Blog # 4 - Aldous Huxley

E! True Hollywood Story: Aldous Leonard Huxley




Aldous Leonard Huxley was born in Surrey, UK in 1894 into an elite English ruling class family. Famous family members include his grandfather, Thomas Henry Huxley, who helped develop the theory of evolution, and his Aunt, Mrs. Humphrey Ward, a novelist. As a child, he differed from other members of his family, not in a negative manner, just that he didn’t fit in with his family. He attended a prestigious school for the elite of the United Kingdom.

His upbringing greatly influenced his novels, and it is easy to see similarities with his life and his novels. In Brave New World, Bernard Marx and Hemholtz Watson, distance themselves from their communities because they don’t fit in. Huxley was born into a high class, and in his novels you can see separation due to different castes and how the wealthy, higher up, class have more power and control over everyone else. In the time of Huxley’s upbringing, there was a much stricter class structure.

At 14 Huxley’s mother died of cancer and at 16 he suffered from an eye illness that almost left him blind. Eventually, Huxley was able to recover to the point where he was able to attend Oxford University, however, because of this impediment he could not fight in World War I. These tragedies impacted him greatly. Death is a common topic in his novels. In Island, the people of Pala are very accepting, while in Brave New World, the people are in constant denial of death. The two are very different looks, but Brave New World is a dystopia, and the people cannot deal with death, somewhat similar to the World we live in. While Island, is close to a utopia as it gets, and they have learned to accept the ways of life. Pain is involved, but people get over it, and it is not feared. This shows that Huxley probably struggled with accepting his mother’s death and made him contemplate the matter. In Brave New World, the mother of John, the savage, Linda, dies of cancer. If Huxley had entered the war and survived, his stand points on life might have been drastically different. He possibly would have focused on the behavior of human’s more so than the overall society.

In 1919, Huxley married Maria Nys, a Belgian, and in 1920 they had their only son, Matthew Huxley. The family constantly traveled back and forth between London and different areas in Europe, but especially in Italy. The Huxley’s also visited India and the United States, where Huxley eventually settled. Aldous Huxley was attracted to the extravagance and confidence of American culture, but not necessarily a fan of the expression used in American culture. For example the cars, the different dances, and the lack of conversation all disagreed with his taste. He was also appalled by the waste America created. All his traveling led Aldous to see all the different types of government around the world, including, Italy’s fascist authoritarian government under Benito Mussolini. Mussolini had a campaign in Italy against birth control, to make sure enough people were produced for the military. I can see that this campaign had an affect on Huxley because in both Island and Brave New World, they emphasize birth control. In Brave New World, giving birth and being parents is equivalent to being a communist in 1950’s America and in Pala, the key to a successful society is making sure there is enough resources to go around – no overpopulation. In 1938, the Huxley family settled in Hollywood where Aldous Huxley pursued film making, and he then remained in California for the majority of the rest of his life. In 1955, Maria Huxley died and he remarried Laura Archera in 1956.

Huxley had many interests in life. He studied Greek history, Sanskrit, Buddhism, pharmacology, scientific experiments and reports, Polynesian antrophology, and many essays and novels. He was also interested in ecology, and considered to be a leader in the environmental movement because of an essay he wrote. He is also known for being a pacifist.

Aldous Huxley has a long list of accomplishments, which include: 11 novels, and a handful of short stories, poems, shorts, travel writings, essay compilations, and screen plays. Brave New World, his most famous novel, was published in 1931 and only took four months to complete. It must be noted that Brave New World, was written before Hitler and Stalinism. In 1946, Huxley wrote a foreword to Brave New World and then in 1958, he published Brave New World Revisited. In both of these he discussed how being a good and functional society is not impossible, however it is still very difficult and rare. These were after Huxley had seen the terrors that occurred in the Soviet Union and across Europe because of Hitler. In 1963, Huxley published Island, which in comparison to Brave New World took a lengthy twenty years. All his novels have been critically studied and many critics have come to the conclusion that he was a better essayist than novelist because he focused on his ideas more than the characters. As a symbol for his accomplishments, Huxley received the Award of Merit.

The 1950’s opened up a new world for Aldous Huxley. He began to experiment in psychedelic drugs such as LSD and mescaline. From his experience with mind altering drugs Huxley went on to write several books that talked about the positives and negatives of drug use.

Aldous Huxley died November 22, 1955. This was the same day that President John F. Kennedy was assassinated, and because of this his death was somewhat overlooked at the time. However, Huxley will forever go down in history as a modern thinker and famous novelist.