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How Did Huxley Change In Brave New World

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A New World “Technological progress has merely provided us with more efficient means for going backwards” (“Aldous Huxley Quotes”). Aldous L. Huxley, author of Brave New World, is one the most influential writers in history, writing timeless works that still boggle minds almost a century later. Huxley didn’t just become an unparalleled writer overnight, but it is his life that shapes his works. While Huxley’s Keratitis Punctuate, sudden death in the family and strong influences in science and evolution changed his life greatly, it is the influence on his writing that has left a lasting mark forever. When Aldous Huxley contracted Keratitis Punctate in 1911, the course of his life was changed forever. Since Keratitis punctate is a virus, …show more content…

From the early age of 14, Huxley’s mother, Julia Arnold, died of cancer, and soon after, in 1914, Huxley’s brother, Noel, committed suicide ("Aldous Huxley - Biography"). From these events, Aldous Huxley felt a great vary of emotion; grief, fear, hate, animosity and depression, Huxley felt it all. Huxley later used these experiences in his novel Brave New World. Huxley took all the emotions he felt through death and expunged them in a backwards, dystopian society with a purpose to disgust the reader with the lack of fervor. Only one role character in this work feels the full depth of emotion. John, the savage, reflects Huxley’s own past grief in a passage where the savage’s grief violently collides with the unemotional pettiness of the dystopian society. John’s maddening reaction to Linda’s death could only be expressed by someone who has suffered a similar fate. Through John, Huxley shows intense emotion as the brave new world breaks him down into his descent of madness (A. Huxley 207). One could also say that Aldous Huxley’s mother’s death gave him a renewed sense of the transience of human happiness. Huxley expresses this in Brave New World by having the society go to tremendous measures to deny the negative emotions of death, and to find perpetual happiness. By doing this, they are essentially denying themselves of all disliked emotions, so in return, they also deny themselves of the all deeply joyous ones as well ("Aldous …show more content…

Aldous Huxley was born into a family of acclaimed scientists. His grandfather was Thomas Henry Huxley who is the most famous, controversial naturalist of his time, and with two brothers becoming eminent biologists, his family was no short of brilliance in the scientific field. Huxley himself was on the path to become a scientist until he contracted Keratitis Punctate and couldn’t properly conduct his experiments ("Aldous Huxley - Biography"). While his later writings may have not been as dry as a lab report, remnants of his scientific endeavors and influences are woven throughout. For example, Huxley writes, “preserving the excised ovary alive and actively developing; passed on to a consideration of optimum temperature, salinity, viscosity” (A. Huxley 5). His scientific knowledge that is woven into Brave New World creates a general image of the future, but in certain areas, such as the passage above, Aldous Huxley uses his scientific knowledge to create a dry diction that gives off a sense of fear and disgust in the rapid advancement of technology. Huxley’s diction of towering scientific terms brings many aspects of this society to life, such as when Huxley talks about genetic engineering and

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