08:32 – Northrop Frye quote on unity vs uniformity
• 24:09 – How satire positions the moral center in the reader
• 32:35-35:44 – Linda’s death as symbolic of awakening from a dream
• 37:04-39:57 – Brave New World as nightmare imagery, John’s mission to "wake" others
• 62:16, 67:12 – John’s confrontation with Mustafa Mond; right to suffering, nobility, and unhappiness
• 91:36-94:40 – The ending: John’s awakening, lighthouse, feet as compass, symbolic interpretation
• 105:48-105:53 – “Death is a birth” and “breaking the bottle” as escape from the nightmare

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Tone and Style

The hosts blend scholarly rigor with warmth and humor, using conversational language but tackling weighty philosophical and literary concepts. There’s frequent teasing, literary allusion, and genuine enthusiasm about close reading and interpretive possibilities. Special guest Ella offers sharp textual analysis and creative interpretive models.

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Conclusion

The episode accomplishes its goal: rescuing Brave New World from simplistic, despairing readings and showing how literature challenges, puzzles, and ultimately enriches readers. The hosts encourage listeners to grapple with literary ambiguity, seek symbolic meanings, and appreciate how stories—even tragic ones—are vital to understanding and transforming our own reality.

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For Listeners

Takeaway:
Brave New World’s ending resists simple moralizing or despair. Its tragic ambiguity is itself a provocation to deeper thought—and an invitation for the reader to “wake up” from the easy pleasures and false comforts of modern life.

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Next Episode Teaser:
Elly Northmore joins to discuss what makes a great film adaptation of literature, plus the hosts’ favorite film adaptations.

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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. Hello and welcome back to our our final episode of this series we've been doing on Aldous Huxley's Brave New World. With me is our special guest, Ms. Ella Hornstra, who's not wearing velveteen shorts. Did you not get the memo that we were doing dress alike today?

[B]

Oh, I guess not. No.

[A]

Mr. Banks, however.

[B]

But the problem with this is that. Can you even see shorts on a zoom meeting?

[C]

Fortunately not.

[A]

We could present. Yes, he says fortunately not because he did get the memo and he is wearing his velveteen shorts.

[C]

Of course, actually. And now he's been full sincerity in full sincerity. I do not own any shorts velveteen. I do not wear shorts in public. Yeah. You can testify you've never seen me walking around with my knees exposed outside.

[A]

This is correct.

[C]

Which is probably good for the world, you know, that they don't have to see my knees. But yeah, shorts are not my thing.

[A]

This, this is me biting my lip and not to have just a whole long.

[C]

No, that's actually something I inherited from my father. I remember thinking it odd that my f. Do not have any memories of my father wearing shorts in public either. Like on a Saturday. He was always a long pants guy. I've turned into that same guy.

[A]

See, my grandparents were like that and they, they were both farmers in the south and always wore serious respect, long, even long pants. Always. They said it protected them from the sun. So. Yes, no. I'm going to throw out a controversial topic. People are going to gasp in horror. But it's okay. I'm going to say it anyway. On our first date, one of the moments that we had that we, we realized we had so much in common was that I said I was of this the staunch opinion that no one over the age of 5 years old should wear shorts. And you, and you, your face lit up and you said yes, yes, thank you.

[C]

Yeah, I mean for me, that's. That's I. One of those small triumphs of maturity that you don't have to wear short pants anymore. No one calls you Tommy unless they're trying to annoy you.

[A]

I guess no one would ever call you that. All right, well, velveteen shorts aside, we're gonna talk about chapters 14 through 18 of Brave New World. But before we do that, just a quick reminder. It's that time of year. It is the annual House of Humane Letters Christmas sale, and you guys are coming out in full force. I love it. I love that you make your list all year and just jump in. So from now until the end of 2025, it is our Christmas sale and 20% off everything in the store that includes previously recorded conferences, previously recorded webinars, and previously recorded mini classes. It does not apply to any live events, our year long classes, or any of the books at Casiodorus Press. So we've got that going on. And this year at least set it up so nicely. And no coupon code required. So when you just go into the store and you start scrolling, there's actually a sale banner over the products that are on sale. So you'll be able to see right away what is and is not on sale. So you guys poke around in there and enjoy. You can pick up my Edgar Allan Poe webinar, which Ella said is one of the best things she's ever heard me do.

[B]

No, I really think it is.

[C]

By popular consent, it seems to be.

[A]

My sister agrees.

[B]

We both sat there while we were watching it and we turned to each other and we said, basically in sync, because we're twins and weird like that. This is the best thing she's ever done.

[A]

Well, thank you. No, I think it went really well. And I've gotten that feedback from a lot of people. So, yeah, I would say that's definitely a good one to pick up. And of course, Ella's got a couple of classes for us. The Living Page, Grammar of the Natural World. Her sister did a fantastic class on Alice in Wonderland and a webinar. So just dig around. Of course, Mr. Banks has got a ton of awesome things. Poetry, history, Westerns, George Orwell, Oliver Cromwell most recently. Yes, Oliver Cromwell most recently, which was a very, very fine webinar. So, yeah, check that out. Check out the back catalog. All of our old summer classes are on sale too, so you can get. Yeah, you can get a bargain. And also a reminder that we moved our Literary Life annual conference to January this year and you can find out the information again. For [e-mail] While you're shopping, you can register for the conference, too. Dr. Jason Baxter will be our keynote speaker once again. And I think that the topic is actually going to fit very well with the things we've been talking about with Brave New World. All right. Having gotten that out of the way, Mr. Banks, do you have a commonplace? Mr. Banks, the savage. Do you have that roll right off the tongue?

[C]

But I was thinking of all the literary characters I faintly resembled that. I don't think that there's no. Yeah, yeah. I don't have that kind of energy, I'm afraid. Yeah. Anyway, so my commonplace. This is from a book of literary essays by Walter de La Mer, who's one of my favorite underrated writers. And he's describing here a medieval travel book written by a Franciscan monk who went to Mongolia and met the great Khan. So here's what he says. To read him is to recall the faraway, childish experience of gloating into the lighted windows of an extremely brilliant confectioner's shop.

[A]

Oh, wow. The Willy Wonka version. I know.

[C]

I was gonna say that's a blurb I would love to have, you know, if I had a book that was blurb worthy.

[A]

That's the blurb you want?

[C]

Sure.

[A]

So they're like, buy this book, and it's the golden ticket to your own chocolate factory.

[C]

Yeah, yeah. Again, I mean, if I actually were to write a book, it probably wouldn't be a chocolate factory type confection, but yeah.

[A]

Oh, no, you're meat and potatoes.

[C]

Definitely. Definitely more meat and potatoes.

[A]

Yeah. All right. Ms. Ella Hornster, do you have a commonplace quote for us?

[B]

A. I have two. And it's either because I don't have self control or because I have trouble making decisions.

[A]

Yes, yes.

[B]

The first one is actually from Aldous himself, from an essay he wrote that's part of a collection of essays he published in 1931 called Music at Night. And it's called Notes on Liberty and the Boundaries of the Promised Land. And he says, but in the future state, so say the prophets, 300 a year will buy £5,000 worth of liberty. And when we ask how and by what miracle, they invoke not the God from the machine, but the machine itself.

[C]

Oh, man, that's wonderful.

[A]

That could be a quote out of Paul Kingsnorth new book, against the Machine. Wow, that's good.

[B]

And then Jerome Mackie wrote a book. He's a scholar of Huxley. He wrote a book called Aldous Huxley. Satire and structure. And he was talking in a chapter about the use of language in the brave new world, that they. They. They choose a word and then make an object or a thing illustrate that word, whether it actually does so or not, because language has lost its meaning. And he says, if the brave new world cannot insert a square peg into a round hole, it will redefine roundness until a perfect fit results.

[A]

Well, that's. That's very apropos to the chapters we're going to look at in the conversation about God. All right, so my quote, shout out to Esther Bills, who found this fantastic quote from Northrop Fry. It's from his preface to Essays on the Canadian Imagination, which I confess I have not read. And she's been.

[C]

Work.

[A]

She's just been plugging right along, reading all of the Fry stuff. So she found this one online because I don't think. I'm not even sure this is published anymore. But anyway, I don't have it in my extensive Northrop Fry collection. I don't have it. And I just thought this quote was amazing and really fit some of the things Huxley's trying to put his finger on. A sense of unity is opposite of a sense of uniformity. Uniformity, where everyone belongs, uses the same cliches. Thinks alike and behaves alike produces a society which seems comfortable at first, but is totally lacking in human dignity. Real unity tolerates dissent and rejoices in variety of outlook. And tradition recognizes that it is man's destiny to unite and not divide. Unity, so understood, is the extra dimension that raises the sense of belonging into genuine human life.

[C]

That's a very sensible judgment.

[A]

That's the least John the Savage thing you've ever said.

[C]

I know. That's. That's why I can never be John the Savage. I think say things like, that's a sensible judgment.

[A]

Sensible judgment. You do talk like that. And I virtually. I find it adorable.

[C]

I also own too many cardigans to be. I don't think John the Savage owns even one cardigan. There's one thing I have over him.

[A]

They didn't think to tempt him.

[C]

I have an almost Mr. Rogers supply.

[A]

Of cardigans, all of which have been purchased by your loving wife.

[C]

I don't randomly change them in the middle of a, you know, class, though.

[A]

You also don't sing any songs when you put them on.

[C]

I do not.

[A]

Can we work on that? Can we have a sweater sock?

[C]

No, you do not.

[A]

Just put me in my place. Right here in front of. Okay.

[C]

Some bridges are not to Be crossed.

[A]

Okay, fine. I guess I pushed him far enough. Now I know where the line is. You need me, I'll be out of my lighthouse, whipping myself. This idea between unity and uniformity. So there this culture is claiming that it has unity, and what it really has is enforced uniformity, preconditioned uniformity. And we saw that first. It's going to come back again at the end here. But we saw that first in the solidarity services when they have the parody of the Eucharist. It's. So the Eucharist is an attempt to unite all of us. We're all members of a body. That's unity, but we're not all hands. That's uniformity. Right. So we're all different parts of the body and we're united with each other.

[B]

The solidarity service about. Is about the abolition of the self. Exactly. So.

[A]

Right. So it's. It's a false unity. It's a. I mean, they had 12 people around a table, so it's very Last Supper esque, but it's a parody. It's upside down. They're going to unite in this orgy, which is, of course, not true unity.

[C]

And another thing, it's almost. It's kind of a mock heaven, because you have a eugenic hierarchy of the Alphas down to the Epsilons, and everyone is perfectly content, says Mustafa Mond. In the whatever hierarchical order they have been placed, everyone enjoys the fullest amount, the fullest measure of happiness that they are programmed to enjoy, which is kind of a grotesque mockery of, you know, Dante's paradise, where there are different, you could say, measures of joy allotted to each person in their contemplation of the beatific vision. But everyone's cup is full. But the cups are of a different scale. But here it's just like, you know, this. This crass, sort of commercial, consumptive society in which everyone, you know, they don't know any better. So they're fine with, you know, the lot they have been given. Right, Yeah. A false heaven.

[A]

Like I said, a false heaven. And I think that comes in at the end here, too. Yes.

[B]

Dibble Bedford, actually, in her biography of Huxley, when she was talking about Brave New World, because it was such a big part of it, it was really a brainchild for him. She said that he believed that counter utopias or dystopias automatically recognized the flawed world and the Fall. Right. And so Aldous starts there because he. In, in the Brave New World, human beings are deliberately bred inferior and superior, and the principle of mass production is Just applied to biolog biology.

[C]

You mentioned Sybil Bedford, who is a widely respected novelist in the mid 20th century. And I. I'm trying to think of some titles of hers. A favorite of the gods and a legacy I think was. Is kind of considered her classic. Evelyn Waugh was a great admirer of Sybil Bedford.

[B]

She lived down the road from the Huxleys in Italy.

[C]

No. Oh, my goodness.

[A]

Wow.

[C]

These. These connections you make, Ms. Hornstrom.

[A]

So speaking of Huxley's inner circle of friends, we had talked about in, I think the first episode, the second episode that Edith Wharton was a big influence on.

[C]

You discovered that?

[A]

Well, I didn't. Kelly bonded. Oh. And it was that. It was the novel Twilight Sleep. And so another one of our Patreon members, Christine Hahn, is reading Twilight Sleep and she posted a quote from Twilight Sleep. And my. Okay, watch. Check this out. So Twilight seep again is. Well, it was something that was introduced to put women completely unconscious when they gave birth so that they, quote, wouldn't have to feel any pain.

[C]

And it.

[A]

Ah, yeah. It is no longer a practice because it had some negative side effects. I'll just leave it at that. All the midwives in our audience are yelling, yeah, I had some negative side effects.

[C]

This is something that was actually done.

[A]

Oh, my grandmother was put on completely unconscious. Oh, my. One of my grandmothers was completely unconscious for all five of her deliveries. And my other grandmother, who had nine, she had half of her kids at home and half in the hospital.

[C]

Okay.

[A]

And so she was unconscious for half of them.

[B]

Yeah.

[A]

You didn't know?

[C]

No, I didn't.

[A]

I didn't. Completely gassed.

[B]

Well, now you. We can all be horrified together.

[A]

No, the whole, like, natural labor movement of like the 1970s was a reaction against all that. Okay, okay. So here's the quote from Twilight Sleep. Of course therein ought to be no pain. Nothing but beauty. It ought to be one of the loveliest, most poetic things in the world to have a baby. Mrs. Manford declared in that bright, efficient voice which made loveliness and poetry sound like the attributes of an advanced industrialism. And babies something be to be turned out in a series like Ford's.

[C]

Wow.

[A]

Right?

[C]

Passage like that, she could almost sue him for pleasure.

[A]

You know, something weird.

[C]

I like that. Insured.

[B]

But this week while I was reading, we've actually never seen a Ford in the book that's right around in helicopters.

[A]

But, like, they're not past the Ford.

[C]

Yeah, even the taxis are helicopters.

[B]

Yes.

[A]

I think that's been one of the most disappointing things about Living in the future.

[C]

Oh, yes. No, I was. No Flying Cars.

[A]

Jetsons. I was promised flying cars.

[C]

No.

[A]

In all honesty, though, if you'll let me. Allow me to digress. I was terrified at the Flying Cars and the Jetsons because I just thought, no, they're all going to crash into each other. This is madness. Going up and down, side to side and back and forth.

[C]

Yeah, we are.

[A]

We just. We can't even handle that on a road.

[C]

I think if I had to choose between living in the world of the Jetsons and that of the Flintstones, I might go with the Flintstones. Though I would probably, you know, last about five minutes in prehistory before being killed by a saber toothed tiger.

[A]

Wow. Okay. Brave new world. All right. So before we pressed record, we were having such an interesting conversation that I said, wait, wait, we gotta stop talking. Let's just. Let's just start the episode like this. So we are going to go through all of the chapters 14 through 18, but I thought we'd actually just jump into the deep end, jump in to talking about the ending, because the ending is ambiguous and it divides readers. It does divide readers. So I don't know if it's a lot. We'll just say some. Some readers read John's death at the end, a death apparently by his own hand. Though Huxley does not describe it, which I think is significant. He doesn't give us a big scene of him, you know, throwing the rope over the banisters and pulling himself up and having a big, you know, to be or not to be moment in speech before he does that. He doesn't have any.

[C]

He dies off stage tragedy.

[A]

That's right. So it'. So he did, you know, it's not that kind of moment. But some people read it and think this is a despairing end. And you had some interesting things to say about that, Mr. Banks, before this.

[C]

Yeah, I think, and I will say I don't think that's a stupid reading. I'm not condescending to anyone who has read it that way. There are professional critics who read the book that way. I think it is incorrect, though. I think I say that because you could point to a number of other very well known stories from antiquity, from our own period, roughly where good is ostensibly defeated at the end of the story. Nonetheless, though, it's defeated in such a way which bears witness to its goodness and the fact that, you know, the corruption of the world might be strong, but it's still corruption. So I was thinking of Antigone. Antigone at the end of Sophocles, you know, that classic tragedy, she is immured and condemned, you know, by the law of Thebes, such as it is, and she dies by her own hand. She hangs herself. Nonetheless, though, it's better to stand with Antigone than with the tyrannical Creon, you know, the. The regent who is responsible for her death. So, again, I don't think. I don't know anyone who would say that Antigone is a nihilistic or a play.

[A]

In fact, we should be very comfortable with the idea of a work of literature telling us that there are some things worse than death.

[C]

I think that's true. I think it's healthy to be reminded of that or another. Again, I'm not saying these books have much in common.

[A]

You know, don't. Don't fear the man who can kill yourself, your body, feel the man who can kill your soul, you know.

[C]

Oh, absolutely. Yeah. Or what. What else did I bring up?

[B]

Oh, the.

[C]

The ending of To Kill a Mockingbird. I mean, at the end, Atticus Finch, who has proven that Tom Robinson is obviously innocent, and it's only because of the racism of the society that he's even on trial. Nonetheless, the racism of the society prevails. Tom Robinson is condemned and dies in the book.

[A]

But that's.

[C]

Yeah, but like no one says. Yeah, really, that's a. That's a really hopeless book. I don't think we should be, you know, even bothering with that one. I mean, there are people who have tried to cancel the book for other reasons, but I don't think that's one of them anyway. So I don't think that John the Savage is Death. I mean, yes, he dies by suicide, but I don't see that that by itself is some kind of council of Huxley's saying that, well, you know, you can't beat the man, so you might as well take your Soma dose. I don't see that that is being true.

[A]

Maybe the.

[B]

The truly nihilistic ending would be to get to the end of the story and not be able to differentiate what's good and bad.

[A]

Right, right.

[C]

That might. Yeah, I think that's actually.

[B]

But at the end of Brave New World, we're left with a very clear picture.

[A]

That's right.

[C]

Yeah, that's right. You know, something George Orwell wrote about this novel, and Orwell had his issues with this novel, as we've, I think, alluded to already. But he points out that a society organized along, you know, this idea of maximal gratification of pleasure couldn't last for more than a couple of generations. It's a society that's digging its own grave in a lot of ways. Even if it has its factory manufactured population, it just doesn't last. Things like this can't endure very long.

[B]

Well, they're not made to be mended after all.

[C]

Yeah, I know. Ending is better than mending the fact that Jon doesn't defeat Brave New World himself or isn't able to provoke some kind of popular uprising. That by itself is, again, I don't think, a sign of a permanent victory for the society.

[A]

And so let's talk a little bit about what are the mistakes readers are making? Like, what are their assumptions when they're going into this book that they think that this is a despairing ending. Like you said something just a few minutes ago before we press record about Modern. There's a certain type of reader that wants Avera.

[C]

Yeah, we want. We want a comforting and clear victory for goodness.

[A]

Yeah.

[C]

And I think that's a modern. I'll say it's also a very American way of reading. It testifies to, like, a certain healthiness because. Yeah, who doesn't want good to triumph? But I mean, so many of the greatest stories, you know, transcending time, just don't offer us that. The Iliad does not offer us that.

[A]

No, it does not. Neither. And I think people have the same problem with the ending of 1984.

[C]

Yeah. I mean, sheesh. Just you could point to so many different examples in the classical tragic tradition. Many of Shakespeare's plays, frankly, don't offer clear victories exactly for their Hamlet. I'm thinking, how does Hamlet end? Yeah, so. So again, I don't think we can. We can take a, you know, the defeat of the protagonist by itself as indicative of a kind of deeply ingrained philosophical pessimism.

[A]

That's exactly right.

[C]

Poisonous pessimism.

[A]

Number of things going wrong. You know, going back to the idea that a lot of modern readers, and this, I mean modern by like the last, you know, 150 years think that when you read a book that the author is giving you. That a novel is a philosophical delivery system. Right. But that Huxley or whatever author is giving you his philosophy of life. And that is just incorrect. That. That completely misunderstands how literature works. It misunderstands how particular genres work. For example, let's take a Shakespeare tragedy, right. If you read a Shakespeare tragedy and this evil happens and boom, everybody's dead at the end. And you decide Shakespeare's a nihilist Shakespeare does not think good can defeat evil. That is incorrect. Shakespeare's not a nihilist. And if you want to know why he's not a nihilist, go read his comedies. What he's doing is just showing you things from a different perspective. And in that sense, the tragedies are very often cautionary tales. You know, Macbeth is the story of a man who gains the world and loses his soul. It's almost a parable. And it's like, don't be Macbeth. Right. So that it's not a reflection of how Shakespeare sees reality. It's a what if. What if a guy did this, what would happen? Right. So there's that kind of story. But then if you throw into the fact. The fact that. Into the mix, the fact that Brave New World is a satire and a parody, now we're really in trouble. People really mess up with satire. So I'll go back to Jonathan Swift because people make this mistake about Swift all the time with Guild of His Travels. Satire works very different. In a satire, the author hides himself behind several layers of narrative. In fact, you, Mr. Banks, you were mentioning earlier that you thought one of the difficulties people have with this ending is that Huxley has hidden his narrative voice so much.

[C]

Oh, yeah, yeah. No, he's not an intrusive storyteller.

[A]

Right.

[C]

I mean, so much of this is, you know, arguments between, you know, Mustapha Monde and John the Savage. And like I think I said earlier, it almost feels at times kind of like a platonic dialogue.

[A]

I like that. Especially that those two chapters, 16 and 17.

[C]

Yeah, there's. There's a. I think a lot of just kind of detachment.

[A]

So that makes people confused because they think, well, if he's not saying something, then the story is his worldview. The story is his perspective on reality, and it doesn't work like that. So in a satire like Gulliver's Travels, Jonathan Swift is not Gulliver. But people make that mistake all the time. And one of the ways that satire works, especially if you're satirizing the main character in addition to everything else. And again, that's a mistake we make. We think, okay, I'm seeing the world through Gulliver's eyes. And whatever Gulliver learns is what I learn. Okay? Satire does not work like that because Gulliver learns nothing. He learns nothing. And that is one of the things that Jonathan Swift is satirizing, is that Gulliver is the perfect enlightened man who believes in the perfect ability of man. And yet he goes on all these, like, Pilgrim's Progress esque journeys and learns nothing and is even dumber at the end of the book than he is at the beginning. So. But people make this mistake all the time. And. And, I mean, I've read Worldview essays which. Which confuse Jonathan Swift and Gulliver so much that they say, jonathan Swift doesn't think there is anything for us to learn. He leaves us in a despairing place because Gulliver is left in a despairing place. But that's not how satire works. So what happens in a satire is the reader and the main character are not the same person. There's that ironic distance there. And so where a lot of us think we want a story where a character learns a lesson, and at the end of the story, it's very clear what the character's lesson was. And we can all walk away saying, oh, yes, I learned this lesson that how a satire works. And really, any book written in the ironic mode, but how a satire works is the character learns nothing, but we, the reader, learns the thing. Right? So that's why it's not nihilistic. That's why Gulliver's Travels is not despairing. Because you laugh at Gulliver because, you know, if you go back to our, you know, bottom of the U kind of language that we talk about the comedic structure, you know, Gulliver descends down to the bottom of the U and he stays there, but the reader goes up. So it's not a despairing book because we, the reader, are not despairing. And sometimes I hear people say things like, well, where's the moral center of the book? Okay? And so somebody might think, well, John the Savage is the moral center. No, in this kind of story, the moral center is in the reader. It's us, right? We. We are separate from this. So that's going to be important to understand that the reader is going on a journey in Brave New World and we are learning things. But that doesn't necessarily mean the characters are.

[B]

Gulliver is not laughing. In Gold. The reader needs to be able to laugh.

[A]

Right, Right, right. That's exactly right. The reader is laughing. Jonathan Gulliver's not laughing.

[C]

No, I was. I was going to say I was trying to think of another story where you can't point to a particular character. It seems like this particular era in literature is rich in that type of story. Everyone seems kind of deracinated. And the planets are wandering in disorder. The human planets. Who are the characters? I think Brideshead Revisited also.

[A]

Oh, That's a good thing.

[C]

I mean, there are characters in Brideshead Revisited you care about deeply and you're rooting for them throughout the story. But for the most of it, the narrator, Charles Rider, is. He kind of understands this himself. I think by the end, he's kind of a lost man. You could say the same for his friend in their different ways. For most of the characters, some of whom are more absurd or grotesque than others or. I mean, think of most of the Fitzgerald. I'm thinking like the great. The Lost Generation writers, the Great Gatsby. You could say much the same thing. There's. There's no one who's really a well ordered human being.

[A]

And yet. And yet Brideshead Revisited gets falsely accused of having a really depressing ending. And if you know how to read it, it actually, it does not has the opposite of that kind of reading. So, you know, all of that's going to come into play. Now then, if you also combine the fact that this is not just satire and this is not just a 20th century novel written in the ironic mode, but this is also parody. Now we have to go back to what I said earlier. That parody is laying down a bunch of puzzle pieces. And that doesn't mean that the author is going to put together the puzzle in the book for you. You are supposed to put it together. And so, yes, we have an ambiguous ending here for sure, and we have a bunch of puzzle pieces. And we conclude then, Huxley's just a nihilist. Huxley doesn't know how to fix it. There's a problem and he doesn't know how to give a solution.

[C]

And so, no, I mean, I think, yeah, we could. It's fair to bring this up, the essay that.

[A]

Yeah, I want to get to that. We'll get to that, but I'll forget my last thought, but we say Huxley identifies a problem, but he can't offer a solution, or he offers the wrong solution. But that is not what parody is. Parody is not a problem to solve. It is a puzzle to put together. And. And we are the ones who are supposed to put it together. So, yes, now you can say, well.

[C]

I mean, the essay, it was actually you who pointed out to me by Louis Marcos, who I, I think, values many of the same things that we do. And again, and he's written, and he's written, and he's a serious scholar. So I think I'm bringing him up not because I think that, you know, he's a buffoon or something like that. I quite the opposite.

[A]

Have enjoyed some of his work.

[C]

Yeah.

[A]

Recommend it, but.

[C]

Yeah, From Achilles to Christ. And. Yeah.

[A]

Anyway, recommend that. But he wrote an essay on Brave New World where he called it a world without hope and he just missed it.

[C]

Yeah, I think. I think that's. I think that's laying too much emphasis on. That's laying too much of the wrong sort of emphasis on the particular way in which John the Savage dies.

[A]

Well, and so his basic argument is Huxley's not a Christian, and so he can see the problems in the world, but he can't offer any kind of real solution because the only solution is Christ. And that just that. That's a complete misreading of the book. That's a complete misreading because Huxley's not trying to offer a solution to the problem of modernity in this book, because Brave New World is not about the problem of maternity. It's a parody. It's Alice in Wonderland.

[C]

Yeah, I think kind of a reading is. I think it relies on making a demand of a story of that story's creator, which a reader doesn't have a right to demand.

[A]

Correct.

[C]

Really correct.

[A]

And honestly, there's a worldview essay that reads Gulliver's Travels the exact same way and makes the same exact mistake and says, you know, Jonathan Swift doesn't have the right view of reality. His theology is not right. And so that's why the ending of the book is the way it is and both of them are making the same mistake. This is parody, and it's an upside down world. And if the characters stay in the upside down world, it doesn't mean that the readers are still there.

[C]

Shall we take a look at the dialogue between the Mustafa mold and John?

[A]

I want to go back even further than that. So one of the things I did, because I went into this knowing a lot of people are very confused about the ending, I read the last few chapters really, really carefully, looking to see how is Huxley telling us to interpret the ending. And I think he does. So let's pick up in 14 with the death of Linda, because I think there's some really important moments in there which will help us understand how to interpret his death by looking at his mother's death. Okay, first of all, this was such a great time line. Linda was dying in company. In company. And with all the modern conveniences, I just. I just loved that.

[C]

All right. And one thing I. I mean, I think I mentioned this to you already. Is that a common feature of dystopian fiction in a different Way the same. You see the same thing in 1984. No one knows, no one really knows how to respond to death. And death is not treated with the proper kind of significance and solemnity.

[A]

They're interfering with the mystery of death. Death is one of the great mysteries because you don't. We all have our beliefs and sincerely held beliefs about what is going to.

[C]

Happen, but in this world it's merely another hygienic problem to be.

[A]

That's right.

[C]

You know, that's right.

[A]

But it's a mystery because none of us actually know through first hand experience what happens when you die. We're only going to find that out when we have crossed that threshold. So it is a. It's a great, It's a great mystery right up there with birth that none of us know what was happening before we were born.

[B]

Well, Merce Eliot says that the greatest mystery in existence is that life comes from somewhere else, is here for a while, and then leaves, presumably also to somewhere else and we don't know where. And I think it's. They have done everything they can to resolve the problem of death and haven't been able to, so they just ignore it.

[A]

Right. So they treat death as a problem to solve instead of a mystery to contemplate.

[B]

Yes.

[A]

One of the points I made my Edgar Allan Poe webinar. Same sort of thing. All right, so a couple things I want to point out about her death. One, he's remembering in this chapter that when he was a little boy, he and his mother would spend all this time together and she would tell him stories about the other place, capital O, capital P. Right, the other place outside the reservation. That beautiful, beautiful other place whose memory as of heaven, a paradise of goodness and loveliness, he still kept whole and intact, undefiled by contact with the reality of this real London, these actual civilized men and women. So I think that's going to be important. Ella, you look like you want to say something.

[B]

I. He keeps trying to recall to himself these beautiful memories of his childhood. And the nursery rhyme about vitamins is not working.

[A]

I know. Like such an impoverished memories that he's holding on to her, swatting him away so she can get drunk and be with Popey. You know, it's. It's sad.

[B]

Todd liver is like not recalling the kind of memory he's looking for.

[A]

Exactly, exactly. All right, so Linda, as soon as she gets to this world, this London, she goes into the Soma holiday, the Soma dream. Right. So she has been, her entire existence in the brave new world has Been in a dream, right? And so now she's at the end of this, and I think this is very, very important. He squeezed her limped hand almost with violence, as though he would force her to come back from this dream of ignoble pleasures, from these base and hateful memories, back into the present, back into reality, the appalling present, the awful reality, but sublime, but significant, but desperately important, precisely because of the imminence of that which made them so fearful. So her death. And if I flip the page, it's going to be on the next page, too. But her death is portrayed in this chapter as her waking up from the dream she's in.

[B]

Because while she's sleeping, in a doze, or even when she's awake, drugged by Soma, he says that even if she woke up, she's really just waking up to a dream of the room that she's in that's influenced by Soma. And her death is the only time she actually comes to reality.

[A]

And then, right here, because she's dreaming about Popeye, he shakes her really hard and then she dies. Right. So waking her up out of the dream is her dying. Her dying is her waking up out of a dream.

[C]

You notice the way he describes the hospital was just wonderfully creepy. Like how everything in it was. All of its conveniences were designed. I mean, not just the drugs and the painkillers, but everything is designed to induce a kind of. Just a kind of mental fog and haze. It's still that. The Muzak playing, the easy listening soundtrack.

[B]

Playing over the speakers, and the million and one twins.

[C]

That's a perfect way of putting it. That's like, terrifying. This is one of the most terrifying chapters to me. Yeah, it was. It was really well done. But.

[A]

Yeah, and I think it's important to note because this will be echoed in the last chapter. So she dies. She's really. She wakes up from her dream. And his response is to say, oh, God, God, God, God.

[B]

And he's mourning. And the nurse is afraid that he's going to undo the death conditioning of these frightening children that are. That are over in the corner.

[C]

Yeah, he's in the way. Like everywhere he goes in this. In this eugenic world, he's in the way.

[A]

He's in the way.

[B]

Yeah.

[A]

All right, so chapter 15. Then again, he opens up saying he's in a nightmare of swarming, indistinguishable sameness. So the brave new world is being portrayed. I know Ella's face. We know where we're going to go with this. Good thing y' all can't see our faces. It's telling us. It's telegraphing exactly where we're gonna go.

[B]

I have a really unfortunately readable face.

[A]

I've decided it's a face made for podcasting. See, we're hidden back here, but it's consistently, this world is being portrayed as a dream because Linda's in this dream or a nightmare for John, but either way, it's all dreams. And then he talks about the mystery of her death, and he's saying the Tempest over her. But now, gosh, that would. I didn't track this, but that would be so fun to track if somebody's, like, looking for a paper topic, but to track the difference in tone every time he says, oh, brave New World. Right.

[C]

Because now it seems that there's a new level of irony introduced each time.

[A]

And now he's saying it, you know, angrily, right. How many goodly creatures are there here? The singing words mocked him derisively. How beauteous mankind is. Oh, brave New World.

[C]

Not just the quotation, but the effect itself is kind of a Shakespearean one, because it made me think of. You Remember Mark Antony's speech in Julius Caesar where he begins by saying, brutus and Cassius are honorable men? And he repeats that several times, but it's more obviously cutting and ironic each time he says it.

[A]

Or honest.

[B]

Honest Iago.

[C]

Yeah. But there was lend me your ears, which introduces.

[A]

No, that's really good. That's really good. And of course, we have to remember that the first time he said, oh, brave New World, Bernard said, perhaps you ought to wait to see this brave New World before you decide it's great. All right, so then the next page.

[B]

How many goodly creatures? Is just kind of ironic because there's really only one in a bunch of copies.

[C]

Two exact children who have.

[A]

Yeah, exactly. Okay, so I want to look at this paragraph, because now he's going to be connecting Brave New World with a nightmare. Okay. This is very important.

[B]

One note, though. Interestingly, up in Linda's room, he seems to be having some kind of taste of reality, at least when she actually dies, because he comes down the elevator, and then it says he woke. He woke to this. This external reality of all of these people swarming, looking for their daily rations, I guess.

[A]

Yes. Okay, so the savage looked on. No Savage stood looking on. Oh, brave New World. Oh, brave new World. In his mind, the singing words seemed to change their tone. They had mocked him through his misery and remorse, mocked him with how hideous a note of Cynical derision, fiendishly laughing. They had insisted on the low squalor, the nauseous ugliness of the nightmare. There we are again, right? He's in a nightmare. There now. Suddenly, they trumpeted a call to arms. Oh, brave new world. Miranda was proclaiming the possibility of loveliness, the possibility of transforming even the nightmare into something fine and noble. Oh, brave new world. It was a challenge, a command. All right, so his response is, I think I can turn this nightmare into something better. I'm gonna save everybody from this nightmare.

[B]

He said everyone is dreaming and he might be able to wake them up.

[A]

Exactly. So they don't know they're in a nightmare, and I'm gonna wake them up. Up that. That goes. That connects with here. Linda had been a slave. Linda had died. Others should live in freedom, right? So he's going to wake them all up. And yes, so he stands up there with his Julius Caesar, lend me your ears. And then fast forward, he gets drowned out by a tape recording of propaganda saying, happy and good happy, and the two creepiest words in the English language put together.

[B]

And then he proceeds to turn over tables. Like Christ.

[A]

Yes, like Christ in the temple. I mean, later, he's going to braid a whip. I mean, come on, guys. I know you can see this, right? And he's. He's trying so hard to wake them up, but, you know, the crowd doesn't want to hear it.

[B]

And he says, I come to bring you freedom also Christ.

[A]

Yes. Yep, yep, yep.

[B]

And he's.

[A]

And he's turning over the soma tables. And we said the soma is a parody Eucharist. And later in the. In chapter 17, Mustafa Mond is going to say that soma is how you have heaven. So he's literally turning all that over again. That's very parody language, right? So let's go back to the idea that parody is flipping things upside down, because we're upside down and we need to be flipped right side up. So he's flipping the soma tables upside down because that's an upside down world, and they need to be flipped right side up. This back at the end. All right, 16. Now, your two chapters that you wanted to talk about with the two different conversations with Mustafa Mond, which I absolutely love. And Bernard is so interesting in these chapters, right? He, He. He kind of. He has a sense that there needs to be an atonement, but it's also lame. Like, I'll sit in the most comfort, uncomfortable chair in the room. And that way, when he comes in this Might alleviate his wrath because I'm not sitting in a comfort. Comfortable chair.

[C]

Yeah. Yeah. Bernard is just such a sad character.

[A]

Well, he. He literally can't envision anything greater.

[C]

No.

[A]

Than his sort of, you know, general displeasure. Okay.

[C]

Let me just say I. I really enjoy the presence of Mustafa Mall. Maybe it's the pedagogue in me.

[A]

But.

[C]

But, yeah, he's. He's always like this very. He always speaks in the manner of a very, very patient headmaster to a room full of not very bright children. There's, like, something politely condescending, always, about Mustafa.

[A]

I should not have called you John the Savage. I should have called you Mustafa Mond.

[C]

Oh, absolutely. I would take that as a compliment.

[B]

You would?

[A]

I know you would. And I would mean it as a compliment. Okay. My little world control. All right. Well, I could just sit here and read most of the chapter, but I don't want to dominate. What did you guys want to say about chapter 16? This is when we find out when. Okay, so he quotes Shakespeare. John gets really excited and he says, no, this is all forbidden. And they have the conversation. Why? Because it's old.

[C]

Because it's old. And because beauty. Beauty, when it takes possession of someone, when it takes up a residence in someone's soul, if you will, it makes them unpredictable and it produces the kind of volatile behavior which we cannot tolerate here in this, you know, antiseptic world of ours.

[A]

And if we can't have people being attracted to beautiful old things because we want them to buy new things.

[C]

Yeah, yeah.

[A]

Lots of quotes from Othello here. And he says, why can't you make good movies, good feelies like Othello? And Helmholtz gets so excited. Yes, yes, that's what I want to do. And then. This is a little too close to home, I say. I think. But he comes back and he says, you could, but no one would understand it.

[C]

Yeah, but again, it's just outdated. The feelings, the poetry, the language, everything about it.

[B]

Mustafa Mond here, he came across to me as this. He's very much in contrast to much of the world in that he's kind of a frightening intellect. And the rest of the world is kind of ruled by sensation alone, for the most part. Maybe that's what sets him apart as the world. He's.

[A]

The.

[C]

Through the world he has created. He even. It's kind of interesting, he even admits that. Oh, yeah.

[A]

You.

[C]

You desire God. Well, God probably exists, but we've sort of, you know, divorced ourselves from the sense of him. Because that, again, this is. We Just, yeah, we have technology. Why do we need a higher power?

[A]

And he keeps talking about the things you lose. Beauty, for example. Freedom. That's the price you pay for stability.

[C]

Yeah.

[B]

No, it reminded me Harold Goddard, when he's actually, he's writing about Othello and the meaning of Shakespeare. He says that the deliberate placing of the highest intellectual gifts and achievements at the service of the lowest human instincts is a phenomenon which the 20th century is acquainted on a scale never previously attained. I think he's. He's talking about Iago, but kind of.

[A]

All right.

[C]

And Mustafa Mod also pretty much admits that the way that we're bringing human beings into this world, conditioning them is dehumanizing. That's not an accident. That's the point. It makes them more easy to control. It makes them as predictable in their behavior as so many. So many tadpoles or something. Yeah.

[A]

Things might make us unhappy, even if it's just for a few minutes, because.

[C]

That means passion means disruption. Anything spontaneous means. Means a threat to the measurable and temperature controlled world that we have created.

[A]

Right. And John pushes back against that in chapter 17.

[B]

But I mean, he even had to give up science because at the end of the day, real science is also unpredictable.

[A]

He's also got a lot of like Bible language here. You cannot pour upper caste champagne surrogate into bottles.

[C]

I know, that was great.

[A]

Yeah. You can't pour new wine into old Zacks. That was so good. Now this is also the part, Ella, that you have been sort of hint at the last few episodes where Mustafa Mons talks about the decanting process. Do you want to read that part?

[B]

Yeah. Also the mention of the Cyprus experiment, which is just also a funny nod to Othello. They put.

[A]

Oh, yes, got that. That's good. Well, we keep having. This actually came up when they were.

[B]

Singing that ridiculous song in. Is it when Lanina and Henry, they go to that nightclub. I forget what it's called anyway. And they were singing this song and they were singing about how, you know, the skies are blue inside the bottle and we're all still inside the bottle. Wish we hadn't been to Canton. That. That whole thing. And. And Mond here says that, you know, really we all are going through life inside a bottle. We've made this world to be such a controlled area that we're now still. We've never been decanted, really. Which I think is kind of important.

[A]

That's right. He says even after decanting, he's still inside a bottle. An invisible bottle of infantile and embryonic fixations. Each one of us, of course, goes through life inside a bottle.

[C]

Can I say that I think that Huxley here accomplishes what almost no one accomplishes without seeming really hammy. He gets his villain monologuing and explaining. Like he's showing his cards and he's saying, this is what we're trying to do. This is the real secret. I'm letting it out of the bottle. Well, pun. Sorry, bad pun there. But it's like it doesn't have the same kind of melodramatic flavor that that same type of speech usually has in a movie where a villain starts explaining how it is that he masterminded this, that or the other thing. Because this is what Mustapha Mond has been doing the entire book.

[A]

That's right.

[C]

I mean, he's like. You kind of wonder if he carries a podium around with him because he's exposition. Yeah, the exposition is brilliantly handled.

[A]

We also see him talking about various experiments, as Ella said. And we get the sense that this society is interested in letting a little bit of instability go just to see how far it can go and then squashing it.

[B]

I mean, which we find out later, because. Which I. I guess that's the reality of the Brave New World. You cannot be in the Brave New World without being in the bottle.

[A]

That's right.

[B]

This is the reality you've created. You were part of the experiment, whether you chose.

[A]

That's right. So he, he, he won't let John go to the island because there's an experiment that needs to play out here. Yeah, exactly.

[B]

Islands, islands, islands, everywhere.

[A]

All right. Then he tells. So he tells Bernard and Helmholtz that they can go live on an island. And then he says, I almost envy you. That's to say he's being sent to a place where he'll meet the most interesting set of men and women to be found anywhere in the world. All the people who for one reason or another, have got too self consciously individual to fit any two. Community, life, life. All the people who aren't satisfied with orthodoxy, who got independent ideas of the one of their own. Everyone. In a word, who's anyone. I almost envy you, Mr. Watson. You wanna.

[B]

No, this is kind of a really random note, but we had a neighbor once who was from Siberia, and she said this was like. Sorry, this is what Siberia was like in Russia, because all the most interesting people were sent there as prisoners.

[A]

Oh, no, that's very interesting. But you were telling me that Huxley actually wrote Brave New World as part of a Trilogy. And that's why he keeps talking about the people. Yes.

[C]

So we've never mentioned the sequels. Yeah.

[B]

Have we?

[A]

Yeah, so we should.

[C]

Yeah.

[B]

He wrote Brave New World and then Ape and Essence and then also island and I think originally. Oh, go ahead.

[C]

Isn't there one called Brave New World Revisited?

[B]

Yes, that's an essay.

[A]

Later, essays and stuff.

[C]

I gotcha.

[A]

Now I own the island, but have never read it. Have either of you read it?

[C]

I know what it is, but no, it's his last novel.

[A]

Yeah.

[C]

Also about an experimental society of a different kind.

[A]

It's as a utopia, not a dystopia, right?

[C]

I believe so, yes.

[B]

Yes. Largely inspired again by the stories that he encountered during his travels in India. I. I've not read it myself either. Apparently it was described to me in this book that I was reading that Brave New World was his first dystopia. Ape, in essence, was a thought experiment about instead of trying to create the ideal world, what if we tried to go back to an old world and the wor. Possible way and that. And that then island was. Was his. His good utopia. Okay.

[A]

It's also this section that we learn it's not just the liberal arts that are attacked in this place, it's also science. And I love that Huxley made that distinction.

[B]

So we don't even have science.

[A]

That's right. Real science is a danger. But what they have is what? Assembly line factory science.

[B]

Which is interesting because Huxley, even before he died, he was being asked if this was a comment on the dangers of science. And he was like, I never thought that. And I mean, this is proof. No, explicitly, they don't have science.

[A]

That's, that's the whole point. They don't have science.

[C]

I mean, it's interesting. I mean, if you look at real life dystopias, whether Nazi Germany or the Soviet Union, they, I mean, they might rise to power partially on those kind of technocratic claims. I mean, obviously every modern government wants to call itself scientific, but. But then the real scientists very often end up on the wrong side of the government and Einstein has to flee. And in the Soviet Union, I mean, they had like this weird system of pseudoscience called Lyschenkoism, which mainly its main failures were in the world of agronomy, because they were claiming that we'll produce gigantic tomatoes and things like that. And so, yeah, a dystopian society in the name of science sometimes ends up being an anti scientific world.

[B]

And I think because science itself, by its nature is based on questions, it's A series of hypotheses. And George MacDonald actually makes the case that he thinks this, the science is much more about the imagination than is generally, generally thought. And so science itself, real science, really can't be trusted in this world. They have to. He. He says. What does he say? They have this, this set orthodox series of facts that they have decided on. And you can do things within that realm, but you're not allowed to ask any questions. You can't go outside of that, that.

[A]

You can't ask questions. You mean you have to trust the science? No, apparently. All right, then we, then we see that he, he gives us finally, at the end of the chapter, the answer to the question, how did this world come to be? Our Ford used to write about scientific progress. They seem to have imagined that it could be allowed to go on indefinitely, regardless of everything else. Knowledge was the highest good, truth the supreme value. All the rest was secondary and subordinate. True ideas were beginning to change even then. R. Ford himself did a great deal to shift the emphasis from truth and beauty to comfort and happiness. Mass production demanded the shift. Universal happiness keeps the wheel steadily turning. Truth and beauty can't. Then, of course, they have a war, the Nine Years War. And he says, what's the point of truth or beauty or knowledge when the anthrax bombs are popping all around you? Now, what's so interesting to me is that C.S. lewis, about 10 years after this, is going to write, give a whole speech to answer the question when the world gets involved in World War II, and he gives a speech about why should we be studying literature when we're in the middle of the world when bombs are falling, what's the use of truth, beauty and goodness? And he gives an answer to that.

[C]

You know, speaking of bombs, one of the funniest and weirdest literary tips of the hat to Aldous Huxley comes at the end of the Evelyn Was comic novel Vile Bodies, where he's imagining this war slightly in the future where all of these horrible chemical weapons are being used. And one of them is called the Huxley Haldane bomb for the dissemination of leprosy.

[A]

That's fantastic. But does he mean the other Huxley?

[C]

I don't know if he. I, I think he might have had Julian in mind. I, I don't know that Evelyn Waugh bore any special animus to Aldous Huxley, but stuff. But yeah, the other name of the bomb I said was the Huxley Haldane Bomb, because, you know, JBS Haldane was.

[A]

The CS Lewis guy.

[C]

Yeah, yeah. I Mean, he was the. I think the model for the villain, actually, for Weston. Yeah.

[A]

When I say he's a CS Lewis guy, he is the model for the villain in Lewis's space trilogy. And he's the one who also wrote against the space trilogy that it was anti science.

[C]

Yeah.

[A]

And Lewis is like, you just proved my point. Thank you very much. Yes, exactly. All right, so 17. Oh, man, 70 was so good because John. John goes where you don't think he's gonna go. And he says, all right, fine. What about God? What about God? And so he's throwing in Othello quotes and Hamlet, and we pull up, you know.

[B]

Because John can't think of any words to describe God. He. It says he would have liked to say something about the night and a precipice and plunge into shadows and death, and he can't think of any words. But the controller can think of many words to explain why God is not a thing anymore.

[A]

Exactly. Well, he thinks he solved the problem.

[C]

Of God, like Mons. His sort of smug dismissal of, you know, an entire. The entire realm of religious experience. It's a little bit like if, you know the French scientist Laplace, who, in explaining certain. Certain theories of his to Napoleon, Napoleon asked him where God figured in his cosmological system. And Laplace supposedly replied, I have no need of that hypothesis. Emperor again.

[B]

You don't need the opiate of the people that is religion, if you have just an opiate for the people now in the form of soma.

[C]

I was highly intrigued by the books that were alluded to in some kind of unpredictable ones. I had forgotten that.

[A]

Cardinal Newman, Imitation of Christ.

[C]

Yep.

[A]

The Varieties of Religious Experience by William James. That's Henry James's brother.

[C]

Yeah. So William James was a famous. He was a scholar of both psychology and religion. He really did much to establish psychology as a academic discipline at the American university system. His most popular book there was Varieties of Religious Experience. And so, yeah, William. William James, a member of the brilliant James James family.

[A]

And okay, I recognize all the names except this. This guy. And I didn't look him up because I knew you would know and you would tell me.

[C]

De Biron, Pierre Maine de Biron was a French Catholic philosopher in the early 1800s who wrote and who wrote a speculative essay on the. I think it was called on the Decay of Thought.

[A]

Is that what he's reading from?

[C]

I don't know which book. I confess I have not read this man, only read an encyclopedia article about him. But, yeah, Cardinal Newman. And it's interesting that he has these books. But he says that these books to us are essentially pornographic. We might have them, but we're ashamed to have them. There's so much smut, really.

[A]

So I think this part I'll let you read here. We can start here to here. But what he's going to read here, I think is actually very important for interpreting the end. So he's reading from the philosopher.

[C]

But my own experience has given me the conviction that quite apart from any such terrors or imaginings, the religious sentiment tends to develop as we grow older, to develop. Because as the passions grow calm, as the fancy and sensibilities are less excited and less excitable, our reason becomes less troubled in its working, less obscured by the images, desires and distractions in which it used to be absorbed. Whereupon God emerges as from behind a cloud. Our soul feels, sees, turns toward the source of all light, turns naturally and inevitably. For now that all that gave to the world of sensations, its life and charms, has begun to leak away from us. Now that phenomenal existence is no more bolstered up by impressions from within or from without, we feel the need to lean on something that abides, something that will never play us false. A reality, an absolute and everlasting truth. Yes, we inevitably turn to God. For this religious sentiment is of its nature, so pure, so delightful to the soul that experiences it, that it makes up to us for all our other losses.

[A]

All right, so my takeaway from this is that we must put to death the passions so that our souls might turn to God, which I think is very important for interpreting the end.

[B]

And that there's something important about the asceticism of old age that happens naturally. And they've avoided old age.

[A]

Right.

[B]

That is no longer a risk.

[A]

Right. So they're an entirely a youthful belly society. You know, when I read this at 19, I didn't know what they were talking about. Now that I'm 54, I'm like, no, that is absolutely true. You do. You do grow up, up. And your passions kind of.

[C]

Isn't it kind of interesting that Mustafa Mont almost sounds like he's like mounting a pulpit and making some kind of case for religious claims, even though he's saying, no, no, we have to keep this stuff away from the kids because this is too dangerous. This will, you know, according to the principles we have founded our society on. This will corrupt them.

[A]

All right. So then he talks about how we. Sure, there's probably a God, but we don't need him. The savage says, but isn't it natural to Feel about God. He says, what's natural feeling? We're all, we all feel what we've been conditioned to feel. And that is that the guy we talked about in the first episode, Watson, with his kind of behavioral experiments, right? Believing, which is kind of like.

[B]

It's the same kind of paradox that takes place in all aspects of the brave new world. Like when Lenina is talking constantly about her real Morocco surrogate, it. So it's like real fake stuff.

[A]

Yes, no, exactly so. Exactly so. So people believe in God because they're conditioned to believe in God, man. There's a lot of people who believe that. All right, so he's still wrestling with it and he's going back to Shakespeare and King Lear and the wheel of Boethius. And don't you believe there's somebody divinely punishing the wicked and rewarding? And he says no.

[B]

And you know, John just keeps saying it's really natural to believe in God when you're alone at night. Which is exactly what happened to him on the night that he was not allowed to take part in the. The coming of age ceremony on the reservation. And he was sitting at night thinking about God.

[A]

Yes, yes, exactly. So as we get. Is very important. And as we get closer to the end of the chapter, he says, if you allowed yourselves to think of God, you wouldn't allow yourselves to be degraded by pleasant vices. You'd have a reason for bearing things, patient, for doing things with courage. I've seen it with the Indians. I'm sure you have. But then we aren't Indians. There isn't any need for a civilized man to bear anything that's seriously unpleasant. Then he goes on to say it would upset the whole social order. So if we go back to the idea that Brave New World is satirizing Freud's idea of the pleasure principle, that is, we build the civilization on the pleasure principle and then everybody's happy. Then what is being contrasted to that is this old school aestheticism that says actually the path to happiness and holiness comes not through giving yourself pleasure, but through pain and suffering.

[B]

And so anyway, Mustafa man keeps saying that, you know, really we've just created the best possible reality, right? The best of all possible worlds. To quote some philosopher once that appeared in Voltaire and. And the Savage. He brings up King Lear and talks about the, the. The bastard son of King Lear, who of course is a villain in the story. And he says, are you quite sure that Edmund in that pneumatic chair hasn't been just as heavily punished as the Edmund whose wooed and bleeding to death. The gods are just. Haven't we. Haven't they used his pleasant vices as an instrument to degrade him? Right, the best of all possible worlds.

[A]

Exactly. No, that's well noted about.

[B]

Or is it the worst?

[A]

Exactly. So I want to go back to the idea that pain and suffering is what brings you to holiness and ultimately happiness. We're going to get the most extreme form of that with, you know, him whipping himself in this kind of medieval, you know, desert father kind of aestheticism. But Christianity is built on the idea of self denial and dying to yourself and being crucified with Christ and you know, putting the passions to death. And so that. That's what he. That's what he's saying. Right.

[C]

We have abolished all that.

[A]

We've abolished that.

[C]

You have it underlined here. So John says, but God's the reason for everything noble and fine and heroic. If you had a God. My dear young friend said Mustafa Mod. Civilization has absolutely no need of nobility or heroism. These things are symptoms of political inefficiency.

[A]

So good. Right. If you go up a few lines. Industrial civilization is only possible when there's no self denial. Man, that is on the nose. And you know, you bring up Brights had revisited one of my. And I'm. I think I'm saying it exactly right, but it might be paraphrasing. But one of my favorite parts is at the end of Brideshead Revisited when WA says everybody wants Easter Sunday and nobody wants Good Friday.

[C]

I. That sounds like something he wrote. Is that in Bride? Maybe it is, yeah. It's been a while since I've read.

[A]

It, but this is the idea. The modern world wants the feast. It doesn't want the fast. It wants the resurrection and the joy and the life. It doesn't want the death and the tomb and the grave. Faith. This is just so good. So what John is pushing back against is the idea that the path to happiness is through pleasure. And then he explicitly says soma is Christianity without tears. And that's it. That's without penitence. Without penitence, exactly. So he says, but the tears are necessary. And then he quotes Othello. If after every tempest came such calms may the winds blow till they have wakened death.

[B]

And then he references the story that we first started seeing.

[A]

Yes, okay, so pull that together for us.

[B]

Yeah, he's talking. He references again the same folktale about the. He says the young men who wanted to marry her had to do a morning's hoeing. In her garden. It seemed easy, but there was some kind of, you know, magic trial going on. In this case, he. He does explain the mosquitoes. She would send these mosquitoes out to plague them every morning, and they would give up because it wasn't worth the pay. Vain of pursuing her hand. And the one who was willing to last through the pain and annoyance of the flies was the one who won the maiden's hand.

[A]

Is that not.

[C]

Is that not analogous to Ferdinand's courtship of Miranda?

[B]

Oh, yes, the one who is willing to bear the wood.

[C]

Yeah.

[A]

Oh, very good, Very good. And it's also what's going to allegorically play out in the last chapter because.

[B]

It comes up again. It comes up again because the helicopters that come to plague him are. Are described as the. So the question is, did he last through. Through the trial? Did he make it through the trial? But I'm proceed myself.

[A]

All right, I'm gonna back up because I think, Ellen, I might. Where we don't finish our sentences because.

[B]

Calm down, back and forth.

[A]

So I'm gonna. I'm gonna explicitly say what we just said here, which is that in chapter 18, he's trying to dig in his garden, but he can't because those helicopters keep coming. And earlier the helicopters were described as insects, and then they're explicitly described as loc. No, they. Yeah, so what you said was, the question is, does he survive the three day trial or not?

[C]

By the way, him trying to cultivate his garden. By the way, Ella, you brought up Voltaire and Candide. You remember, the last sentence of Candide is ifo coutiver, not jardin. Each of us must cultivate his garden. His garden. But here, I mean, the idea of cultivating your garden is. It's outdated. Each being being left alone.

[A]

Yeah, exactly. Savage is fighting back. And he says, what you need is something with tears for a change. Nothing costs here. And he says, of course not. And he says, but we know. This was so interesting to me. We know that human beings actually have to have a little rough something. We have to, you know, to use Jason Baxter's expression in his book why Literature Still Matters, it's not good if everything things smooth right. Human beings need a little roughness. So he said, I recognize that. That's why we do the violent passion surrogate, so that you can have. So you can have your adrenal stimulated.

[B]

From time to time again with the real Morocco surrogate. Everyone has blood surrogate. So are they even human? They don't have real blood. They don't have Real passions. They have passion surrogates. It's terrible.

[A]

And it's very, very important, this last little line between from him, because I think this will help us to understand some of the things John says and does in 18. He says the violent passion surrogate is all the tonic effects of murdering Desdemona and being murdered by Othello without any of the inconveniences. And he says, but I like the inconveniences.

[B]

And. And, yeah, perhaps even just as important. Mustafa starts talking about all the inconveniences, such as dying and disease and pain. And John says, I claim them all, blame them all. He says, I want to be mortal.

[C]

We have to read that passage. I think this is maybe the most famous passage in the book. So John says, but I like the inconveniences. We don't, said the controller. We prefer to do things comfortably. But I don't want comfort. I want God. I want poetry. I want real danger. I want freedom. I want goodness. I want sin. In fact, said Mustafa Monde, you're claiming the right to be unhappy. All right, then, said the savage defiantly, I'm claiming the right to be unhappy.

[A]

Read the last paragraph. Go ahead.

[C]

Not to mention the right to grow old and ugly and impotent, the right to have syphilis and cancer, the right to have too little to eat, the right to be lousy, the right to live in constant apprehension of what might happen tomorrow, the right to catch typhoid, the right to be tortured by unspeakable pains of every kind. There was a long silence. I claimed them all, said the Savage at last. Mustafa Mond shrugged his shoulders. You're welcome, he said. There's a little bit there, actually. It reminds me of Huck Finn. You remember? I think with him it might be a monologue, but he's thinking about. He feels instinctively, though he can't quite put words as to why, that helping Jim escape is the right thing to do, even though it's. Society says that, no, this is. This is as theft of property. And he says, and you know, theft of property, of course, you know, thievery is a mortal sin, and if I steal, I'll go to hell. But he says, fine, then I'll go to hell. This kind of. I think that's a. There's something. Huck. Finish sentiment here.

[A]

I agree with you. And so this is going to be very important for interpreting the ending of the book. He's saying.

[B]

I think. I think the final chapter is John claiming them all.

[A]

That's right. He's claiming them. All of these things, things I, I want to suffer because that's how I know I'm truly alone.

[B]

He wants to be real.

[A]

Wants to be real and real people.

[B]

He doesn't need violent passion surrogate.

[A]

Right. All right, chapter 18 starts with him making himself vomit because he says, I ate civilization. It poisoned and defiled me.

[B]

Which is actually right for the purging of evil spirits.

[A]

Okay, tell me this.

[B]

This there, you're getting rid of the, the imbalanced humor or whatever, has whatever sickness is inside of you. So that's. But he's just had this encounter with civilization, the real world that's maybe unreal. So now he's getting rid of it.

[A]

Okay, so let me, let me just add to what you just said. If anybody's confused then about this idea of parody, this upside down world, like that's, that's what she's talking about, right? He, he's vomiting up what they say is real, but what he knows is not real. It's not life, it's poison.

[B]

Because, I mean, Mustafa Mon said, you know, this is the highest good. And he says here at the beginning of chapter eight, it poisoned me.

[A]

Me. That's right.

[B]

And so I needed to, I need to vomit up all this poison so that I'm not.

[A]

Which means that this brave new world is death. And he is trying to escape the death of this nightmare world. Okay, and then what do you want.

[B]

To say to the point about I ate my own wickedness? I think it's, it's meant to be the same statement as I ate civilization. This civilization is human wickedness.

[A]

It's the belly. Right. It's the passion.

[B]

Yeah.

[A]

And he's saying you have to put the passions to death.

[B]

Yeah.

[A]

Then we have this very interesting moment when the three guys are saying goodbye and they're sad and it's good to.

[B]

Be sad because they realize they love each other. Yeah.

[A]

So that's a, that's a, that's a real moment of sadness, of parting. Shows them that they had something real. And then John says, well, he says, I can't go with you because he's going to make me part of the experiment. But I'm damned if I'm going to be. Be experimented with.

[B]

He's going to be real.

[A]

He's gonna be real. All right, so let's talk about where he goes. So he goes to an abandoned air lighthouse. I think this is important because this is a lighthouse that has lost its function. It's not on a sea.

[B]

All right, what's that it's an island created between these two highways, or high lines, as he calls them. It's for some inexplicable reason, they weren't able to put the road there. I forget, what did he say reason.

[A]

Was they kept running into the mountain or something.

[B]

Yeah. So now they've. They've created this small island in between the two high lines.

[C]

It says the savage had chosen as his hermitage the old lighthouse which stood on the crest of the hill between Puttenham and Elsted. Putnam, by the way, is a very, very small coastal town. And the only notable landmark in it is an 11th century Norman church of St. John the Baptist. Another wild man in the desert.

[A]

Ooh, Huxley. Yes. Another wild man in the desert. Okay, so go. This is a lighthouse on a hill. Get ready for all the symbolism. A lighthouse on a hill.

[B]

Can I segue briefly about islands? Because I think a lot of islands come up in, in this book. And obviously, I mean, he wrote a book called island, so this, this very much captured his imagination. It's important in Othello. It's a point important in the Tempest. Always significantly, it's this piece of land that literally rises out of. Of surrounding ocean. Right. It's kind of isolated. So by itself, it's always meant to be this little bit of cosmos in. In the middle of chaos, because you have these waring incomplete elements. Right. That are moving and shifting and unstable, and then you have this one bit of land that's rising up out of it. And I think Brave New world is they've tried to create this island. They've tried to create their own world, their own cosmos. So I think, I think the imagery of that keeps coming up, up, and.

[A]

Then in the Tempest, because I did not reread the Tempest like you did. I'm trying to remember. They shipwrecked on the island and the end is that they get off the island.

[B]

Right, yeah. With identities reclaimed. As. As Gonzalo says, they all needed to lose themselves in the Tempest in order to find themselves on the island.

[A]

That beautiful upside down language they had to lose themselves to.

[B]

You have to die to live, Ferdinand. And Ferdinand had to die in the eyes of his father so that his father could find him again. And so on and so forth.

[A]

Exactly, exactly. All right, so you guys starting to put it together? Are you yelling into your iPhone? I was going to say your stereo, where it's not 1992. Angelina. Okay, so he wants to purify himself so he's not sleeping. Okay. This is, this is straight up desert Father behavior. Right. He's going out, he's in the desert, he's purifying himself, he's practicing asceticism, he's praying, he's working in the land, he's.

[C]

Pummeling his body and making it his slave, as St. Paul says.

[A]

Exactly so. And he stands from time to time as though he were on the cross. And Ella, where have we seen this image in this book before?

[B]

Oh, he also. He did this on. Also the day after or right after this, this rite, this situation that he talked about where he wanted to be part of this initiation rite on the reservation. He was not allowed to be, so he did it himself.

[A]

Okay, just to remind you guys, go finish your thought. Finish your thought.

[B]

No, that. That was it.

[A]

We were worried that this was going to happen on the podcast. Ella and I are. With such one mind, we almost never finish our sentences because the other one just knows what we're going to say. And we're working so hard to not do that on the podcast. I need to take a breath.

[B]

It's partly my fault.

[A]

No, no, I'm. It's me. I'm doing it. But anyway, let's remind our listeners that earlier John wanted to go with the other Indian boys for that rite of passage where you suffer for a few days and you have a divine vision. Right, right. Not allowed to because he's not one of them. So he said. So I went and did it myself and I stood on the edge and I bled and I put my arms out like I was Christ on the cross.

[B]

Yeah. And I think. Yeah, well, I'll bring this up later.

[A]

Okay. All right.

[B]

So.

[A]

So that's what he's doing. And this is old school aestheticism. Death through the passions. This should not be misunderstood either. When you read it with the medievals are here as an attempt to earn your salvation. It is an attempt to, as you said, let St. Paul put. Put the body to death, put the flesh to death with the passions to death. Because he's just said in the previous chapter, how do you find God when you've put your passions to death? That is when you find your soul turning in the direction of God. God, that word direction is going to also be important.

[B]

And he notices these towers that are pointing up to heaven, and he sees them as pointing up to the heavens. And he says with a gesture whose significance nobody in England but the savage now understood no one else looks up anymore.

[A]

That's right. That's right. No, they don't look up because Lenina did not like that. Right. The stars declared the handiwork of God, but the savage can see it. He can see what nobody else can see.

[C]

See.

[A]

So he's alone in nature. The two things that this world will not allow. He's doing it. He's full on rebellion. The whole scene about he wanted wheat, not starch and cotton waste flour substitute. And then he gets convinced to take some fake meat. Man, this is. Well, it's on the nose for now with certain, like, you know, this is no shade on anybody who's a vegan. Go eat your vegetables. Good for you. But like the whole idea of like, like fake vegan meat, that's like. No, just eat your vegetable.

[B]

Isn't that Eustace in the Voyage of the Dawn Tread.

[A]

It is useless with the vitamin water. That's exactly what. And so he's not imagining the future. This is what war rations look like.

[C]

Yeah. Everything's synthetic and fake. The world of margarine.

[A]

That's it. You know where I was going? C.S.

[B]

Lewis, margarine and Sam.

[A]

Yep. He said he was afraid that the war rations because they had to eat margarine and not butter. That there was going to be a generation of kids who didn't know what butter tasted like and actually preferred the taste of margarine. And he was not wrong. A lot of kids today prefer the taste of franken food. All right, so he's going to make a bow and arrow because he's going to live off the land. And I couldn't help but notice a lot of sacred trees here. Ash trees, hazel trees. Does my name. I can tell it from your face. There's some things you want to say. These are sacred trees. Right?

[B]

Yeah. I actually, I devoted, I think one of. One of the sessions in my recent mini class to the hazel tree specifically, or at least a part of it, to the hazel tree. Sacred to the Celtics. Tradition especially. They. They represent wisdom.

[A]

There's.

[B]

There's a long series of stories that mention the hazel tree as being this container of wisdom. But they're also sacred to the druids. They were the. The tragedy. The traveling magicians and holders of knowledge. And hazel also is important in Harry Potter. Right. Because it's the. The tree out of which they make a lot of their wands.

[A]

Oh, yeah. I guess so. Right.

[B]

The same reason.

[A]

So am I right then, in interpreting the.

[B]

The sacred knowledge. Yes.

[A]

Right. So the naming of these trees is all to show us what he's doing out here is a sacred ritual. Everything he's doing, the beating of himself, the cutting of the trees. He's involved in a sacred ritual.

[B]

Indeed.

[A]

All right. And he starts singing. And then he's like, no, I'm not supposed to be happy. I was supposed to remember my mother. No, no. And he starts hitting himself violently with a whip of knotted cords. Three days later. Oh, man. He had three days in the wilderness. And three days later, like turkey buzzards, here comes the reporters.

[C]

And this all becomes just another spectacle. Just another, you know, another source for cheap entertainment.

[A]

Yep.

[C]

But I. I have to read this bit with the reporter. Okay, this is too funny. It's horrible.

[A]

But let me see this first before you do, because he says, startled as though by the bite of a snake, the savage sprang to his feet. So this is. This is. He tried to make a Garden of Eden in this nightmare world. But here comes the serpent. Go ahead.

[C]

So a reporter shows up. I beg your pardon? Said the reporter with genuine compunction. I had no intention. He touched his hat, the aluminum stovepipe hat. And he's literally wearing a tin hat. Basically, the aluminum stove pipe hat in which he carried his wireless receiver and transmitter. Excuse my not taking it off, he said. It's a bit heavy. Well, as I was saying, I am the representative of the hourly. What do you want? Asked the savage, scowling. The reporter returned his most ingratiating smile. Well, of course, our readers would be profoundly interested. He put his head on one side. His smile became almost coquettish. Just a few words from you, Mr. Savage. And rapidly.

[A]

That's the same thing Lenina did when she cocked her head and hat to the side. Remember?

[C]

Yeah, yeah. There's something kind of repulsively coy about all of it. And rapidly, with a series of ritual gestures, he uncoiled two wires connected to the portable battery buckled around his waist, plugged them simultaneously into the sides of his aluminum hat. Touched a spring on the crown and antennae shot up into the air. Touched another spring on the peak of the brim, and like a jack in the box, out jumped a microphone. And hung there, quivering six inches in front of his nose. Pulled down a pair of receivers over his ears, pressed a switch on the left side of the hat, and from within came a faint, waspy buzzing. Turned a knob on the right, and the buzzing was interrupted by a stethoscopic wheeze and cackle, by hiccups and sudden squeaks. Hello? He said to the microphone. Hello? Hello? A bell suddenly rang inside his hat. Is that you?

[A]

Ed.

[B]

Sl.

[C]

Primo Melon speaking. Yes, I've got hold of him. Mr. Savage will now take the microphone and say a few words, won't you, Mr. Savage? He looked up at the Savage with another of those winning smiles of his. Just tell our readers why you came here. What made you leave London. Hold on, Edsel. So very suddenly. And of course, that whip. The Savage started. How did they know about the whip? We're all crazy to know about the whip. Whip and then something about civilization. You know, that sort of stuff. What I think of the civilized girl. Just a few. A very few. The Savage obeyed with a disconcerting literalness. Five words he uttered and no more. Five words, the same as those he had said to Bernard about the arch community songster of Canterbury, Honey sans esso CE na. And seizing the reporter by the shoulder, he spun him round. The young man revealed himself invitingly well covered, aimed, and with all the force and accuracy of a champion foot and mouth baller delivered a most prodigious kick.

[A]

Wait, then you have to read the headline, because I can't stop laughing about that.

[C]

Eight minutes later, a new edition of the hourly radio was on sale in the streets of London. Hourly radio reporter has Coccyx kicked by mystery Savage. Ran the headlines on the front page. Sensation in Surrey.

[A]

Huxley was born in Surrey. But I. I think that he had his coccyns kicked. I lack. Undeterred by that cautionary bruise on their colleagues. Coccyx for the reporters. That is so funny to me. So I looked up what he says in the language. Do you know the full thing of what he says? Because I only.

[C]

I looked it up and I. I did not find it.

[B]

It's also from the folktale that he's been referencing the maiden sister.

[A]

He's saying little sister. So that's a reference to the tale you.

[B]

Yeah, it's. It's. I think it's a phrase that comes from the story. Okay.

[A]

And then the 40 and Science Monitor reporter comes, and this is clearly the Christian Science Monitor. And he says pains of delusion. Because Christian Scientists believe pain's a delusion. So anyway, we go like that.

[B]

Like, you want me to show you how pain's an illusion.

[A]

Yes. Correct. But then he also explicitly says this tale again. He likened himself in his imagination to one of the. The suitors of the maiden of Matsaki, unmoved and persistent among the winged vermin.

[B]

Right. So all these reporters and helicopters and people pursuing him are the distraction and the trial that he needs to. To move through and to become victorious over in his pursuit of this maiden's hand. Over this.

[A]

Right. So then he finds himself having lustful thoughts about Lenina. And then he throws himself into the juniper bush. And I am pretty sure that is the story of a desert f. Father.

[C]

Yeah, I thought it sounded like St. Anthony of the desert. Maybe it might be. It might be. Or.

[A]

Yeah, I didn't look it up, but this is definitely.

[C]

No, I. I looked it up. I could not find anything on. Yeah, anything definite. Anyway.

[A]

All right, so remember when in the last chapter Mustafa Mon says you can have a violent passion surrogate and without all the inconvenience, it's take one pill and you'll be both killing Desdemona and murdered by Othello. And that is what we see happening in this scene. So he starts yelling, strumpage, trumpet. That's Othello, right? He's calling Lenina Desdemona, but he's not killing Lenina, he's hitting himself.

[B]

Oh, yes.

[A]

So he is killing Desdemona and also being murdered by Othello all at the same time.

[B]

Again, I ate civilization. I ate my own wickedness.

[A]

That's right. So the use trumpet, you strumpet. That. That's him. He's the strumpet. He's trying to be purified from that. All right, Then we find out about the guy who's. That was so hilarious to me. 72 whole hours of discomfort. But he got the film. And so John finds this guy has.

[B]

Mortified the flesh in order to get this film.

[A]

Exactly so. Exactly so. And our poor guy is digging in the garden digging too, in his own mind, laboriously turning up the substance of what is of his thought down death. And he drove in his spade once and again and yet again. And all our yesterdays have lighted fools the way to dusty death. All right, so he's going back and forth here between talking about King Lear and Hamlet. Right. But he typically says, no more than sleep, sleep per chance to dream. That's what. That's because that's what Hamlet says death is. It's falling asleep so you can dream.

[B]

And that's what I think.

[A]

Oh, gosh.

[B]

Who says this line in the Tempest? Someone says this line in the Tempest that we are the stuff that dreams are made of and our whole life is rounded with buttersclus sleep.

[C]

That's Prospero, I think.

[B]

Yeah, it is Prospero. Okay.

[A]

Yeah, that's at the end, right? That's when he addresses the audience near the end.

[B]

Yeah, yeah.

[A]

I'm trying to decide if I should get sidetracked on that. That moment is when Shakespeare is telling the audience to separate from the story. Right. And so the characters have played their play, but we. We are having our own play in our life, and we, too, are in a dream.

[B]

Okay, now, most famous film of the day is the Sperm Whales Love Life.

[A]

Hilarious. That was hilarious. Flashbacks, like middle school documentaries. Now the machines are coming. They're described as locusts. Okay, so we got. Here comes the trial, right? They're all coming at him. And again, he says, as in a nightmare, the dozens became scores, the scores, hundred. So again, he's in a nightmare. What do you do if you're in a nightmare?

[B]

I think it's important also that he says that they had all come between him and the sun, and the world was darkened because all the helicopters were flying in between him and the sun. They created this eclipse kind of.

[A]

Yes, yes. Okay, now we're right on the end. And I didn't know how much I wanted to get into this because it's probably gonna be confusing for some people, but I'm gonna throw it out there for you guys who've been taking all my classes. And you. You kind of up to speed on the parody. But the reporters are literally going up a hill to find him. So they're. But in every kind of way, they're descending, right? They're descending on him. They're pushing him down. This is an indication of the upside downness, right, because what does upside down mean? It means everything's mirror, reverse, right? So you go left, you go right, you go up to go down. So they're literally going up, but they're going down down, because they're in an upside down world. So, okay, so this is the setup for the last two pages. Here we are at the end. Now the people have just descended on him, and they're all chanting, we want the whip. We want that whip. And having a sense of rhythmical atonement. Jump in here at any time as I bring us through here. And then he's horrified by everything that's happening. And then Lanina shows up, and she's crying. So she's experiencing some pain and suffering.

[B]

Yes, Some violent passion.

[A]

Violent passion, right. We want the whip. We want the whip. What he shows them, right? He sees that. She starts yelling, strump it. The savage had rushed at her like a madman. Bitchu. Like a madman. He was slashing at her with his whip of small force. So there's Desdemona again, all right? She turns to run away. Henry has already abandoned her. And then, because we already saw that the violent passion surrogate allows you to kill Desdemona and Be murdered by Othello. All the same time, he's doing the real passion version of that. So he then turns it onto himself. Oh, the flesh. The savage ground his teeth. This time it was on his shoulders at the whip descended. Kill it. Kill it. Right, so. So again, the flesh. The flesh. This is St. Paul. Kill the flesh. He's got to be free of the passions so that he can ascend to God. And then what happens?

[B]

They don't know what to do with this. The only thing that they can recognize is something that kind of reminds them of their solidarity service.

[A]

So they start chanting, so he's having a real atonement. And they. They immediately start going into the parody of tone with orgy Porgy. Now, he doesn't show us the scene, but we are to understand that they. They participated in a solidarity ritual, but not that John participated in it. There was some confusion of that. I'm gonna start reading.

[B]

I. I also think there is nothing to tell us that Jon himself caved and took Soma.

[A]

Right.

[B]

I think. I think it's important that he mentions he was stupefied by Soma, but that's because the whole world was. Was like Brave New World is in this dream.

[A]

That's right. That's right.

[B]

It's not necessarily.

[C]

I took this to. I think he feels himself that he failed to live up to his own ideals here and he. And blaming himself, that explains. I think that explains his death more reasonably than anything else.

[A]

Okay, so they.

[C]

They have that maybe if you just like, read the. The last page or so.

[A]

All right. It was after midnight. Go to the end.

[C]

It was after midnight when the last of the helicopters took its flight. Stupefied by Soma and exhausted by a long drawn frenzy of sensuality, the Savage lay sleeping in the heather. The sun was already high when he awoke. He lay for a moment, blinking in owlish incomprehension at the light, then suddenly remembered everything. Oh, my God. My God. He covered his eyes with his hand. That evening, the swarm of helicopters that came buzzing across the Hog's back was a dark cloud 10 kilometers long. The description of last night's orgy of atonement had been in all the papers. Savage called the first arrivals as they alighted from their Messines. Mr. Savage? There was no answer. The door of the lighthouse was ajar. They pushed it open and walked into a shuttered twilight. Through an archway on the further side of the room, they could see the bottom of the staircase that led up to the higher floor. Just under the crown of the Arch dangled a pair of feet. Mr. Savage. Slowly, very slowly, like two unhurried compass needles, the feet turned towards the right, north, northeast, east, southeast, south, south, southwest. Then paused and after a few seconds, turned as unhurriedly back toward the left, south, southwest, south, southeast, east.

[B]

The end bins on the east.

[A]

All right, so I am going to say my understanding of this last page, and then I'm going to toss it to Ella, who's got some things to add. Did not see, and we'll give those to her first. Before I break it down, I want to say shout out to the Patreon. You guys were amazing. You guys have been tracking and you've taken all my classes and webinars and you know how to think about this stuff. And I was very excited to see so many of you read the ending the right way. And when I looked at the student discord, man, the students, they rock. They kill, okay?

[B]

They.

[A]

They. They nailed it. They totally knew what was going on. I mean, shout out to Olivia Wetzel, who was quoting Harold Goddard the whole way through on the Tempest. Like, she totally was tracking that Huxley was doing the same thing in the Tempest. And remember, the Tempest ends with them getting off the island. All right, so here's my reading of this. We are in an upside down world world that has been shown that it. That it's a dream, right? Because Linda is there the whole time. It's a dream. It's not the real world. It's a dream world. And for John, it's not a happy dream. It's a nightmare. But it's all still a dream world. So how does it end? He's sleeping in the heather, and the sun is high when he awakes. So the end starts with, he wakes up. He has woken up from the dream, and he is in the sun. He lay for a moment, blinking in owlish incomprehension at the light. So he is in the light at the end of this book. We cannot miss that. Then suddenly remembers everything. I'll let Ella explain that in a minute. Oh, my God. My God. He covered his eyes with his hands. Okay, it does not say that he killed himself. Okay? I think this is important for understanding the ending. So that night they all come. So check this out, right? He's in the light. Light. Everybody in this world is in the dark. That ends with them being in the dark. He's in the light, but they're in the dark. So they come in. The door's open. So he is in a lighthouse. They're Walking into the shuttered twilight. And he's hanging. They only see his feet. He's hanging from an arch. Okay. That means he's in the bottom of the U. He's in the bottom of the U. You. But it only looks like. It only looks like he's up there because they're upside down. If you flip it all around, they're at the bottom and he's at the top. So he's hanging from the top at the bottom of the U. It's upside down. U. Oh, so good. They see his feet, and his feet are moving around like a compass needle. And of course, where the dot, dot, dot is. He's pointing to true north.

[B]

Oh, he's pointing east.

[A]

Pointing east. Pointing east. But I mean, it's going around because he's. He's. He's going to point to. To north, the way up. So. So the lighthouse with him hanging from it actually does become a lighthouse to. To show how to not crash on the waves and how to not be shipwrecked on the island, to use the tempest metaphor. And so this is very Alice in Wonderland. He. He wakes up out of this. This world, but they're still trapped in the nightmare, but he is now in the light. Okay, so let me just say this last thing before I hand it off to Ella, because I get excited about this stuff, and then I. I forget that if you don't know all this other stuff, maybe it's a little confusing. In an upside down world, everything is reversed. So if death is asleep, if you flip that around, then waking up is dying. I want to toss it to you. Did that make sense to you, or do I need to explain that better?

[C]

Well, I think he killed himself. I think that much is obvious. But, yes, he does.

[A]

But I'm talking about on the symbolic level. What does his death mean?

[C]

Yeah, does it mean that, like, you know, he's a futile sacrifice and entirely purposeless? No, I don't think it means that at all. I think that. I mean, the gesture where he. No, the gesture where he wakes up and says, my God. My God. And buries his face in his hands. It seems that he blames himself for letting down his own expectations, his own moral expectations of himself and his death at the end. I think his death at the end is, I think, the one real tragedy in this book because he's the only character who has any kind of tragic standing, any kind of possibly heroic standing.

[A]

Right, we agree. We agree here. The emphasis I'm trying to make is not on plot points like He. He is dead. In the brave new world, in. In the world of this London nightmare, he is dead. What I'm trying to say is in an upside down world, dying is waking up. What I mean is he is no longer in, like, symbolically, spiritually trapped in the nightmare world. They're trapped in the nightmare world. He is free. Like what you were saying about Antigone, she dies, but they didn't destroy her. She's still.

[C]

Yeah.

[B]

In the same way that as believers, our death on this earth is beginning of our spiritual, eternal life.

[A]

Right. It's that idea. So I'm not. I'm just trying to put a symbolic interpretation to know how to. How is it that this is not despairing? Well, they don't win because they're still alive, because being alive in a nightmare world is not a victory.

[C]

I would agree with that.

[B]

Right.

[A]

So he. He is no longer at the end of this book, trapped in the nightmare. He is still himself. He still has the integrity. He has escaped the nightmare world. That's. That's why it's not a despairing ending. And so if you track the imagery, he ends with an ascent. He's at the top of the lighthouse, and his feet are like a compass pointing the way out of the nightmare, showing them the direction. So if you flip back to what Mustafa Mond had said, he said the passions keep you from seeing God. Right. Well, he has put to death his passions and now he can see God. But those people are still spiritually dead because they're still stuck in their path. That's the point. I was trying. I was trying to do a symbolic reading at the end to tell you what's happening symbolically.

[C]

Yeah, yeah. I mean, I think that the important thing about John, I mean, once again, that. I mean, he's the only character who has anything really, other than his passions to act on, which gives him a kind of humanity which nobody else in this world has. And I suppose if he were to go on existing in this world, he would always be.

[A]

Be.

[C]

He would always be, at most, a sideshow attraction in it.

[A]

Right. So the reason why I'm emphasizing the parody aspects of the suicide. Okay. And so that to die is to live, because that's the upside down language of Christianity, is because I think some people read the ending in this very horizontal, literal way, as if Huxley is saying, look around how bad the world is. We have no hope, Just kill yourself. And he doesn't mean literally kill yourself yourself, but in a symbolic sense, we're all supposed to die to Live. Did I. Did I say it better that time?

[C]

I think so.

[A]

Right. So all of us are on the path to die to ourselves.

[C]

Yeah, I mean, there's a kind of. What am I trying to say? I guess there's a kind of nod to the value of mortification in the last chapters.

[A]

Absolutely right. So. So you should see his death, because read it symbolically. Not that Huxley is saying we should all go kill ourselves, but that spiritually, we all are trying to put our passions to death. We are all trying to die to ourselves. We're all trying to be crucified with Christ. And that is what allows you to ascend.

[B]

This is the movie Inception, where when they're in the dream that they've created, to die in that dream is to wake up.

[A]

Yes, yes. That's how you wake up out of the dream is you die in the dream. Exactly, exactly. All right, now, having said all of.

[C]

That, that being said, you're not saying that John the Savage is himself like a kind of Christ figure or something? Okay, yeah, I wouldn't. I wouldn't go there either.

[A]

No. Yeah, I think that. I think that's a misreading. But I do think his feet being a compass, if the people in the world can't use his compass as a way out, then the reader can. That we should. So the whole point of parody is to make. To raise the question of what is the dream and what is real. So in the material world, we say what is real is the things we can touch and taste and see. Right. But spiritually, those are not the real things. Those are not the eternal things. Those are temporal things that will pass away. And the eternal things are the things that are invisible. So one of the things. I mean, you see this in Lewis Carroll all over the place, and I think this is a big part of Brave New World is it is raising the question to the reader of. Of the things that you think are real, are those actually the real things? Or is that just a dream and the things that you think of are just imaginary in a dream? Are those in fact the real things? And that is one of the essential themes in the Tempest, too. So, no, I don't. I don't think he's. I don't think he's a Christ figure. I've never. I've never.

[C]

Thank you.

[A]

I've never thought that any time I've ever read. I would be willing to say he's a John the Baptist type figure.

[C]

There. I would entirely.

[A]

Yeah. So with the feet and as the compass, like he's pointing away. No, no, I'm not at all suggesting he's a Christ figure. I've never. I've never read it that way. But I do think at the end, we are left wondering what is real and what is a dream? And can we. Can we tell the difference? Because the people in the Brave New World can't tell the difference. They think they're living a real life, but they're living a dream world induced by Soma, a nightmare world. Does that track with you?

[C]

Yeah. That they're still prisoners in this world in which they're. They themselves are kind of complicit in their. In their enslavement.

[A]

Right. Yeah. Okay. Now, having hammered all that out, I'm gonna throw it to Ella, who has a very different take. Yeah. I do want you to say it because I think it's really interesting and Mr. Banks can disagree, but. And. And nobody has to agree with any of our interpretations. All we're trying to do is show you that there's a different way to read this. Then it's a depressing ending and he kills himself. That. That if you understand parody. And even though the three of us each read the ending slightly different, we all agreed it was not a depressing ending. But Ella has a very interesting theory, and I'm gonna let you say it. And Mr. Banks can disagree if he wants, but I think this is a fascinating thought.

[B]

While reading, especially this time, it occurred to me that it might be interesting to propose that the story of Brave New World proper kind of begins on that night that John is not able to participate in the initiation ceremony. It is at night, and he's sitting in the dark on the end, on the edge of the chasm. Right. And his blood is dripping down. And he learns about time and death and God. And at that moment, he decides that he is going to take it upon himself to have this religious experience that the other boys are having. And he does. She doesn't need their permission to. To take part in this. Right. I propose that the entirety of Brave New World is that trial. Him going through this initiation meeting with all of these things. The mortification of the flesh, the vision that he has. It's also important then in this fight. I think it is the final chapter that we are told that Jon's spirit animal that he was not willing to reveal to Bernard and Lenina earlier is the eagle. Eagle that they encountered on their way up to Malpace. And. And that symbolically, this is all the night. His journey all through Brave New World is The night of this trial. It's the dream, right? And so when this final frenzy is over and he wakes up with the sun on his face and says, oh, God. And he remembers dash everything, and that everything might. Might even be the other world that he is. He's always known about. Right. This great mystery that. That might be the sunrise on the morning after the trial. And this is significant because it ties into. He keeps making him reference himself to the fact that he's in this trial for the maiden's hand. Right. And so I think that this sunrise, this awaking and immediately panning to the fact that. That he is dead. He has died, is the mourning that has happened after this trial. What he might have succeeded.

[A]

I think that's a fascinating thought. And when you told it to me, at first I couldn't see it, but then I went through the chapters looking for it and saw that there was a lot more in the text to suggest that that's something that could be going on. But certainly we all agree that it's a. It's a slightly ambiguous ending, but we all agree that it's not a despairing ending.

[C]

Yeah, it's. I don't think that.

[A]

I mean, I like the idea that he has. He has passed the trial, because I think. I think that fits in with your Antigone idea that he passed the trial. He is still himself. He's went through the long night, dark night of the soul, but he is. He hasn't lost that essential core.

[C]

Yeah. I don't think he's surrendered to the values of the world in any kind of permanent fashion. And I mean, as. As awful as his death is, I don't think it's. I think that. I think that him becoming simply another. Another bee in this particular hive would be a far worse fate in many respects.

[B]

I think in some way, at least, it's clear that his death was the breaking of the bottle. He's no longer in the experiment.

[A]

Yeah, no, that's very true.

[C]

That's actually a very good way of putting it.

[A]

That is a very good way of putting he's not in the experiment. And, you know, it is very difficult for me to talk about this stuff on the podcast because. Because for all I know, this is the first time anybody's even listened to us. And it's so hard for me to think, okay, I've got to go back and explain, like, you know, six years of foundation I've laid, and now I have lost my train of thought. K. Hang on.

[B]

Unless you think that the experiment is a good thing. The ending is positive. But if you think that, oh, yes, he should have just become part of this experiment and lived out the rest of his days being this experiment, because really, there was no other option for him in the brave new world then. Then, yes, it's depressing.

[A]

So the point I was trying to make, and I. And I appreciate you, Mr. Banks, pushing back on that, because I don't want somebody to think when I said Huxley doesn't describe the suicide, that that means I don't think he's dead. But that's not the point I was trying to make, but rather that Huxley's not trying to draw our attention to a suicide as much as he is drawing our attention to the other things in the scene. That. That, that. That he is free. He is in the light, and they are still in the dark. But I like what you said about Inception, and that's a good final thought to what you said about he has broken out of the bottle.

[B]

Yes.

[A]

Which. Which does fit with the idea that the death is actually a birth.

[B]

Yes.

[A]

Yeah. All right. This was a lot of fun. This was a lot of fun.

[C]

It was a book that I'm glad to have reread because I. Again, it's kind of humbling to pick up this book thinking that, yeah, I remember most of this, and I think I had forgotten more, in fact, than I had remembered.

[A]

Oh, I had definitely forgotten a lot of.

[C]

I mean, I remember, again, I was practically a child when I read this the last time. I was 20 or something like that. I don't know. But, yeah, it's a book that I feel that I enjoyed, and it's a fuller richness than I'd known before, for.

[A]

For sure. For sure. It's definitely different for me. And even though you only read it, what, two years ago? Yeah, you said it really was different for you as well.

[B]

Yeah.

[A]

You know, one of the things I really appreciate about you, Mr. Banks, as a reader, and I tell you this all the time, but I'll say it on the air, too. We do not approach books from the same way. I am very interested in form and genre and shape and, you know, all the Northrop Fry stuff. And I get all interested in that. That I'm very interested in reading things symbolically. That is not where you come from. And yet we always land on the same place.

[C]

You know, you're More often than not, I think. Yeah.

[A]

Right. So, like, even though you might not be 100% comfortable with some of the ways I phrased how I'M interpreting the ending like we don't essentially disagree. You also, you know, you also read the ending as not despairing that this is not, you know, as Lou Marco said, a world without.

[C]

Yeah, I guess I think it's worth underlining the distinction between a book with a tragic ending and a book with a hopeless ending. And when we started using those terms as synonyms or falling into the habit of thinking them as essentially synonyms, I think that's a dangerous way to go because we end up foisting this shroud of pessimism onto all sorts of tales and stories and plays and epics that ought not to be forced to wear it. I mean, you can say that, I don't know, a Kafka story or a Kafka novel is hopeless or nihilistic. Sometimes they are, but that's a completely different world from a Sophocles or from, you know, for that matter. I think this book. I don't see that this book is ending in the realm of irrecoverable darkness.

[A]

Actually, it might be worthwhile to say that there's all this deliberate martyr language around him. And we don't think the death of martyrs is despairing and nihilistic. We see that as a glorious death. They did not give in. They held on and, you know, and then they ascended.

[C]

Anyway.

[B]

No, it's.

[C]

Yeah, it's a book that I dare say I will visit again.

[A]

I enjoy this. Ella, thank you so much for.

[C]

Absolutely. Ella, I think you did more work than any of us approaching this.

[A]

No, no, no. You're trying to do finals and we just. Sorry about that. That wasn't the best timing when we. When we planted this.

[B]

Oh, actually, it's very good timing. I would rather discuss Brave New World than sit in a pile of papers at the moment.

[A]

Well, thank you so much. I hope you guys enjoyed this. I look forward to the comments in our Patreon forum to see if we helped you guys shed some light on the ending at all. And, of course, Facebook comments and. And comments, you know, on. On our website and all the places cases. So, again, thank you, Ella. And you can find more of Ella at her Grammar of the Natural World class and her Living Page webinar, which are on sale now for the Christmas sale. You can pick those up for a steal, and they're absolutely fantastic. I. I'm dead serious when I'm saying I think those are two of the most important things we have ever done. So you definitely want to take a look at that and you can find out all the stuff we've got going [e-mail] and join us Next week we're gonna have special guests at Lee Northmore on our own film Maven at Lee Northmore. We are going to this is be a fun episode. I think we are going to talk about what makes a good film adaptation of a work of literature and then we're going to share our top 10 ish list of favorite film adaptations of books. I think you guys will enjoy that conversation. So 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 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.

[C]

The Life that I have by Leo Marx the life that I have is all that I have and the life that I have is yours. The love that I have of the life that I have is yours and yours and yours. Asleep I shall have a rest I shall have yet death will be but a pause for the peace of my years in the long green grass will be yours and yours and yours.