Chapter 16

• Bernard, John and Helmholtz are brought to Mond‘s office and Mond assumes that John doesn‘t really like the civilization
• John agrees but also states that he does like some things in the World State (the sound of music for instance)
• Mond quotes a line from Shakespeare‘s The Tempest and John is pleasantly surprised
• however, Mond points out that Shakespeare is forbidden for several reasons
  
  • literature tends to last and in a world of consumerism, people constantly need new things; thus, newness is valued above literary or moral value
  • people in the World State are not capable of understanding Shakespeare because his storylines revolve around happenings that the citizens of the World State have never experienced
  • John suggests to create something new with the passion and intensity of Shakespeare, but about topics that these people could understand
  • Helmholtz chimes in that this is exactly what he has been wanting to write
  • but Mond is adamant that this just isn‘t possible because the people wouldn‘t understand it
• John asks why they can‘t all be Alphas
• Mond explains that the government needs people who happily perform the tasks they are required to do; hence, real Alpha‘s would be degraded and made stupid in order to do trivial tasks
• he underlines that with an experiment that took place on an island a while ago: only Alphas populated it and a civil war broke out because people weren‘t happy with the tasks they needed to do
• also, Mond states that the people are happy doing their menial jobs because they find them comforting
• taking this away from them would result in chaos
• even science is a possible enemy, although no one really knows what science is except for Mond
• Mond postulates that he knows what science is; however, he does not explain it to his audience
• he used to be a scientist and he invented something that got him into trouble - because of that he was offered the choice between being exiled and becoming a World Controller
• however, one can conclude that science does not really exist in the World State because the search for truth interferes with happiness
• Mond then tells Helmholtz and Bernard that they are going to be exiled: Bernard begs and pleads to not being sent away
• three men take him away and sedate him
• Mond tells the others that exile is actually a reward because those islands are inhabited by interesting people who all do not fit into the World State society
• Mond actually envies Helmholtz and Bernard
• Helmholtz wonders why that is and why Mond did not choose exile when offered the choice
• upon that, Mond states that he rather manages the happiness of others
• in addition, Mond explains that people like Bernard or Helmholtz would have to be killed if it weren‘t for the island
• when asked if he would like to go to a tropical island, Helmholtz says he‘d rather go to an island with bad climate as this might help with writing
• Mond suggests that he should go to the Falkland Islands and Helmholtz accepts

Function

• consumerism as central piece of Brave New World
  
  • Shakespeare does not contribute to consumer behavior
  • shows a mirror of our world: the ever-increasing value of consumerism
  • consumerism as the consumer‘s drive to gratify his or her appetites
  • consumerism according to Huxley is infantile
  • Mond equals happiness to stability
  • stability means economic stability - the continuous cycle of production and consumption