1999 applied practice brave new world pdf

This form of fiction has been, if not vindicated, at least accounted for, by Frederick Hoffman, 2 who showed that Huxley used ideas as if they were animated persons and that he dramatized ideas instead of the life of his characters. 189-200ĢIt is a commonplace to say that Huxley can create neither a plot nor characters and that his novels consist in bringing people together and making them talk. 2 Frederick HOFFMAN, “Aldous Huxley and the Novel of Ideas,” in Forms of Modern Fiction, pp.This and the topical character of his novels explain their success, though Huxley has always been both a widely read and a controversial writer. On the other hand, the comments of his intellectuals on the human condition give his work an air of universality which often leaves the reader wondering at the perspicacity and the breadth of the author’s judgment. In a sense, the type of characters he presents in his early novels and what he reveals of their way of life limit the bearing of his satires. All of them are sophisticated people who refuse to take life seriously and either become cynics or are secretly distressed about their own negative attitude. His characters are mostly upper-class people who can still afford to lead a leisured existence and divide their time between house-parties and travels or they are artists and intellectuals of the type which Wyndham Lewis so much despised for corrupting “genius” and undermining the greatness of Western civilization. He expresses the unavowed despair which underlies their defiant negation of values and shows the vulnerability of modern man, his distrust of his fellow-beings and his reluctance to face life responsibly. His clever and sardonic criticism of his contemporaries lays bare the futility and immorality of a social class which seeks oblivion in pleasure. Huxley was an eloquent interpreter of the feverish mood of the Twenties. 1ġThe philosophy of meaninglessness is the essence of Huxley’s early novels, of those witty and merciless satires in which he exposes the spiritual disease of the post-war generation. There was one admirably simple method of confusing these people and at the same time justifying ourselves in our political and erotic revolt: we could deny that the world had any meaning whatsoever. The supporters of these systems claimed that in some way they embodied the meaning of the world. We objected to the morality because it interfered with our sexual freedom we objected to the political and economic system because it was unjust. The liberation we desired was simultaneously liberation from a certain political and economic system and liberation from a certain system of morality. 273.įor myself, as, no doubt, for most of my contemporaries, the philosophy of meaninglessness was essentially an instrument of liberation. 1 Aldous HUXLEY, Ends and Means, London, 1946, p.

1999 applied practice brave new world pdf