what do you find prejudice about the novel Brave New World?

Question

which part of the book, or certain occurences in the book, do u find have elements of prejudism? please help me!

Answer 1

have you read the book?

Answer 2

I know the answer but when I saw the way you spelled prejudism, I just couldn't give you the answer since you won't even use a dictionary. This isn't meant to be mean or to put you down, but think about it. Why would someone try to help you with a difficult question about a book when you don't put in the effort to do something as simple as use a dictionary?

Answer 3

Take note of this:

Brave New World was published in 1932 and was strongly influenced by its historical context. The Great Depression had started, and the effects of World War I were still noticeable. In Germany, the Nazi party was getting stronger, and in Russia the Bolshevik Revolution had taken place. The world was troubled by numerous instabilities: people had to face political, social, and economic troubles. Many theories and systems tried to offer solutions for these problems: Capitalism, nationalism, and religion. These solutions, however, often resulted in significant racist, sexist, and class prejudice. Science and theories, like the Darwinism, tried to underline these prejudices, and very often science was abused terribly in the name of "trouble-solving". Racists, for example, used Darwin´s theory to justify their prejudices and actions against ethnic minorities.
In Brave New World, there are several aspects which are worth being examined more closely: individuality and the World State, religion, science, and feelings and sex. Individuality and the World State: In the World State, individuality is abandoned: children are no longer born, but they are made in dozens in a factory. In this factory, the children are conditioned according to the caste they will live in. The conditioning completely abandons any free will in the individual person, so that there are no individuals left in the end. The World State´s explanation for this is simple: they have to maintain "Community, Identity, Stability." A very efficient medium for achieving this is the so-called hypnopaedia: the children are so to speak brainwashed while they are sleeping. The explanation is easy: moral education is strongly connected with feelings, and feelings can best be reached through hypnopaedia. The Director of the factory claims that this conditioning will make every person happy in the caste they live in. The World State´s philosophy is that free will only results in unhappiness and unsteadiness. Still, there are some examples of unhappiness and free will (at least to a certain extent) in the State: Bernard is highly discontent with his situation and has unorthodox beliefs about sex, feelings, community, and soma. Helmholtz, his friend, feels, that his writing skills are wasted in the hypnopaedia-department and hope to be able to write real poetry (which is also forbidden) one day.


CHAPTER 11

In this chapter, Huxley features John’s discovery of the activities that come closest to imagination and poetry in the world of Fordian London—taking soma and going to the feelies.

Huxley has introduced the effects of soma very early in the novel, and so the reader is not surprised to find Linda on a more or less perpetual soma holiday now that the drug is available to her once more. Soma, however, is new to John, and his worry about the drug shortening his mother’s life gives Huxley the opportunity to expand on soma once again. In explaining what he regards as soma’s benefits, Dr. Shaw uses the word “eternity”—a concept John recognizes from Shakespeare’s poetry. The moment represents a rare connection for the displaced character.

The chapter also offers a detailed description of the feelies, the popular entertainment that combines the senses of smell and touch in a movie format. Bernard, the reader recalls, disdained the feelies as beneath his intellectual dignity. Huxley’s presentation of John’s experience, however, makes clear the strengths and weaknesses of the form, which Mustapha Mond describes in Chapter 16 as “practically nothing but pure sensation.”

As the chapter reveals, the feelies exist simply to soothe and titillate the senses, while leaving the mind (or, rather, one’s conditioning) untouched. The story is pornographic, but conservative, containing nothing at all to introduce doubts into a viewer’s sense of social order.

The reader should note the racially charged assumptions underlying Huxley’s satire of the feelies, the plot revolving around a black man’s abduction and rape of a white woman. Again, the satire tells the reader as much about Huxley’s present world as it does the futuristic, fictional world. The technology is different, but the prejudice remains. Note also John’s later comparison of the feely he sees with Othello, whose tragic hero, John recalls, is also a black man.

The erotic power of the feelies shocks John deeply, because his own unintentional conditioning and poetic education mark off sex as a dangerous, filthy territory. In contrast, Lenina responds enthusiastically to the stimulation and is hurt and confused by John’s refusal to end their evening together with sex. The experience drives John back to Shakespeare—the world he understands—and further isolates him from the civilized people of London.


Compared with John—now called “the Savage”—Bernard appears shallow in his supposed individuality and his protests. Reaping the social rewards of his association with a celebrity, Bernard pushes for power and attention. At last popular with women because of his connection to John, Bernard forgets his earlier objections to recreational sex and throws himself into promiscuity with real enthusiasm. He flaunts his unconventional views in public for the mere sensation of risk-taking and even dares to lecture Mustapha Mond in his reports on John. The disapproving comments of his superiors forewarn of Bernard’s ultimate fall from social grace.

Bernard’s heady experience of power and popularity contrasts sharply with John’s growing disillusionment. Note especially John’s repetition of the “brave new world” quotation, now deeply ironic, as he views a factory filled with Bokanovsky groups and vomits in disgust.