Language

Precision and accuracy

The language of the novel Brave New World by Aldous Huxley is characterized by its careful accuracy, but not only in the description of the thoughts and feelings of the protagonists. Huxley also describes the new world with painstaking care. For example, he lets the omniscient narrator and his characters describe the processes in the Conditioning Center with millimeter precision. Foster “took an evident pleasure in quoting figures.” (Chapter 1, 33%). He explains to the students that by the Bokanowski method many embryos can develop from one ovary, namely “ ‘sixteen thousand and twelve; in one hundred and eighty-nine batches of identicals’ ” (ibid.). After the embryos have been put into bottles, they are packed onto a “ ‘conveyor traveling at the rate of thirty-three and a third centimetres an hour.’ ” (Chapter 1, 56%). There they stay “ ‘two hundred and sixty-seven days at eight metres a day. Two thousand one hundred and thirty-six metres in all.’ ” (ibid.).

Language areas

Aldous Huxley came from a large family of English biologists. His grandfather was a famous biologist. His father worked as a teacher and editor. His eldest brother, Julian Huxley, was a recognized biologist and writer: he had a great influence on Huxley's novel. Julian Huxley encouraged the idea of ‘atheism in the name of reason’, which can also be found in the novel. Through him, Huxley gained access to the latest research in reproductive biology.

Throughout the novel, Huxley uses scientific terms from the fields of psychology, chemistry and physic...