Language

• detailed and unemotional writing style
  
  • book begins with a passage about the hatching and fertilizing process, no detailed characters are involved
  • characters are described very little in order to emphasize their interchangeability and missing identity
  • the Director for instance has no age and remains vague
  • whenever Huxley describes the looks of a character, he reinforces their unappealing appearance (Bernard is short, Linda is monstrous and Lenina has purple eyes and gums)
  • this repulsed style of describing a character stands in contrast to the World State that is assumed to be a nice place to live in
• repetition of phrases and jumping between scenes
  
  • at the beginning, Huxley jumps between Lenina and Fanny talking about promiscuity and World Controller Mustapha Mond explaining the World State‘s history to a group of students
  • consequently, the reader is reminded that the World State still consists of certain individuals who resemble real people
  • repetition of phrases in the context of Brave New World hails from the propagandistic process of hypnopaedia
  • that repetition of phrases such as “a gramme is better than a damn” or “ending is better than mending” functions as a portrayal of how deeply the mindset of the World State is ingrained into the brains of its members
  • the neologism "orgy-porgy" has different functions: first, it serves to damp the negative connotations that the reader has towards brainwashing and genetical engineering; second, it serves to describe a social assembly combining religious worship and sexual promiscuity
  • through those repetions and jumping between scenes, Huxley illustrates the divergence between what the characters think due to being brainwashed by the World State and what they might think if they had the freedom to
• sardonic and dispassionate tone that later shifts towards sympathy and intimacy
  
  • the tone at the beginning hints towards the fact that the reader should rather be sceptical about whether the World State is a pleasant place to live in
  • this tone is underlined through images such as "The depressing stars had travelled quite some way across the heavens." (Chapter 5, p. 67) - usually, the reader finds nature soothing and technology unsettling
  • in Brave New World, it is quite the opposite which is why the reader cannot reconstruct why the members of the World State do not rebel against the system
  • the tone of the novel indicates that the reader knows about the wickedness of living in the World State whereas the residents ignore it
  • after John‘s arrival at the World State, the tone shifts and is more emotional
  • it reflects how John - being considered a savage by everyone - is actually the only civilized character in the novel as he struggles with reconciling conflicting feelings towards his dying mother, making him thus fully human
• references to Shakespeare
  
  • those references link timeless human conflicts as depicted in Shakespeare‘s plays with the futuristic struggles of the novel‘s characters
  • the title itself is a reference to The Tempest in which the female protagonist Miranda exclaims “O brave new world, that has such people in it!” after being finally introduced to civilization
  • references to Shakespeare underline the fact that in the World State, words and phrases are used for propaganda but have no actual, significant meaning to them
  • whereas Shakespeare uses words as medium for enlightenment and as means to communicate human experience, the World State uses them to repress its citizens

Genre

• Utopian Novel
  
  • Sir Thomas More coined the name "Utopia" in 1516 with a novel of the same name in which suffering can be eliminated by perfecting the society so that people live a happy in peaceful life
  • in Brave New World, genetical engineering and conditioning is the cause for happy citizens
  • negatively connoted drives like ambition, dissatisfaction and envy or feelings of injustice do no longer exist through conditioning
  • negative feelings are relieved with the drug soma
  • societal ills such as war, disease, crime, aging or depression do not exist anymore
  • Aldous Huxley satirizes the idea of a utopia through implying that the World State members‘ lifes are meaningless despite the overall prevalent happiness
  • their lifes are void of relationships, history, religion and art, emphasizing the emptiness of their existence
  • the utopia is an artificial state that hails from conformity and its functionality through happiness is enhanced by soma
• Dystopian Fiction
  
  • dystopias paint disturbing, bleak, and cautionary pictures of future societies and governments that mostly have a dark secret with regard to controlling its citizens
  • Brave New World is also a dystopian novel, because its presumably utopian environment leads the most intelligent and free-thinking character to commit suicide
  • in the World State, only those who have made themselves incapable of seeing the truth by taking soma are truly happy
  • John feels so suppressed by the World State that he ends up killing himself
• Science Fiction
  
  • in general, novels of the genre science fiction describe future worlds in which advanced technologies have altered the experience of being human
  • the novel is set in a future where genetic engineering and psychological conditioning have ruled out biological processes which is the foundation of science fiction
  • in the World State, those technologies include high-speed travel, cloning, genetical modifications of the human body, emotional manipulation and brainwashing
  • because brainwashing and manipulation as exercised in Brave New World are ethically indefensible, the novel attempts to draw attention to the dark sides of technological advancement