Brave New World Symbolism, Imagery, Allegory

Animal Imagery

Animal imagery is rampant in Brave New World. Just look at the first chapter. There's the repetition of "straight from the horse's mouth," Foster's implicit claim that "any cow" could merely hatch...

Soma

"Euphoric, narcotic, pleasantly hallucinant"—that's what Mustapha says of soma. It's arguably the best tool the government has for controlling its population. It sedates, calms, and most importan...

The Electric Fence

An electric fence borders the Savage Reservation and separates the primitive world from the civilized world. The question, of course, is which is which? If you look at it in a certain light—a wor...

The Bottle That Will One Day Die of Sleeping Sickness

This is a really small passage in Chapter 13, and it's easy to miss if you're reading quickly. That being said, it's arguably the most skilled, artistic moment in Brave New World, partly because it...

Zippers

Did you notice that all the clothing in the World State has zippers on it? Because in case you didn't, Huxley helps us out with his repeated "zip," "zip," "zip," often followed by "zip," and even o...

Music

In other places of this guide we discuss the connection between sex and violence in Brave New World. All the violence is vaguely sexual, all the sex vaguely violent. (That's our premise, but feel f...

Weather

The World State seeks to control everything about its citizens and environment. The weather, of course, presents a bit of difficulty. As far as we can tell, the World Controllers haven't figured ou...

Ford

The choice of Henry Ford as the deity-like figure in Huxley's dystopia reveals the new world's value system. Henry Ford was famous for the perfection of mass production and the assembly line. In Hu...

Bottles

Bottles are introduced in Chapter 1 as the new way in which humans are created and grown. Right off the bat, this just seems very, very wrong. But far more disturbing than the notion of little zyg...