Brave New World

With benevolent dictatorships like these, who needs tyranny?

  • Course Length: 3 weeks
  • Course Type: Short Course
  • Category:
    • English
    • Literature
    • High School

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Meet the World State. Its name might sound a tad ominous, but it promises, it has only your best interests in mind. The World State wants to show you a life without pain or loneliness or sorrow, where the complications of human relationships have been replaced with drug-fueled movie outings, endless hookups, and consumerism up the wazoo.

Basically, a parent's worst nightmare.

But as it turns out, this brave new world would be a bad trip for anyone—even the most libertine of folk. We've got hatcheries full of human eggs, "savages" raised on reservations, and a resurgence of the caste system. Love, art, and science are a thing of the past, and the only thing that's sacred is the Model T.

Henry Ford help you if you were born an Epsilon.

But author-extraordinaire Aldous Huxley wasn't drumming up nightmare fuel just for kicks. Brave New World is a rousing critique of the notion of an "ideal" society, and the excessive need to be happy at all costs. In addition to becoming totally scared of the future after taking this fifteen-lesson course, you'll

  • learn all about the historical inspirations for this novel, from the World Wars to the eugenics movement.
  • examine themes that are still pertinent today—from social class, to sex and power, to freedom and confinement.
  • write essays, make podcasts, and put together storyboards, all in ways that'll make the most dystopic of high school teachers happy.

Say no to soma, kids—but say yes to this brave new Shmoop.

Required Skills



Unit Breakdown

1 Brave New World - Brave New World

In this course about Aldous Huxley's dystopian opus, we'll take a long hard look at what happens when the saying "be careful what you wish for" comes to fruition. Let's just say that paradise never looked less pretty.