Aldous Huxley

Aldous Leonard Huxley was born on July 26th in 1894 to Goldaming in England. As a child, Huxley has a fragile health, but he is very intelligent and learns much in contact with his father. Aldous is unfit for the war, he integrates Balliol College of Oxford to study the English literature.

Huxley has to work to meet his needs. He decides to use his literary skills to earn money. His themes of preference are then the modern civilization, the technique, the behaviourism, the nationalism. In the 50's, his interest for the psychology grows, in particular on the question of the states of consciouness, on which it works with the psychiarist Erickson. He dies on November in 1963.

The grandson of a famous biologist, At 16, he became totally blind for 18 mouths. He recovered his eyesight sufficiently to continue his studies but not to pursue his chosen career as a scientist. He turned to writting and wrote a dozen books before achieving worldwide fame with Brave New World

Aldous Huxley's Brave New World, a dystopia, depicts a dehumanized, technologically-based world dominated by a totalitaria government. The story unfolds in london in AF632. The novel depicts a genetically-engineered society divided into five castes. The upper castes, the Alphas and the Betas, are destined to occupy intellectual and managerial positions. The lower castes, the Gammas, the Deltas and the Epsilons , are bred to provide manual labour. People are conditionned to be happy within thei own caste and glad not be a member of any other group. Conditionning is reinforced by sleep teaching. The ironic title of the novel was taken from Shekespeare's The Tempest.

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