Topic for Brave New World?

Question

I need a topic to write 15-20 pages on Brave New World. There needs to be significant writing done on the topic, on which I will (of course) expand. So far I am drawing a blank. Any takers? Ordinarily I have little trouble coming up with essay topics, but this particular book has stumped me. By the way, this is for a graduate course.

Answer 1

Great book. The following would be interesting topics:

The modern popularity and acceptance of mood-altering/enhancing pharmaceuticals and comparing/contrast with attitudes in the bood re: soma.

Today's adoption of cliche's and slogans compared/contrasted to those expressed in the book. Think: mission accomplished, flip-flop, cut and run etc.

Discussion of sexuality and promiscuity in the book.

Compare to 1984.

Look at Brave New World Revisited and analyze whether Huxley was subjective.

Or you can critique his method of introducing the main characters - especially waiting until halfway into the novel to bring in John. Discuss whether this was effective, and what he accomplished by doing so.

Answer 2

I think if you are looking for material, depending on the level of personal freedom given to the topic (which for a graduate course might vary quite a bit id think) i might trace some of modern globalization as a potential precursor to the Brave New World society. If you wanted to you could look at the treatment of savages all the way back into a colonial era and keep moving forward from there highlighting in brief some of the ideas presented by the first respondant. Now this might be a bit too speculative for a graduate level course, but there would be lots of material about decay of current capitalistic society (mostly gloom and doom perspective) that could indicate a society like brave new worlds coming into existence in the form of automatons.

Good luck with the paper.

Answer 3

Talk about the advancement of technology and of culture. Compare their world to ours and focus on similarities, their caste system, and things that mainly come under the category of ethics. I really love that book although it's been a while since I read it. A good topic can be about how prophetic it is and how our modern world compares to it. One thing to remember is that although the world was made to satisfy physical pleasure people still became depressed, and thus soma was born.

Answer 4

Cloning and Genetics, Mass production & Henry Ford, socialism, the political implications of the social pyramid. I read this book as a sophtmore in High School, and it stumped me too. The thing that got me the most was the fact that somebody was playing god and mass producing human beings to make society work in harmony, and how you weren't able to move up in the social pyramid, because you were designed not to even dare to try.

Answer 5

If I had to do this paper, I think I would write about what in the book turned out to be true. Maybe compare and contrast what turned out to come to be and what did not come to be.

My second thought would be to somehow discuss the book's class system.