Brave New World Revisited

Brave New World Revisited is written against the background of Huxley’s 1932 novel Brave New World. Throughout the essays, Huxley refers to the novel frequently and discusses contemporary and past events with reference to it. He also uses the phrase “Brave New World” to denote the kind of society he envisions in the novel, which he believes will develop in the near future.

Huxley borrowed the phrase “brave new world” from Shakespeare’s The Tempest; in the play, the character Miranda uses the phrase to describe the experience of the shipwrecked strangers arriving on her island from Europe. In Shakespeare’s day, “brave” was a term of approval, suggesting adjectives like showy, grand, splendid, handsome, or finely dressed. Miranda’s use of the phrase is ironic because several of the men to whom she refers are revealed to be evil and corrupt. Huxley retains this sense of irony in his use of the phrase. As applied to Huxley’s imagined society, the phrase implies a naïve enthusiasm for social developments that are, in reality, negative.

Huxley’s novel Brave New World is set in a future society called the World State that revolves around scientific progress and efficiency. At the Central London Hatchery and Conditioning Centre, babies are created artificially in tubes and incubators and are chemically conditioned to belong to particular social classes, from leaders to manual laborers.