Disscussion 1. Using any part of the novel, but especially chapters 7-12, discuss how the Brave New World’s society deals with aging and illness. Use specific examples. Why do the leaders treat the elderly and sick this way?
Disscussion 2. Why does Linda not return to London after she is left there? What makes her stay on the reservation instead of reaching out for help?
Disscussion 3. When the Director and Henry Foster are discussing Bernard at the beginning of chapter 10, the Director says, “The greater a man’s talents, the greater his power to lead astray. It is better that one should suffer than that many should be corrupted…no offence is so heinous as unorthodoxy of behavior. Murder kills only the individual–and, after all, what is an individual?” (148). Given this explanation, why is Bernard in trouble back in London?
Disscussion 4. On pages 160 and 161, Huxley juxtaposes a scene with John “the Savage” retching when he sees the multiple sets of Gammas and Epsilons with a scene where Bernard reflects on the oddity of John NOT being repulsed by his mother’s appearance. Why do you think Huxley writes these two scenes back-to-back? What is he trying to say?
Disscussion 5. On page 177, Mustapha Mond refuses to publish a scholar’s paper and decides instead that its author needs to be supervised and possibly banished. Mond says that doing this is better than leading the masses to think that life’s “goal was somewhere beyond, somewhere outside the present human sphere; that the purpose of life was not the maintenance of well-being, but some intensification and refining of consciousness, some enlargement of knowledge.” He then admits: “Which was…quite possibly true. But not, in the present circumstance, admissible.” Why has Mond made this decision? What is he saying about the masses here?
