Brave New World by Aldous Huxley: Chapter 5 by https://padlet.com/alicebranco/kgva6dbg9gz5 Chapter 5 en-us 2019-05-03 11:35:56 UTC 2019-05-25 21:21:37 UTC hello@padlet.com https://padlet.net/icons/png/1f18e.png About the author - a biography https://www.biography.com/writer/aldous-huxley (written) alicebranco https://padlet.com/alicebranco/kgva6dbg9gz5/wish/356550598 - youtube biography https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=s-IfwVXXk8E
- an Interview https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oIgjujAI6eE
- another interview where Huxley describes today's world around 60 years ago
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4xUyHA0h2jU

Characters 

HENRY FOSTER
Henry is the the life of a typical upper caste male living in the World State. But most of all, Henry is obsessed with numbers. When we first meet him in the Hatchery, Henry explains in horrible detail the way conditioning works. 

Birth and growth, which we think of as the most natural, unchecked, beautiful processes in the world, have been harnessed and made scientific, exact. And it's Henry's character that reminds us of this, again and again.

LENINA CROWNE
Lenina is a vaccination worker at the Central London Hatchery and Conditioning Centre. She is an object of desire for a number of major and minor characters, including Bernard Marx and John. She’s described as being very pretty and curvy.

BERNARD 
Bernard is an Alpha male who fails to fit in because of his inferior physical stature. He holds unorthodox beliefs about sexual relationships, sports, and community events. His insecurity about his size and status makes him discontented with the World State. Bernard’s discontent stems from his frustrated desire to fit into his own society, rather than from a systematic or philosophical criticism of it. When threatened, Bernard can be petty and cruel.
]]> 2019-05-03 11:35:56 UTC https://padlet.com/alicebranco/kgva6dbg9gz5/wish/356550598 SETTING alicebranco https://padlet.com/alicebranco/kgva6dbg9gz5/wish/356550599 Huxley establishes in Chapter 1 that the year is A.F. 632. We are told in Chapter 3 that the introduction of the first Ford Model-T was year "zero" for this calendar.
It is the Future.

Huxley creates an incredibly elaborate and nuanced setting for his novel. He provides details about everything from technology (vibro-vacuum massage, scent organ) to professions (Director of Hatcheries and Conditioning, World Controller) to down-time activities (Centrifugal Bumble-puppy), and from the cityscape (the seven skyscrapers twinkling over Guildford) to individual buildings (The Internal and External Secretions Factory, The Hounslow Feely Studio).

In essence, the more disturbing the setting and the more complete the picture, the more effective the novel.
 If Brave New World creeps you out, Huxley did his job well. All this elaborate detail, while sometimes outlandish, makes the idea of a "World State" plausible  in our minds. We start to see how a society like this might function, down to the smallest detail.
There are  details that allow Huxley to parody our own world so effectivel:. Christianity has crosses; they have T's. We say, "Thank God!"; they say "Thank Ford." We play mini-golf; they play Obstacle Golf. 

Finally, as far as a specific setting goes, there's a clear dichotomy between the Savage Reservation and the civilized world. The two landscapes act as a foil, although settings aren't characters).]]> 2019-05-03 11:35:56 UTC https://padlet.com/alicebranco/kgva6dbg9gz5/wish/356550599 THEMES alicebranco https://padlet.com/alicebranco/kgva6dbg9gz5/wish/356550600 Individuality, Dystopia and Totalitarianism, Technology and Control, Industrialism and Consumption, Drugs, Religion, Sex

Match the themes with their meaning here: https://quizlet.com/400119478/chapter-5-bnw-themes-flash-cards/?i=22s8pw&x=1jqY

]]> 2019-05-03 11:35:56 UTC https://padlet.com/alicebranco/kgva6dbg9gz5/wish/356550600 VOCABULARY alicebranco https://padlet.com/alicebranco/kgva6dbg9gz5/wish/356550601 Here is the PDF of the book, by courtesy of The Gutenberg Project

https://gutenberg.ca/ebooks/huxleya-bravenewworld/huxleya-bravenewworld-00-h.html

CHAPTER 5

When reading you don't always need to know the translation of all words in order to have the gist and grasp the meaning. However, there are a few less obvious ones.

Learn a few of them here: 
https://quizlet.com/397794441/chapter-5-brave-new-world-flash-cards/
]]> 2019-05-03 11:35:56 UTC https://padlet.com/alicebranco/kgva6dbg9gz5/wish/356550601 ANALYSIS alicebranco https://padlet.com/alicebranco/kgva6dbg9gz5/wish/356550602 Lenina and Henry's date is an example of conditioning at work. They consume goods, they don't fear death, soma keeps them happy, and they make sure not to have any children and thereby avoid any emotional entanglements or responsibilities.

Like most individuals, Bernard is always stuck in his mind. In contrast, all of the other people at the Solidarity Service barely think of themselves at all. In other words, they're happy.
The Solidarity Service is designed to further eliminate the individual in everyone. It turns a group of individuals into a kind of mob, and at the same time ensures that no one goes without sexual satisfaction for too long.

But for Bernard, already an individual, the experience of watching others lose their individuality only makes him feel more alone.
]]> 2019-05-03 11:35:56 UTC https://padlet.com/alicebranco/kgva6dbg9gz5/wish/356550602 QUOTES alicebranco https://padlet.com/alicebranco/kgva6dbg9gz5/wish/356550603 The following quotes sum up Chapter 5 pretty well.

“Obediently, with all the others, Lenina and Henry left the building. The depressing stars had travelled quite some way across the heavens. But though the separating screen of the sky-signs had now to a great extent dissolved, the two young people still retained their happy ignorance of the night.”

"What a marvellous switchback!" Lenina laughed delightedly.

But Henry's tone was almost, for a moment, melancholy. "Do you know what that switchback was?" he said. "It was some human being finally and definitely disappearing. Going up in a squirt of hot gas. It would be curious to know who it was—a man or a woman, an Alpha or an Epsilon.…" He sighed.”]]> 2019-05-03 11:35:56 UTC https://padlet.com/alicebranco/kgva6dbg9gz5/wish/356550603 SUMMARY alicebranco https://padlet.com/alicebranco/kgva6dbg9gz5/wish/356550604 On their date, after a game of Obstacle Golf, Henry and Lenina fly in a helicopter over a crematorium where phosphorous is collected from burning bodies to help make plants grow and they discuss how nice it is that the elements in dead human bodies are recycled. They drink coffee with soma before heading off to the Westminster Abbey Cabaret where they eat dinner and listen to Calvin Stopes and His Sixteen Sexophonists. They take another soma dose before they return to Henry’s apartment. Although the repeated doses of soma have made them almost completely oblivious to the world around them, Lenina remembers to use her contraceptives.

Every other Thursday, Bernard has to take part in Solidarity Service at the Fordson Community Singery. He's late and has an uncomfortable conversation with a woman named Morgana Rothchild because of it. The twelve participants sit at a table, alternating men and women. While a hymn plays, the participants pass a cup of strawberry ice cream soma and take a soma tablet with it and the ceremony ends in a sex orgy that leaves Bernard feeling more isolated than ever.
]]> 2019-05-03 11:35:56 UTC https://padlet.com/alicebranco/kgva6dbg9gz5/wish/356550604 S alicebranco https://padlet.com/alicebranco/kgva6dbg9gz5/wish/356550605 2019-05-03 11:35:56 UTC https://padlet.com/alicebranco/kgva6dbg9gz5/wish/356550605