Pre-Reading PowerPoint Questions: April 16, 17

Brave New World Pre-Reading PowerPoint Questions: Group Work.
Work with members of your caste to answer as many of these questions as you can using the PowerPoint in your folder.

Aldous Huxley
1. What did Huxley’s parents do for a living?
2. Why might Huxley’s ancestry have “brought down on him a weight of intellectual authority and a momentum of moral obligations?
3. What could Huxley not do because of the disease that affected his eyes?
4. How did Huxley know so much about science?
5. How did his eye disease influence who Huxley was to become?
6. What were some tragedies he experienced?
7. Why was Huxley not granted U.S. citizenship?
8. What are Huxley’s novels about?
9. Describe Huxley’s experience with hallucinogenic drugs.
10. Who is Jim Morrison and what is his connection to Huxley?
11. What is The Doors of Perception?
12. What is significant about the day Huxley died?
13. What other book contains similar themes as Brave New World? Who wrote this book?
14. How did Huxley and the author of this book know each other before their books were published?
15. What historical events happened around the time Brave New World was published?
16. What were the last few years of Huxley’s life like?

Terms, Literary Elements, Connections to Literature
17. What is a utopia?
18. What is a dystopia?
19. What is totalitarianism?
20. What point of view is Brave New World written in?
21. What are the themes of Brave New World? (in your own words)
22. Where do we get the word utopia?
23. Who is Sir Thomas More?
24. Who was Jonathan Swift? What is his link to More? To utopia?
25. What is the setting(s) of Brave New World? (time and place)

Brave New World
26. What is soma? What is its function?
27. Do we have a modern soma? Explain.
28. What are “feelies”?
29. What is “orgy-porgy”?
30. Who is Freud? What is his significance in Brave New World?
31. What is a Malthusian Belt?
32. What is a freemartin?
33. Describe the Alphas.
34. Betas.
35. Gammas.
36. Deltas.
37. Epsilons.
38. What is the result of the caste system?
39. How is promiscuity regarded in Brave New World?
40. Who is the director of the D.H.C.?
41. What is the aim of the state in Brave New World?
42. What is life like in the society of Brave New World? What is the quality of life?
43. How & why is the society of Brave New World a peaceful society?
44. Who is the savage & what does he believe?
45. How are the savage’s beliefs different from those of Mustapha Mond?
46. How is Brave New World more applicable today than in 1932 when it was published?
47. How is Brave New World a warning?